There is almost no big company or enterprise that didn’t start from scratch. From Tesla to Apple to Pixar, most of them started off with a great idea, lots of effort, and a small garage. With every passing day, entrepreneurs come up with amazing startup ideas and newer methods to implement them. This, however, is easier said than done, since startups need both funding and support along with immense hard work in their initial days to be successful. As part of its funding program, Google has helped some of the top startups, and some of those startups have become well-known companies.
This is where equity and venture firms come in. If they find the idea behind a startup reasonably adequate, they make the initial and much-needed investment in the startup. Blackstone and Apollo Global Management are some equity investment firms, while Google Ventures is a venture investment firm. But before knowing what startups are funded by Google, let’s find out how funding works.
How does Startup Funding Works?
Google Ventures
Startups Funded by Google
- Slack
- Uber
- Medium
- StockX
- Stripe
- GitLab
- DocuSign
- Magenta Therapeutics
- One Medical
- Zipline
- Farmer Business Network
- Sense
- Scribble Data
- Jio Platforms
- Wysa
- Dailyhunt
- Glance
How does Startup Funding Works?
Apparently, there are certainly different kinds of funding based on factors such as startup valuation, its customer base, strategy, revenue model and other technical factors. These funding are categorized as follows:
- Pre-seed Funding– This is the earliest stage of a startup, and the funding here is mostly the initial investment in the idea and is done by the founders themselves. This stage isn’t even officially included in the funding rounds, however, it is where a startup begins.
- Seed Funding– This is where the first official investment for a business or a venture is made. Seed funding helps startups take the initial steps towards making their products. While the failed startups never go beyond this stage, the one’s that do, proceed to the Series A round.
- Series A Funding– Once a startup or company has surpassed Seed round, has an established user base, and offers its services or products, they can opt for Series A Funding. This is where startups can use the investment money to further optimize their product, and raise anywhere from $2 million to $15 million.
- Series B Funding– After Series A, this round helps a business to advance to the next level. If the company has justified the initial investment with a strong customer base and valuation, Series B funding helps to take the business to the next level. The investment in this round can range from $30 million to $60 million.
- Series C Funding– The businesses which are already successful and are looking to build new products to touch newer markets are funded in this round. The companies in this round may also acquire startups and the investors and founders in this round look for exponential growth. The valuation of companies in this round can range in hundreds of millions.
Although there can be more funding rounds corresponding to the alphabet, these are particularly the one’s where most startups reach. There is also private equity funding away from public markets in which private companies can finance startups privately.
Vibhavari Madki
Google Ventures
Google Ventures is a venture capital investment firm of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, CEO is David Krane. Renamed to GV, the primary objective of Google Ventures since its conception has been to back founders with a vision for the future of entrepreneurship. GV has funded over 500 portfolio companies and is in constant search of new and industry-changing ideas and startups.
GV flaunts a team of founders, physicians, and other professionals, who have been in the startup ecosystem for a long, and understand it more than most people. This team of specialists, engineers, advisors, and fund operatives help GV to solve challenges and deliver feedback to create better services. GV invests across all stages and sectors, with a focus on enterprise, life sciences, consumer, and frontier technology. GV has made 988 investments so far. Recently on July 29, 2022, GV made a $3.3 Million investment in New York-based consumer Software, Studio.
Startups Funded by Google
Slack
Industry: Enterprise Software
GV Investment: $110.8 Million
American software company Slack Technologies developed the proprietary business communication platform Slack. Slack offers a number of IRC-style features, including persistent chat rooms organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging. Google Ventures invested $110.8M in October 2014.
Uber
Industry: Transportation
GV Investment: $1.8 Billion
Who in the digital world isn’t aware of the most popular cab service Uber? It has turned out to be one of the most popular cab booking services around the globe, and both cab drivers, as well as people who need them use it on a regular basis. It is a consumer service and has also set its foot in the food delivery services. Uber has offered quality, door-to-door service and continues to do so by constantly introducing safety features in its Community Guidelines. Uber has been Google Ventures’ biggest investment to date. Google Ventures has invested approximately $1.8 Billion in Uber.
Rishabh Rathi
Medium
Industry: Digital Media
GV Investment: $19 Million
Medium is a blogging platform that suggests viewers blog through smart algorithms. World-class publications and experts publish their blogs in different niches, and viewers can choose their preferred subjects to read the latest research papers, articles, and blogs. The popularity of Medium attracted Google’s interest and they invested. Medium currently flaunts its user base of 170 million users and counting, with the writers including journalists, authors, experts, and individuals.
