This month at January Ventures: Pano adds $17M in Series A funding, FLOWN and SoulCycle join forces, & more!

There's so much to celebrate this month! Check out our portfolio news, food for thought, and more below.

Portfolio News

Pano has announced $17M in additional funding to fuel their mission of early detection of wildfires from the first wisps of smoke using an actionable intelligence AI platform. Just last week, the company was able to detect a wildfire in Oregon and issue a warning 14 minutes before the first 911 call. This new infusion of capital accompanies the news of three new members joining the Pano executive team from Amazon, Apple, and Doordash to lead on engineering, finance, and talent. Congrats to the growing Pano team.

ConnectCareHero, Chicago’s new hero in aging tech, landed a $1.8M seed round. ConnectCareHero provides a “Netflix-like” platform for residents in skilled nursing, assisted living and memory care facilities. The health-focused platform provides culturally diverse programming with the goal of keeping seniors busy, happy and socially active. Congratulations to co-founders Osvaldo Montelongo and Tornu Ngwayah and the ConnectCareHero team! 

FLOWN celebrated some fantastic news as they announced their partnership with SoulCycle!  "If your favorite instructor already leads you to achieve great results on the bike, can you piggy-back off that, and let them lead you to achieve great work goals, beyond the bike," Founder & CEO Alicia Navarro stated on LinkedIn. Congrats to the entire team - if you're looking to add more focus to your day, try it out here.

At Viva Technology in Paris, Turing Biosystems’ CEO Adam Amara was interviewed about his company, how AI is transforming healthcare, the associated risks and regulation of AI. See the discussion here.

Founders, we need your help!

January Ventures is excited to kick off our 5th annual company building survey! The purpose of this survey is to understand what founders are experiencing in today’s market conditions. What is it like operating in the current environment? What challenges are underrepresented founders facing while fundraising? What can the venture community do to better support founders?

Your voice is important to ensure we capture a wide variety of experiences and perspectives. The survey, which will take less than 10 minutes, will help us better serve founders and be instrumental in understanding the current market.

Food for Thought:

📰 “Smaller venture funds are finding a way to manage in the midst of a conservative market.” Maren Bannon weighs in on TechCruch.

📹 On Founders for Good, Sano Genetics co-founder Charlotte Guzzo spoke about doubling revenue every 6 months, the stigma around parental leave as a founder, and issues with traditional medical research.

🖥 January Ventures sat down with leading experts and investors to get their take on how AI will change the future of work. “Is it all just hype? Or are we finally hitting the inflection point with recent advances in AI? And will AI replace us, or actually make us better and faster at what we do?”

Where we were last month:

Maren spoke at the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA)'s High Growth 2023 conference in June. Moderated by Bindi Karia, the panel also welcomed Marcus Love, Alastair Kilgour, and Lina Zakarauskaite to discuss seed deals in a downturn. Read about the key themes that they explored here.

Save the Date

📆 Mark your Calendars! Jennifer Neundorfer was announced as a speaker at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 discussing what you need to raise a Series A in today’s climate.

In case you missed it!

January Ventures has welcomed a new intern! We’re thrilled to have Marlíse Arellano joining us for the summer and are looking forward to her contributions. You can find Marlise on LinkedIn if you'd like to say, "Hi!"