Author: Jesse Landry

Some companies raise money. Others change the tempo. Midi Health just dropped a Series D that feels less like a victory lap and more like a bassline you feel in your chest. $100M raised, valuation north of $1B, and suddenly a conversation that spent decades whispering is now getting mic time. Not because it is trendy, but because it is overdue. Perimenopause and menopause were treated like background noise in healthcare. Midi Health turned the volume up and made it impossible to ignore. Joanna Strober did not start this company because the market looked good on a spreadsheet. She started…

Every industry has a moment when the math stops working and the culture steps in. Travel hit that moment when hotels turned into spreadsheets and short term rentals forgot they were homes. Kindred shows up with a different equation, one rooted in trust, reciprocity, and the quiet power of people treating each other like neighbors instead of transactions. Founded in 2021 in San Francisco, Kindred built a members-only global home swapping network where 1 night hosted earns 1 night given. No buying, no selling, just a give to get model that turned 300,000 members into stewards of 350,000 hosted nights…

Every once in a while, a funding round lands that feels less like a headline and more like a mirror held up to an industry that has been pretending not to see its own mess. Alaffia Health just closed a $55M Series B, led by Transformation Capital with FirstMark Capital, Tau Ventures, and Twine Ventures riding shotgun, and the number is big, but the signal underneath it is louder. Healthcare payments have been noisy for decades. This is what it sounds like when clarity starts winning. TJ Ademiluyi and Adun Akanni did not wake up one morning and decide to…

There is a moment in every industry when the noise drops and the signal steps forward. Benefits has been overdue for that moment. Too many PDFs, too many handoffs, too many hours burned translating human needs into spreadsheet theater. Then Pasito shows up, not loud, not desperate, just precise. Built in New York, founded in May 2021, and engineered around the idea that work should actually work, Pasito just closed a $21M Series A and the timing feels less like luck and more like inevitability. This round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from Y Combinator and MTech Capital,…

Some companies talk sustainability like it is a vibe. Ecovia Bio treats it like an engineering problem that does not care about your feelings. Founded in 2014 and built in Michigan, this is fermentation science with steel-toed boots on, turning gamma polyglutamic acid into something the market can actually scale, ship, certify, and sell without crossing fingers or apologizing to regulators. The Series B just closed with Pointe Angels leading, and yes, the dollar figure stays quiet, which is fine. Real builders know the number that matters is capacity. Under the leadership of Kousay Said, CEO, with Dr. Jeremy Minty,…

Every category has its quiet revolutionaries. The ones who don’t shout, don’t posture, just show up with product and receipts. Non-alcoholic beer used to be a punchline told by people who never tasted it. Go Brewing turned that joke into a balance sheet. Not by pretending beer culture needed saving, but by respecting it enough to rebuild it sober, sharp, and scalable. Joe Chura does not arrive at this moment by accident. This is a founder who learned systems on a Ford assembly line, scaled Dealer Inspire until Cars.com wrote a $165M check, then decided the next act wasn’t software…

Some companies sell energy software. Derapi sells relief. Relief from the migraine that happens when the grid meets reality and reality shows up with solar panels, batteries, EVs, thermostats, utilities, regulators, and a thousand manufacturers all speaking different dialects and all insisting they are the standard. Distributed energy is supposed to be the future. Until you try to integrate it, then it feels like the past calling collect. Derapi was born in 2022, incubated at Union Labs Ventures, after Thomas Lee and Jake Masters spent enough time watching engineers duct tape integrations together to realize the problem was not ambition.…

Some companies are born in glass towers with polished decks and rehearsed confidence. Kasada started in a shipping container under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, where Sam Crowther was already tired of watching bots laugh at traditional security like it was open mic night. That detail matters, because origin stories are destiny in disguise, and this one was built around friction, curiosity, and an intolerance for fake traffic pretending to be human. This week, Kasada locked in $20M in growth funding, led by EQT, with Ten Eleven Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, Reinventure, Our Innovation Fund, StepStone Group, and Turnbull & Partners…

Some companies raise capital. Others raise eyebrows. Corus Orthodontists just raised $20M in institutional equity, and the interesting part is not the number. It is the timing, the structure, and the restraint. Founded in 2019 by Dr. Paul Helpard and 18 orthodontists who were tired of watching patient care get boxed in by spreadsheets, Corus has spent 5 years building something quieter and harder to copy. Doctor owned. Doctor led. Growth without surrender. That is a harder song to play, but it lasts longer in the set. This is Corus’ first institutional equity investment, led by ATB Financial’s private equity…

There is a quiet lie most enterprises tell themselves. That if you build enough dashboards, ship enough surveys, and hire enough consultants in dark suits, the truth will eventually wander into the boardroom on its own. Meanwhile, the people who actually know what is broken, the drivers, operators, frontline teams, customers on hold between jobs, are talking every day. The data is alive. The problem is nobody is listening at scale. Arbor decided that was lazy thinking. Arbor just closed $6.3M across seed and pre-seed, led by 645 Ventures, with Next Play Ventures, Chaac Ventures, Comma Capital, and a tight…