StockX
Industry: Stock Market
GV Investment: $22 Million
As described by Google Ventures, StockX is the world’s first ‘Stock Market for Things’. This is an online marketplace where both buyers and sellers put forth the bidding and asking amount, and as soon as both of them meet, the transaction takes place. The marketplace that StockX offers can be used to sell any sellable product from sneakers to watches; all you need to do is sign up. Google ventures and battery ventures invested $44 M in series B funding.
Ansh Mehrey
Stripe
Industry: Digital Payment
GV Investment: $600 million (along with other investors)
Stripe is one of the most popular payments processor for online transactions and in mobile applications. Today, millions of online and offline businesses from startups to bigger enterprises use Stripe as their payments processor. Be it Software as a Service, an online platform or your marketplace, Stripe can be used in all these cases either through the software or its API.
“Stripe is the best way to accept payments online and in mobile apps.” says Google Venture.
GitLab
Industry: Software
GV Investment: $20 Million
GitLab is a DevOps platform that accelerates development through collaboration and automation. With various organizations relying on its source code, CI/CD, and security, GitLab offers powerful automation with real-time security and vulnerability management. Moreover, GitLab is trusted by some well-known industry-leading companies including Nvidia, Siemens, and Drupal. GitLab has received funding from Google Ventures in both Series C and Series D rounds of funding.
DocuSign
Industry: Software
GV Investment: $8.1 Million
A leader in eSignature transaction management, DocuSign has become an industry and global standard for eSignatures. DocuSign gained popularity with the help of Google. DocuSign has garnered a user base of over 500k customers and hundreds of millions of signers. DocuSign was introduced and established based on the fact that most modern businesses will need to go online and hence the online document management needed to be taken into consideration. Google Ventures invested in Series D round in June 2012.
Magenta Therapeutics
Industry: Healthcare & Life Science
GV Investment: $8 Million
Magenta Therapeutics is a leading expert in harnessing stem cell biology for safer transplants. It endeavours to reset a patient’s immune system through stem cell transplant to cure diseases such as blood cancer. It is also developing novel medicines through commitment and excellence. Also, Magenta is revolutionizing medicine by precisely removing disease-causing cells and revamping stem cell mobilization.
“Magenta is harnessing stem cell biology to make transplants safer and more effective for patients with immune and blood-based diseases.” Says Google Venture.
One Medical
Industry: Healthcare
GV Investment: $13 Million
One Medical is currently trying to reinvent healthcare with innovation and technology. As of now, One Medical offers and schedules in-person or over video appointments, 24/7 on-demand video chats with a virtual medical team, over 90 drop-in lab services, along COVID-19 testing and care. Moreover, OneMedical acts as an employee benefits partner for over 7000 companies. Google Venture invested Private Equity round of funding in December 2015.
Vidhi Punamiya
Zipline
Industry: Robotics
GV Investment: $12 Million
Zipline is a company that delivers life-saving medicines and drugs to remote and previously unreachable parts of the world using electric planes and drones. It makes precise, on-demand and critical deliveries, wherever and whenever needed, with safety and reliability. The access to on-demand delivery is made global, owing to Zipline, and it seeks to replace the traditional delivery system with customer-centred and cutting edge technology. Google venture Invested in Series C round of funding in May 2019. In the last funding round in June 2021, Zipline has raised a funding of $250M which made the startup valuation to be $2.5 billion.
Farmer Business Network
Industry: AgriTech
GV Investment: $15 Million
Farmer Business Network is a tool that helps farmers understand and enhance their crops and yields with advanced insights and real-time data analysis. It is a global Agritech company and seeks to help farmers reduce production costs, maximize crop yield and output, and make informed and confident decisions when it comes to crops. Farmer Business Network can help farmers manage contracts, select seeds, monitor fields, and organize operations with premium crop marketing and financial services. FBN raised a funding of $15 million in 2015 from Google Ventures. Recently, they raired $870 million in series G funding round in November 2021.
“Farmers Business Network generates powerful insights from real-time data to help farmers understand and improve their crop performance.” says Google Venture.
Sense
Industry: Artificial Intelligence
GV Investment: $16 Million
Sense is an artificial intelligence-driven talent engagement and communication platform that was founded by Dharni and Pankaj Jindal in 2015. The company has its headquarters in San Francisco and is known for providing enterprise-ready solutions that provide a system of engagement for talent acquisition teams.
