Welcome to The ORCA Newsletter

My name is Max Comolli, and I’m the Head of Growth here at ORCA. We’re an innovation network helping connect 650+ founders with funding, resources, and the network they need to launch a successful venture.

This is the first edition of our weekly newsletter, where we’ll bring you an inside look into early-stage VC, with the past week’s insights from our network of trending pre-seed & seed startups and active early-stage investors (for edition one, you get all of July to date!).

Read on for trending startups, ORCA investor activity, highlights from July’s new startups, and a look at our latest VC partners.

Enjoy, and let us know if you have any feedback!

Trending Startups

July’s hottest startups (pro tip: there are 60+ more getting meetings with investors this month – see more of them here)

Eztia

Eztia: Cold therapy wearables for icing on the go that's friendly to people and planet.

5 ORCA investors booked meetings with Eztia this month. Want an intro?

Playbook

Playbook: The designer’s tool for spatial computing – empowering design teams to create, view, and share 3D designs.

4 ORCA investors booked meetings with Playbook this month. Want an intro?

n-gen

n-gen: Empowering over 1M users to turn their personal data from consumer apps like Spotify and Strava into 1:1 digital art they can share with the world.

4 ORCA investors booked meetings with n-gen this month. Want an intro?

Investor Activity This Month

The investors meeting the most founders in July 👀 

#1: Insight Partners: 🥇

32 meetings with ORCA founders

Insight Partners: As the trusted partner for more than 600 transformative companies, Insight’s deeply experienced software operators and flexible capital across every stage of growth provide everything leaders need to fly faster and further.

Know a founder who’s a fit? Refer them here

#2: Blue Collective 🥈

13 meetings with ORCA founders

Blue Collective: A generalist VC firm investing at early stage (the earlier, the better): from day one to Series A, they want to be your first big check.

Know a founder who’s a fit? Refer them here

#3: Gravity Capital 🥉

10 meetings with ORCA founders

Gravity Capital is a San Francisco-based seed stage venture capital firm investing in meaningful tech companies that make us reimagine traditional ways of thinking.

Know a founder who’s a fit? Refer them here

New Startups

ORCA has brought on 35 new startups in July. Here are the highlights:

Crewmate

Crewmate: an AI-personalized job search platform where users are matched with job opportunities and join talent communities for their favorite companies. Backed by Dorm Room Fund, Rough Draft Ventures, Soma Capital, Stonks.com's Best of Stonks Fund.

 2 ORCA investors already booked meetings with Crewmate. Want an intro?

Supliful

Supliful: Empowering entrepreneurs to effortlessly launch and grow their own scalable CPG brand with zero upfront costs, no minimum order quantities, and the ability to go live in just one click.

2 ORCA investors already booked meetings with Supliful. Want an intro?

Did you Catch it

Did you Catch it: a new e-commerce platform for influencers, athletes, and artists to engage with their audience directly leveraging fear of missing out.

 2 ORCA investors already booked meetings with Did you Catch it. Want an intro?

July’s New Investors

Founders, there’s never been a better time to have your startup on ORCA. We passed 100 investors this month. Here’s a look at who’s new to the platform:

• Plug and Play is a seed and early-stage investor focused on great teams leading emerging growth companies. Plug and Play runs 12 industry-specific accelerator programs twice a year, that acts as a platform for major corporations and high quality startups to connect and collaborate.

• Intrepid Ventures invests in early companies building in deeptech, AI, Energy, biology, synbio, aerospace, energy storage, and hardware.

• 2.12 Angels does 2 zoom meetings. You get their decision the day after the second zoom. At 12:00 pm. They do not lead rounds.

• V1.VC is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage internet, B2B software, consumer, financial, crypto, and deep tech companies across North America.

• GTMfund is an early-stage VC fund focused on investing in the most exciting, up-and-coming B2B SaaS companies across the world.

• Dark Mode Ventures invests in early stage companies with a focus on developer platforms, AI/ML, and the modern data stack. Their average check size is $100K.

• Abstract Ventures is an SF-based seed investor.

• Secure Octane makes early stage investments in cybersecurity, data & infrastructure startups.

• XRC Ventures is an early-stage venture firm driving innovation in retail technology, consumer healthtech, & consumer goods.

Investor Spotlight

🚧 This section is under construction 🚧 
Want to be featured here and have startups apply directly to a personal portal? Let’s chat.