Morning Report: Algolia And Scout RFP Pick Up Differently-Sized Series Bs

Morning Report: A quick peek at two funding rounds from this week that caught our eye.

This morning, we are taking a quick look at two Series Bs that were announced this week. The two companies in question, Algolia and Scout RFP, are fun to discuss in unison. Each shows how flexible a Series B round of capital can be.

It’s common knowledge that what counts as Seed, or a Series A, or really any Series round has become skewed in the current tech cycle. The changes are simple to summarize: Series rounds are now larger than before, and what was previously a growth round can be squeezed into, say, a Series B.

On that point, we’ll start with Algolia, a startup that provides search capabilities to other firms. The company raised a staggering $53 million Series B. The round comes after the firm’s similarly outsized $18.3 million Series A that it locked down in May of 2015. Both rounds were led by Accel.

The timing of the capital is obvious. Algolia raised an oversized — by historical norms — Series A, so it raised its B a bit after the normal 18-month timing. And the company likely self-funded along the way. According to its PR (sigh), Algolia expanded “its annual recurring revenue (ARR) more than 100 [percent] each year[.]”

The company did not provide a timeframe for the claim or notes regarding what it counts as revenue inside of that recurring bucket. Still, complaints aside, greater than 100 percent yearly through a full Series A cycle (presumably, given the language) is more than alright.

Algolia, which has also raised from 500 Startups, Point Nine Capital, Anshu Sharma, and Index, has taken on just over $74 million to date. Hold those figures in your mind.

Turning to our second Series B, Scout RFP raised a more traditional $15.5 million Series B round of capital, led by Menlo Ventures. Matt Murphy will join the company’s board.

In contrast to Algolia, Scout RFP has raised an aggregate of $27.25 million according to its own notes. Crunchbase corroborates the figure. Looking backwards once again, Scout RFP, a firm focused on “cloud-based strategic eScourcing solutions,” according to its own verbiage, raised a $11.75 million over two prior rounds, each led by New Enterprise Associates.

All this sums to the following question: Are traditional venture round categorizations at all relevant anymore? The Scout RFP round is pretty reasonable. Is the more than $50 million Series B? Between the start of 2008 and 2010, just 35 Series B rounds were worth more than $50 million. Today, back the same 1095 day period, there were 234.

What a business cycle.

From the Crunchbase Daily:

Addepar raises $140M to track wealth 

• Addepar, a software platform for wealth management, just got wealthier. The Silicon Valley-based company closed a $140 million Series D funding round led by Valor Equity Partners, 8VC, and hedge fund investor Harald McPike. The financing follows a period of sharp growth for Addepar, with the value of assets on its platform more than doubling in the past year-and-half to over $650 billion.

Essential dials up $300M

• Essential, a startup run by Android creator Andy Rubin, has secured $300 million to bolster its position in the ultra-competitive consumer electronics space. The financing, which reportedly values the company at over $900 million, comes on the heels of Essential’s debut of a high-end smartphone and connected home device.

Recruiting startups lure more VC cash

• Investment into recruitment startups has risen sharply in the past few years, Crunchbase News reports, led by companies using technology to simplify the task of finding and filling jobs. Many are turning to AI to automate and refine the recruiting process.

WeWork acquires Fieldlens

• WeWork has acquired Fieldlens, a provider of communication tools for construction teams, for an undisclosed sum. New York-based Fieldlens previously raised about $13 million in venture funding.