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The Big One: These founders sold their startups for millions. Here's what they’re building next.
There are serial founders that most everyone knows, like Elon Musk, Resy founder Gary Vaynerchuk and Sam Altman, whose firm OpenAI is currently taking the world by storm with its ChatGPT artificial intelligence.
But there are also a host of successful repeat founders in innovation ecosystems around the nation who are working on their next big idea. American Inno is putting the spotlight on 16 of them in our Serial Founders to Watch feature.
Our list includes Paul English, the co-founder of travel search engine Kayak, Andy Dunn, the co-founder of fashion brand Bonobos, which sold to Walmart for $310 million, and Helen Anderson, who sold her first startup Milkies, a breast milk saver product, to Fairhaven Health.
You'll also meet an entrepreneur who sold his business to Zillow and now leads one of the fastest startups ever to reach a $1 billion valuation, and the Whole Foods execs now behind a new healthy eating startup.
Read the full story: These founders sold startups for millions. See what they're building next >
Startups to Watch
- Basketball superstar Kevin Durant has invested in Atlanta startup Pickleheads, a tech platform for pickleball players and organizers to help schedule matches. Pickleheads has 100,000 users on its platform each month and connects players to 10,000 locations in 4,400 cities in the U.S., Atlanta Inno reports.
- Rocket startup Firefly Aerospace has landed $30.2 million, the first tranche of a massive $300 million series C funding round the company is raising, Austin Inno reports. Firefly's fundraising comes as it continues to expand its lineup of rockets, as well as its Blue Ghost lunar lander that is projected to go to the moon in 2024 as part of NASA's commercial lunar payload services contract.
- Miami autonomous delivery robot Kiwibot will massively scale its fleet of last-mile delivery robots after raising $10 million. The startup, which currently has 540 robots, aims to manufacture thousands more over the next 18 months. It delivers restaurant meals at 28 college campuses across the U.S., working with delivery apps like Grubhub, according to Miami Inno.
- Developed out of MIT, Boston startup Themis AI is creating a de-biasing algorithm for artificial intelligence. Themis, which just raised $2 million, looks at models and data sets and identifies the risks or biases. After identifying bias, it would then make sure that the AI model is being trained in a de-biased way, according to BostInno.
- Philadelphia sports card startup CollX allows users to scan their trading cards and, using computer-vision AI technology, combs through a database of millions of cards to tell users how much their card is worth. The startup, which just raised $5.5 million, has seen 100 million cards scanned to date on its platform, PHL Inno reports. It recently launched a "deals" feature, allowing users to negotiate and purchase cards that has facilitated over $50 million in deals.
- Chicago startup General Lattice was part of last weekend’s NBA Slam Dunk Contest when it helped build the first 3D-printed, airless basketball. The ball, used by Houston Rockets star KJ Martin in the competition, nearly fits the performance specifications of a regulation basketball, but does not need to be inflated because it is made of a black, see-through lattice, according to Chicago Inno.
Weird and Wired
What’s the trick to landing a pitch meeting with famed Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz? Country music, it turns out.
Daryl Roy was cleaning horse stalls at his Louisiana home when he was struck with an idea of how to get a meeting with VC firm Andreessen Horowitz for his AR/VR startup 3D Media.
Roy read “Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It,” written by Andreessen Horowitz Partner Scott Kupor. In the book, Kupor said if he wasn’t a venture capitalist, he would be a country music singer.
That resonated with country music enthusiast Roy, who told Orlando Inno he decided to write a song for Kupor and Andreessen Horowitz. “The chorus came to me, so I dropped my shovel, headed to the truck and wrote the chorus.”
Before the end of the day, Roy recorded an original song about 3D Media and sent it over. That scored 3D Media a Feb. 21 meeting with the firm.
No word yet on how it went, but before the meeting Roy said he expected to focus on the pitch deck — but would be ready to perform if needed. “I’ll have my guitar handy if he asks.”
