Many VC firms chose to make surface-level reforms that didn’t affect their actual, white-heavy power structures, according to Elliott Robinson, a partner at Bay Area venture capital company Bessemer Venture Partners.
In an interview with Upfront Ventures partner Kara Nortman, Robinson observed, “There’s a lot of diversity BS in venture capital—there still is.”
Your startup’s hidden weapon for increasing brand awareness and lead generation could be social media. What’s the best part? It is a cost-effective marketing strategy. It’s no longer a channel you SHOULD use; it’s now a channel you HAVE to utilize. It’s the most popular and successful way to reach out to your target audience and promote your company. You’ve built a fantastic product or service, but the hard part is yet to come. The difficult part is persuading people why they should care about your company and what it can achieve for them. “Generating relevant traffic and leads are the top marketing problems for a business,” according to this survey.
DNABlock, based in Los Angeles, has secured $7 million in a second seed round to allow Web3 artists to generate non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of avatars.
Sfermion, Solana Ventures, Animoca Brands, and Non-Fungible Labs led the round, with SoftBank and Gaingels also participating. The new financing follows the company’s original seed funding round of $1.2 million in September.
DNABlock intends to utilize the funds to expand and improve its flagship Replikant software product, which allows users to create video game-quality 3D avatars and animated material without having any coding or animation knowledge. The company, which was founded in 2017, also wants to open an L.A. studio for NFT developers and expand its executive team.
Serena Williams’ early-stage startup capital firm, Serena Ventures, headquartered in San Francisco, has raised an inaugural fund of $111 million, which she told the DealBook newsletter will invest in founders with diverse points of view. The tennis star’s investing firm is already an active angel investor, with 60 firms in its portfolio, including SendWave, MasterClass, and Daily Harvest.
Ms. Williams, who has been investing for nine years, said, “I’ve always been fascinated with technology, and I’ve always appreciated how it actually impacts our lives.”
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