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Defy.vc, an early-stage VC firm in Silicon Valley, raised $300m for its third fund. www.defy.vc

Early-stage VC firm Defy.vc  has closed on its third fund of $300 million to invest in pre-Series A funding rounds.

“That’s our core deal: where you need $3 million to $10 million to lead a seed-plus or A-minus” round, said Neil Sequeira, who co-founded Woodside, California-based Defy.vc after leaving General Catalyst to focus on this niche stage.

The firm has already made a couple of investments from fund three, including one in blockchain infrastructure and another in real estate — deals it said will be announced in the coming months.

Most of the commitments to fund three were made in early 2022 with supportive insiders. The firm kept the fund open to add some new investors when the market soured. It decided to wait to announce as it was still investing from fund two.

The firm intends to invest in 33 core companies from this new fund, slightly up from the 27 out of fund two and the 19 core companies in fund one.

Linktree announced it is launching a number of new features to help content creators diversify their income streams and deliver more engagement for fans. As of Jan. 31, 2023, the platform will now include an in-house Buy Me a Gift tool—harkening back to donation and membership tool Buy Me a Coffee—and new integrations with Send Owl and Bonfire, tools for digital product and merchandise selling.

The new Buy Me a Gift feature works incredibly similar to Buy Me a Coffee, a crowdfunding platform founded in 2018 that allows creators to accept memberships and donations for designated price tiers paired with icons for “coffee,” “pizza,” or other items. The tool charges a 5% transaction fee and sends payments made via credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay from fans to creators via Stripe. Despite its similar name and functions, Linktree’s Buy Me a Gift is not made in partnership with Buy Me a Coffee.

With Buy Me a Gift on Linktree, fans can send a one-off donation to a creators’ PayPal or Square account, with the value of the donation being represented by corresponding emoji like a hot drink, sandwich, or beer. Fans pay with PayPal, Venmo, credit or debit cards when creators connect their PayPal account; they can also pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay when creators connect their Square account. Although Linktree will be deducting transaction fees for the use of this service further down the line, it is currently free to use with no such fees.

 

SendOwl is teaming up with Linktree to help creators easily launch, share, and sell digital products to their online community.

The landscape of social media is always changing. As algorithms evolve and platforms pursue new growth paths, the creators who are the heart and soul of social media — whose content drives clicks and whose engagement creates community — can struggle to make the most of what they’re building.

Linktree has become the leading link-in-bio solution with a mission to empower creators by providing paths to monetize and strengthen their digital presence. And now, creators can use SendOwl’s Linktree integration to convert their hard-won audience into paying customers.

SendOwl knows all about empowering creators. Creators have no shortage of ideas, talents, knowledge, skills, and expertise — and with SendOwl, they can harness that creativity to sell anything digital directly from their Linktree (and anywhere else online).

Linktree, the popular link-in-bio startup, is continuing to build more tools to help creators make money on its platform. The company announced today that it’s introducing three new monetization features designed to help users turn their Linktree into a stronger earnings channel.

First, Linktree is launching a new “Buy Me a Gift” button that is somewhat similar to its Tip Jar feature. Buy Me a Gift is a new way for fans to say thank you to their favorite creators in a simple way. Creators can pick from five emoji gift options that represent what a fan’s gift means to them. The emojis you can choose from include the coffee emoji, taco emoji, cake emoji, beer emoji or present emoji. Then, they can set a price and connect their PayPal or Square account to get paid. Linktree says it won’t charge any transaction fees for a limited time.

Once a user has added their Buy Me a Gift link to their Linktree, they can share a URL to bring people directly to it. You can head to your Linktree on desktop, hover over your Buy Me a Gift link and select the share icon to get a short link that drives donation traffic straight to your Linktree.

espite continuing talk about a possible recession, slumping tech stocks and a slowdown in the world of startup investing, the business of funding was positively humming last week. After slowing way down last spring, venture outfits disclosed a stunning $8 billion in new capital commitments in the span of just five days.

Consider the following: NEA revealed that it closed its two newest funds adding up to $6.2 billion; Cowboy Ventures announced two funds totaling $260 million; and FJ Labs also disclosed two funds totaling $260 million. Then there’s Sapphire Sport (it closed a second fund of $181 million), Volition Capital (it announced $675 million for its fifth fund), Kearny Jackson ($14 million) and Dimension ($350 million). Even non-U.S. outfits got into the act, including Highland Europe, which announced a new €1 billion fund, and a Japanese chemical giant that revealed a $100 million fund.

So what’s going on exactly? Are we already through this downturn? While impossible to know, the flurry of activity likely owes itself instead to a few unsurprising things.

For starters, a lot of “new” funds were actually closed last year but not announced for one reason or another. Defy.vc, for example, an early-stage venture outfit based in Woodside, California, said it is now investing out of a $300 million third fund (compared with a $151 million debut fund and a $262 million sophomore fund that it closed in 2019).

Defy actually closed the fund in the middle of last year but didn’t say anything until now because it was actively investing its previous fund until a few months ago, co-founder Neil Sequeira said. At the time, he said, the moment didn’t seem right.

“It was an interesting time in the Nasdaq and [regarding] world geopolitical issues,” he said, referring to the confluence of events that made 2022 a year that many would sooner forget, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and disrupted supply chains to surging inflation around the world.

Before we turn the  switch on this thing, we leave you with this week’s StrictlyVC Download, featuring Neil Sequeira of the early-stage venture firm Defy.vc, who reveals the nearly seven-year-old, Woodside, Ca.-based firm is now investing from of a new $300 million fun and talked with us about where his team is shopping, as well as why so many new funds are being announced amid the current, purported slowdown. Hope you enjoy it.

Alex finds some brights spots in this week’s tech news, and then Connie talks to Neil Sequeira of Defy.vc about what it takes to raise a VC fund these days, where Defy is investing, and more.

Capchase, which claims to be the leading provider of non-dilutive (debt-based) capital to SaaS companies,  revealed its 2022 growth metrics, announcing it “increased revenue by 250%.”

Throughout the year, Capchase was “able to expand its reach by securing additional funding, forging partnerships with leading financial service companies, and expanding its European services, including launching in Germany.”

The company’s success “allowed it to deploy a record amount of non-dilutive financing to startups across the globe.”