A New Chapter in Storytelling

Tome Tells Tale of Successful Funding, Paradigm Scales Back, and Amadeus and Apex Join forces for Deep Tech Fund.

Author

Adam from VC Brags
February 23, 2023

Welcome Shareholders,

In this daily edition of the Brags Newsletter, we'll cover how a startup is taking the presentation world by storm, a crypto venture firm is downsizing due to the slowdown, and two venture firms unite to invest in early-stage deep-tech startups.

So sit back, grab a snack, and enjoy!

Startup of the Day

  • Storytelling Startup Tome has just raised $43 million from a Series B led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, now valuing the firm at $300 million.

The new round included several other investors, including Coatue, Greylock, Stability.ai CEO Emad Mostaque, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The funding, which now values the company at $300 million post-money, is a pretty significant jump from the $175 million valuation that the company had achieved in its Series A in 2021. The startup, which is still pre-revenue, said it was the fastest productivity software maker to reach 1 million users, reaching the milestone in five short months.

Tome's software reinvents Presentations with automatic text and image placement on a customizable canvas. Unlike traditional presentations, Tome's modular tiles update dynamically with changes to one. Using advanced AI integration, Tome generates a framework based on the user's prompt and fills in corresponding images and text through multiple large-language models. Users can easily fine-tune the results or ask for more pages with additional prompts.

Venture Today 👏

  • Crypto-centric venture firm, Paradigm, co-founded by Fred Ehrsam, a Coinbase co-founder, and Matt Huang, a former partner at Sequoia, is rapidly downsizing.

Since the beginning of October, Paradigm has witnessed a considerable exodus of staff, including two investment partners and four engineers, totaling at least eight departures. These exits constitute a significant portion of the firm's investing and engineering team.

The departures began before the collapse of FTX, which resulted in a $278 million investment loss but has accelerated since. Crypto venture firms like Paradigm are currently sitting on billions in dry powder but have slowed the pace of their investments drastically since the end of last year.

Who's Raising?

  • Amadeus Capital Partners, a UK-based venture capital firm, and Austria's Apex Ventures are teaming up to launch a new fund dedicated to early-stage deep tech startups.

Both Venture firms have already secured an initial investment of €28 million ($30 million), with a target of closing out the fund at €80 million ($85 million). The Amadeus Apex Technology Fund aims to invest in seed and Series A-stage startups focusing on deep tech areas such as AI, quantum computing, mobility, outer space, and robotics.

The fund will be primarily allocated to the DACH region, which includes Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but investments may expand into nearby markets such as Poland, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Cambridge-based Amadeus Capital Partners, which was founded in 1997, has made 260 investments over its lifespan. On the other hand, Vienna-based Apex Ventures has invested in 40 startups since its founding six years ago.

Memes and Other Things

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