Participated · Series D · Mar 2018

Cheddar operates a live post-cable network focused on covering innovative products, technologies and services and is led by founder and CEO Jon Steinberg. The network is distributed on Sling TV, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and is available on roughly 60% of smart TVs in the U.S. Cheddar sells advertising and content-marketing products under “Cheddar Segments” and “Cheddar Shows,” and has launched a live-read sponsorship model with partners such as Dunkin’, TradeStation, Fidelity, E*TRADE, Ally, HP and Volvo. The company raised a new financing to fund expansion and product initiatives. Management says it will use the proceeds to launch a second live news network and to accelerate international growth. Next month Cheddar plans to debut “Cheddar Big News,” a non‑partisan general news network delivering headlines across politics, business, sports, weather and trending stories without pundit panels. Cheddar is a NYC-based live video news and entertainment company focused on technology, media, startup, and culture news. Founded by Jon Steinberg, formerly President and COO of BuzzFeed (2010–2014), the company operates a live video network and a street-level studio in the Flatiron Building. Cheddar has developed a cloud-based approach to video production and streaming, allowing it to broadcast multi-camera, multi-location live shows and field shoots with real-time graphics. Less than a month before the funding it launched Cheddar Life, a lifestyle and variety show, from its street-level studio. The company raised $10m in funding and intends to use the proceeds to continue to expand operations. Investors in the recent round include lead investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Comcast Ventures and Ribbit Capital.

Participated · Series C · Jan 2015

Coinbase operates a platform that allows trading of a handful of cryptocurrencies. Its core product is an exchange that lists assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple, and the company has expressed ambitions to expand to host hundreds — and potentially millions — of tokens over time. The company completed a Series E financing that injected $300 million and values Coinbase at about $8 billion. That Series E is nearly three times what Coinbase raised in its Series D and brought total capital raised to date to over $520 million. With the fresh $300 million, TechCrunch reports Coinbase is well-capitalized to survive a market downturn. Despite its valuation, Coinbase is worth more than all but the top three cryptocurrencies traded on its platform; Bitcoin Cash is a distant fourth at about $7.3 billion. Coinbase operates a wallet and exchange for cryptocurrencies and has added support for Ethereum (2016) and Litecoin (2017). The company’s trading platform GDAX recently added margin trading and Coinbase plans to open a GDAX office in New York City. Coinbase facilitated almost $15B in digital currency exchange in the first half of 2017 (about 5x the volume of 2016) and saw a 4x increase in new customers over the same six-month period. Rapid growth has caused downtime and degraded performance, and customer service response times have been a major issue. Coinbase said it aims to get response times below six hours by Q3 2017 and to offer phone support for some customers by Q4. The company plans to use new funding to scale customer support and engineering teams and to continue adding cryptocurrencies and building consumer-facing infrastructure for digital currency apps. Coinbase operates a consumer wallet service for buying bitcoin and spending it across merchant partners, and also runs a platform for institutional investors. The company is pursuing international expansion in Asia, having expanded to Singapore the prior year and now targeting Japan. Coinbase announced a partnership with Bank of Tokyo‑Mitsubishi UFJ to support its long-term international expansion efforts. The firm has raised more than $100 million to date, including a $75 million round led by DFJ in January 2015. Recent funding from Japanese investors is intended to support entry into the Japanese market, though an exchange launch would require regulatory approval. The company is leveraging strategic partnerships with Japanese financial firms to advance its market entry plans. Coinbase operates a Bitcoin-focused exchange and offers what the company describes as the most popular API for Bitcoin developers. The platform handles both trading and a growing share of transactions for goods and services; Coinbase reports "non-trading transaction volume" has at least tripled over the past year to about 12% of activity. It is available in 19 countries and has 56 full-time employees. Leadership cites merchant adoption (including Expedia and Intuit) as a growth driver and notes at least a dozen merchants accept Bitcoin for over $1 billion in annual transactions. Coinbase plans to use new funding to build a stronger mobile presence and to expand its developer platform. The company is raising amid a broader Bitcoin price decline, which the CEO framed as a long-term opportunity to build useful products. Coinbase offers a wallet and payment processor for merchants, positioned analogously to what PayPal created for online transactions. The company reports around 600,000 consumer wallets and serves roughly 16,000 merchants. Coinbase emerged from Y Combinator last year and has been expanding product features such as SMS payments and recurring payments for subscriptions. The funding will support scaling the team from eight to roughly 50–60 employees within a year and building additional services for developers. Serving both consumers and merchants requires building multiple products, which the company notes could be a downside versus focused competitors like BitPay. Coinbase is operating amid a volatile and evolving Bitcoin market and shifting regulatory guidance internationally, while U.S. agencies have signaled conditional support.