This edition looks at why Amplitude has converted a Midas List investor into a direct listing bull, checks in with a top “meme investor” on methods to the Twitter madness, looks at the stark data on Latinx investors’ presence at VC firms and why BOND is leading a $50 million round in lawn care.

California does a good job of aggressively drawing people into its net of high taxes. Add the state’s notoriously aggressive enforcement and collection activities, and it’s a perfect storm. If you have an IRS or FTB audit, be careful. Surprisingly, the FTB can be worse than the IRS.

The Boulder, Colorado-based company sends consumers boxes of the lawn care they need for their exact lawn conditions.

Despite gloomy climate headlines, there is cause for optimism in the ClimateTech world. This month, we cover announcements by Xpansiv, Stem, Storegga, LanzaTech, and EnergyVault, as well as mentioning conversations with Ubiquitous Energy, IncubEx, and the Foundation for Climate Restoration.

First the good news: the energy transition seems to have been accelerated by COVID, a leading venture capitalist said this week, so much so that 2020 may be remembered as the turning point for climate action. Now the bad:

“I think of it as a maturation process,” says Dr. John Halamka . “You’re asking why your three-year-old isn’t doing calculus. But can your three-year-old add a column of numbers? That’s actually not so bad.”

LanzaTech is an industrial chemicals company that leverages innovations in biology, artificial intelligence, and precision engineering to create the molecules that make everything from yoga pants to jet fuel possible – all without digging up fossil fuels.

Israel has long been known as the “Startup Nation” due to founding the most tech companies per capita. Now with the rapid uptick in new unicorns, it is rapidly becoming the "Scale-up Nation."

When Skyscanner was sold to Ctrip for $1.8 billion at the end of 2016, it drew attention to a startup ecosystem that up until that point had been rather overlooked.

In an industry moving toward automation, the startup looks to provide training and organizational tools to customer service reps, which they believe should remain core to the process.

Worth, in many ways, is subjective. As a founder or leader, you must apply logic to achieve your full potential in business with all your constituents.

The New York-based startup makes natural household cleaners that don’t use plastics and, unlike competitors, are designed to be sold in-store.

This edition looks at how companies have started to raise rounds split between traditional investors and online platforms; checking in with customer service startup MaestroQA; diving into the rumor that Addition is already raising a new fund; and looking at VC’s obsession with the used car market.

This is Ninja Van’s biggest fundraising since its inception in 2014.

LanzaTech's work is so important to maintaining quality of life in a post-fossil carbon world I wanted to investigate the field of synthetic biology, the science that forms the basis of the company's innovative chemical business.

Turner Novak's Banana Capital has made its biggest investment ever in auto ecommerce platform Vinn, creating a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to augment capital contributed from its fund. On Thursday, Vinn announced a $3.2 million seed round led by Novak’s micro-VC compatriot Andrew Wilkinson.

Overloaded with unvaccinated Covid-19 patients, many hospitals are out of room. Hospital-at-home programs may help ease pressure to ration hospital care.

LanzaTech is a perfect portrait of a “Post-Carbon Industrial” company. Its innovations shift industrial paradigms as much as steam engines did in the Second Industrial Revolution. Its business model shifts commercial paradigms as much as personal computers did during the Internet Revolution.

This edition looks at Canva’s founders pledging 30% of their company to charity; checks in on Inspired Capital’s new $275 million fund; dives into the data on startups raising multiple rounds in one year; and looks at an Armenian woman CEO who just raised $13 million.

CEO Rema Matevosyan and her cofounders see balloons as a cheaper, carbon-free geospatial mapping alternative to plane flights and satellites. Their startup, Near Space, could help track real estate, urban planning and recovery from natural disasters.