Cherry Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm operated by former founders and tech builders that supports early-stage companies across Europe.
The seed round was co-led by GV and Cherry Ventures to support the public launch of its AI agent platform.
"High-severity incidents can make or break big customer relationships, and numerous smaller problems drain engineering productivity. Software monitoring tools exist, but they aren't very intelligent and require people to spend a lot of time working out what's wrong and what to do about it."
The pre-seed round was led by Cherry Ventures and Mosaic Ventures with backing from several angel investors.
"If you want to transition to a new career or learn a new skill, mentorship is the most effective way to reach that goal. But, due to the changing employment landscape, finding relevant mentors is harder than ever, especially for startup employees. With Vektor AI, you get direct professional guidance from someone who has been in your shoes and can help you get to where you want to go."
Northzone led the seed round to help the startup launch its compensation benchmarking platform and expand its team.
"We’ve experienced first hand how hard it is to hire and retain great teams and scale internationally. Getting compensation right from day one is crucial and it only gets harder the larger you become. When we were growing, we couldn’t find any reliable or real-time data to help us determine the right compensation for each person on our team. We lost great people, and missed out on key hires as a result. We’re surprised that no one has built a better solution to this problem yet"
The Series A round featured participation from Sonoma Brands, Waldencast, Felix Capital, and Cherry Ventures.
"We’ve been encouraged to see men of all ages increasingly turning to Manual to solve multiple health problems, with almost half of our customers seeking help for more than one issue. It’s clear that a health concern may have more than one cause, and we can provide customers with the ability to treat their health in a more holistic way. Using different treatments to understand and improve their wellbeing."
The funding round was led by Cherry Ventures and Seedcamp with participation from a roster of angels.
"The problem with benefits is clear: while they are meant to attract, engage, and ultimately drive productivity, the status quo doesn’t lead to desired outcomes. Our software platform allows companies to load funds and set individual spend rules on how these can be used. Employees are then able to choose from group benefits, such as private medical insurance, mental wellbeing services, or dental plans, while a real per-employee Mastercard opens the door to pretty much any product or service in a tax-efficient and compliant way. It’s a win-win: Employees get tailored benefits, and companies only pay for what’s used, take advantage of tax exemptions and preferred pricing, while streamlining the administration."
Earlybird led the investment round, which will fund international expansion and platform development.
"We want to help everyone become wiser, empathetic, and fulfilled. I believe learning about ideas and insights shaping our future, and stories that move us can do exactly that,"
The Series C round was co-led by Target Global, RTP Global, and Autotech Ventures, bringing the company's total funding to £27.5m.
"The car market is one of the last retail categories that has yet to shift online, with online penetration of car sales being still below 1%, while 20% of all UK retail sales are now online. Drover’s digital ‘car-as-a-service’ model is the right approach to truly build the ‘Amazon of Cars’ as it lends itself much better to an online model than does the long-term commitment, high ticket size type transaction of buying a car with cash or on finance. As a result, the last few years have seen Drover evolve and grow into a seriouscontender in the UK car retailing market. The Drover team has been agile through COVID-19 and that has enabled us to continue to show fantastic growth in a challenging time. The need for a simpler, more flexible model for car ownership is only accelerating and we’re proud to be leading that journey in the UK and France and in hopefully many more markets in the future."