Hello and happy 2021! We’ve got some exciting news from our team and portfolio, and a few thoughts about the future in 2021 and beyond.
Big news
The wonderful Andrew Parker is our new partner at Spero Ventures. Our team has been so impressed by Andrew’s thoughtfulness, insight, and deep dedication to mission-driven founders—not to mention his strong track record of investments, which includes Carta, Nylas, Particle, and Panorama Education. The founders of these and other startups who’ve worked with Andrew sing his praises as a board member and thought partner, and we’re thrilled that Spero’s portfolio founders will be able to benefit from his guidance. Be sure to read Andrew’s heartfelt Medium post about why he’s joining Spero.
We’ll be leading a $123M fund together this year—many thanks to our LP, Pierre Omidyar. As always, we’ll be investing in the things that make life worth living specifically in wellbeing, work & purpose, and human connection.
2020 portfolio wins
We asked each of our portfolio founders to share their #1 favorite milestone or accomplishment from 2020—anything besides a fundraise. Even in such a difficult year, every single company took on the challenge and made significant progress, quickly adapting to the new circumstances.
Here’s what they said:
Base Operations now counts among its customers one of the inventors and producers of the COVID-19 vaccine, and Base Ops is proudly supporting them in manufacturing and distributing the vaccine all around the world.
Clarity was selected by the Greater London Authority as the exclusive technology provider for a citywide deployment of more than 100 air quality sensors at London hospitals, schools, and other sensitive locations. The Breathe London project makes London the first city ever to holistically integrate low-cost sensors with existing air quality infrastructure, and will provide Londoners with some of the highest-resolution air quality data in the world.
Core was recognized among the top 100 innovations of 2020 by Popular Science, and one of TIME’s Top 25 Gadgets from CES.
Droneseed sold out their spring 2021 reforestation capacity, and they’re expecting fall contracts to hit 4x capacity.
Empowerly just hired a new Head of College Counseling: Alix Coupet, who has read 5000+ college applications while working in admissions at Stanford and the University of Chicago. They’re looking forward to working with Alix to empower students to become the most successful version of themselves.
Fluent Forever made 6 key hires this year. Thanks to their hard work, the team at Fluent is now aligned on exactly what they’re trying to accomplish, how each role fits into that greater purpose, and how to prioritize our work efficiently.
Fiveable supported a total of 2.9 million students in 2020, which is 8x year over year growth.
Gencove helped customers representing the majority of the cattle breeding market transition their entire operations to a new technology -- low pass sequencing.
Huckleberry quadrupled their MRR while maintaining a 4.9/5.0 star rating from users (800,000 and counting).
Jopwell rose to the task of becoming a holistic diversity solution, despite the challenges presented by COVID-19 in 2020. They expanded their offerings beyond recruitment and hiring, and they’re now supporting organizations with their internal strategies for equity and inclusion.
Mati realized that Silicon Valley’s B2B sales orthodoxy doesn’t work the same way in developing regions—succeeding in emerging markets requires an open, adaptive mind. So, the team decided to apply an engineering approach to overhaul their sales machine. They’ve rebuilt all of the elements, from lead generation to email responses, as if they were pieces of a physical engine.
Nana Technologies grew from a team of 8 to 24 while continuing to delight customers.
Roam Robotics completed the first phase of their clinical pilot for their health application while in the midst of Covid-19.
RushTix, which began as a live event subscription business, was confronted with a big problem when all in-person events were cancelled. In response, they made a 15-day pivot. By March 31st, RushTix had created their first ticketed (paid) livestream event. From there, they’ve gone on to find a lucrative niche in comedy livestreams, with single events garnering six-figure revenue. They’ve now become the top comedy livesteaming platform and were named one of the top innovators in comedy for 2020.
SafeTraces developed veriDART, an all-new aerosol mobility indicator to identify hotspots, assess ventilation and filtration, inform remediations, and keep buildings safe during COVID-19.
Skillshare beat their year-end paid member target by 40%. Put another way, they hit their goal for 12/31/21 by 12/31/20.
Tortuga achieved an industry milestone by booking multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts with a select group of the world's largest fruit growers. They hope this will be the beginning of a promising industry that growers around the world have been dreaming about for many decades.
Futurism
We have a feeling this decade is going to be very significant for technology companies. Across the team, we have a few perspectives on what we’d like to see founders building. Here’s what’s top of mind for us.
Shripriya Mahesh believes the next big thing is agency, so she’s excited to see new tools that allow people to explore and capitalize on their own agency. SkillShare and Nana are two good examples that Spero has already invested in.
Marc Tarpenning wants to seenew carbon-negative (or at least carbon-neutral) products—awesome goods or services that people want to use, which drive benefits for everyone through their commercial success. Marc is interested in products with the potential for mass adoption, because by building them, startups can build a sustainable future.
Sara Eshelman is interested in communities that help people explore, personalize, and discover treatments to conditions, both common and rare, creating a new journey for patients that empowers them to help themselves and each other.
Andrew Parker is excited about the unbundling of broad social networks into vertical communities.Throughout the past 15 years, Craigslist has slowly been unbundled into vertical marketplaces that better serve their customers through vertical-specific features. Back in 2010, Andrew visualized this trend:
Moving forward, a similar dynamic might play out in communities like Reddit, FB, and Twitter, where verticals will be well served by software built specifically for their purpose, as opposed to broad social platforms. Andrew is curious to see the next generation of online communities that fit this trend.
In a word, we’re looking forward to the future, and we hope you are too.
Until next time,
The Team at Spero Ventures