Sense has so far helped many companies find, recruit, deploy talent and automate manual tasks for recruiters. The company has raised $16 million as part of its Series C round from Avataar, Google Ventures, Accel and Khosla Ventures. The company is said to use these funds to get a foothold in the Indian market, add new products, expand its team and go into newer geographies.
Scribble Data
Industry: Machine Learning
GV Investment:
Scribble data is an ML engineering product company that offers ML Feature Store for mid-market enterprise data teams. The company is known for its flagship product known as Enrich, which is a highly customizable Machine Learning Feature. Scribble Enrich is a store product that allows data scientists to develop and manage production-ready datasets that are used to train ML models faster and with confidence.
Data-driven companies such as Google and Amazon have invested an undisclosed amount of money into the company in May 2020. Google funding for startups such as Scribble, has helped the platform to scale and deliver Enrich in international markets for enterprise-grade Machine Learning products.
Jio Platforms
Industry: Telecommunication
GV Investment: $4.5 billion
Jio Platforms is an Indian technology company and a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. The company has its headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The company acts as a holding company for Jio (which is India’s largest and the world’s third-largest mobile network) and other digital businesses of Reliance. As of 2020, Jio platforms became the fourth largest Indian company by market capitalization.
In November 2020, Google-funded $4.5 billion to the Jio platform, which makes it the biggest-ever investment in an Indian company. Google now reportedly holds over 7.73% share in the company. The company has now raised a total of Rs 1.52 lakh crore by selling an almost 33% stake to over 13 financial and strategic investors in under 11 weeks. This will help the company to cut down Reliance’s net debt target for the full fiscal year.
Wysa
Industry: Artificial Intelligence
GV Investment:
Wysa is an AI-enabled life coach designed especially for mental and emotional wellness. The company was initially launched in 2017 and provides its users with the ability to activate coach and chat anonymously. The company provides early intervention through 3 methods, which are an AI chatbot, a library of self-help tools, and messaging-based support from human psychologists.
Google Ventures India, has funded an undisclosed amount in the AI Platform in May 2021. Wysa was a part of the first batch of 10 startups for Google Launchpad Accelerator India, which was held in 2018. In 2021 however, the Sleep by Wysa app was awarded the best app by the Google Play Store. According to Crunchbase, the company has so far raised $3.9 million from three funding rounds.
Dailyhunt
Industry: Social Media
GV Investment: $33 Million
Dailyhunt is one of the leading Indian content and news aggregator app. The company has its headquarters in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The platform provides news in 14 Indian languages from multiple content providers to over 300 million users. In 2015, Dailyhunt became the largest Indian language distributor of e-books having 70,000 titles in ten languages.
As of December 2020, Dailyhunt has raised over $100 million from Google, Microsoft and AlphaWave among other investors. Google funding rounds helped the company become a Unicorn as its value increased to over $1 billion. The company is planning to use the funds to scale its Josh app, which is an augmentation of local language content offerings. Google-funded startups in India with a budget of over $10 billion over a few years.
Glance
Industry:
GV Investment:
A google-funded startup called Glance is a startup that was founded in 2018. The company serves news, media content and games on the lock screen of more than 100 million smartphones. The company is a subsidiary of InMobi Group and is known for using AI to offer a personalized experience to its users.
The company raised over $145 million in a new financing round from Google and existing investors like Mithril Partners. According to Google, Glance is a great example of innovation solving for mobile-first & mobile-only consumption, and providing content across many Indian languages. Google funding for startups like Glance, has helped them evolve and grow their audience.
FAQs
What is Google Venture (GV)?
Google Ventures is a venture capital investment firm of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
Who is the CEO of GV (formerly Google Ventures)?
David Krane is the CEO of GV.
How many companies have Google Ventures funded?
Google Ventures has funded more than 500 companies. Some of them are:
- Slack
- Uber
- Medium
- StockX
- Stripe
- GitLab
- DocuSign
- Magenta Therapeutics
- Dailyhunt
- Glance
What are the sectors Google Ventures invest in?
Google Ventures invests across all stages of startups and varied sectors. The major industries in which Google Ventures invests are:
- Enterprise
- Life sciences
- HealthCare
- Consumer
- Frontier technology.
How do startups get funded?
Startups use various methods for funding:
- Small Business Loans
- Trade Equity or Services
- Incubator or Accelerator
- Crowdfunding.
Who owns Google now?
The parent organization of Google is Alphabet Inc.
What do startups use the funding for?
Startups raise funds for various reasons, mainly for the growth and expansion of their business.
Who are the founders of Google?
Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the founders of Google.
What is the valuation of Google?
Google has a valuation of $1.5 trillion.
