
Investments
225Portfolio Exits
26Funds
6Partners & Customers
10About CircleUp
CircleUp harnesses the power of data to provide capital and resources to emerging consumer brands. Through Helio, the company's technology platform that identifies, classifies, and evaluates consumer and retail companies, CircleUp has built a robust repository of CPG and retail intelligence and takes a quantitative approach to investing in promising entrepreneurs.
CircleUp Headquarter Location
30 Maiden Lane Floor 6
San Francisco, California, 94108,
United States
415-529-7408
Expert Collections containing CircleUp
Expert Collections are analyst-curated lists that highlight the companies you need to know in the most important technology spaces.
Find CircleUp in 9 Expert Collections, including Vitamin & Supplement Startups.
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CircleUp Web Traffic
CircleUp Rank
Research containing CircleUp
Get data-driven expert analysis from the CB Insights Intelligence Unit.
CB Insights Intelligence Analysts have mentioned CircleUp in 3 CB Insights research briefs, most recently on Dec 9, 2021.
Latest CircleUp News
May 18, 2022
News provided by Share this article Share this article The once internal data platform used to help CircleUp discover and fund some of the nation's top consumer brands is now commercially available to provide emerging brand insights from every retail and direct-to-consumer source with Universal Data. SAN FRANCISCO, May 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- CircleUp , a data company offering Universal Data for the emerging consumer goods space, today announced that its previously internal data platform, Helio , is now commercially available to help identify emerging trends, breakout brands and competitive insights across categories. Helio Logo Helio uses machine learning algorithms to synthesize data on 2.5 million consumer brands from more than 200 data sources, providing a fully integrated, universal view of brand and trend performance to inform innovation, strategy and investment giving leading Consumer Goods companies and investors a competitive advantage. Over the past several years, CircleUp has utilized Helio as an internal assessment tool to provide sourcing and diligence insights for its investment fund, CircleUp Growth Partners, leading to investments in some of the nation's top consumer brands including Liquid I.V. and Function of Beauty. More recently, the company used insights from Helio to help grow its capital offerings by providing flexible financing options through CircleUp Credit Advisors, which has provided over $1 billion in credit funding since its inception. Helio's offering comes at a pivotal time for the emerging brand ecosystem.Over the last two years, consumer businesses have shown strength and resilience, with sales growing 4.3% above pre-pandemic levels in 2021 all while battling high inflation and historic unemployment rates. Meanwhile, independent consumer brands have disrupted complete industries entirely online. Today there is not one universal solution for the consumer ecosystem to identify emerging opportunities through brand comparison, trend analysis, and consumer insights. With Helio, investors, innovation divisions, service providers and investment teams have an integrated solution for sourcing, diligence and innovation all in one place. "The consumer goods industry has fundamentally changed. The way people consume is vastly different than how it was just a few years ago and the way new products are brought to market are fundamentally different as well," said Danny Mitchell, CEO of CircleUp. "Key players, such as Amazon, Instacart, and Drizzly, have transformed how we consume by bringing retail to our doorsteps. No one in the world is capturing data from every retail and direct-to-consumer source, including rapidly-growing channels such as Instagram and TikTok. Everyone in the consumer goods industry using traditional data providers is flying blind. With Helio, the entire consumer ecosystem will experience better outcomes, ranging from inventing and creating more targeted products and services, to responding to competitive threats ahead of time, and identifying disruptive trends and brands before anyone else." "In just a few months, we've used Helio to source more than one hundred qualified leads that met our category investment thesis, and to execute a brand diligence analysis that helped us make an investment case in a fraction of the time it would have taken our team to do manually. We were very impressed and are looking forward to continuing our work with Helio," said Nico MacDonagh, Investor at Btomorrow Ventures. While CircleUp has demonstrated Helio's success with the performance of its fund over the last ten years, select private equity, aggregator, and large CPG vendors participated in a beta program to identify strengths and needs. As a result, multiple participants have engaged in acquisitions based on Helio outputs, have increased sourcing efficiencies, and renewed their contract to an annual subscription. CircleUp is committed to building the most complete private market dataset on the market, with plans to integrate more data, build new entity resolution models, enhance the platform's UX and build out an API, allowing for integrations with complementary data providers across the consumer goods space by 2023. About CircleUp CircleUp is a data company that uses Helio, which provides Universal Data of the emerging consumer goods space, to support its flagship venture fund, CircleUp Growth Partners, and credit business, CircleUp Credit Advisors. Over the last ten years, CircleUp has supported more than 500 businesses through equity, capital, and community support, propelling some of the nation's breakout consumer brands. With a vast network of entrepreneurs, institutional investors, industry experts, and flexible financing solutions, CircleUp intends to shine a light on untapped human potential and transform the world of private enterprise. To learn more about CircleUp, please visit https://www.circleup.com/ . For more information about Helio, please visit http://heliocpg.com/ . Press Contact
CircleUp Investments
225 Investments
CircleUp has made 225 investments. Their latest investment was in Kosas Cosmetics as part of their Unattributed VC on April 4, 2022.
CircleUp Investments Activity
Date | Round | Company | Amount | New? | Co-Investors | Sources |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4/26/2022 | Unattributed VC | Kosas Cosmetics | $12M | No | 1 | |
3/31/2022 | Series A | Koia | Yes | 2 | ||
2/7/2022 | Series A | Everything Legendary | $6M | Yes | 301 INC, and Mark Cuban | 8 |
1/13/2022 | Series A | |||||
5/6/2021 | Seed VC |
Date | 4/26/2022 | 3/31/2022 | 2/7/2022 | 1/13/2022 | 5/6/2021 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Round | Unattributed VC | Series A | Series A | Series A | Seed VC |
Company | Kosas Cosmetics | Koia | Everything Legendary | ||
Amount | $12M | $6M | |||
New? | No | Yes | Yes | ||
Co-Investors | 301 INC, and Mark Cuban | ||||
Sources | 1 | 2 | 8 |
CircleUp Portfolio Exits
26 Portfolio Exits
CircleUp has 26 portfolio exits. Their latest portfolio exit was NomNomNow on January 14, 2022.
Date | Exit | Companies | Valuation Valuations are submitted by companies, mined from state filings or news, provided by VentureSource, or based on a comparables valuation model. | Acquirer | Sources |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1/14/2022 | Acquired | 2 | |||
12/20/2021 | Acq - Fin | 3 | |||
10/21/2021 | Acquired | 2 | |||
Date | 1/14/2022 | 12/20/2021 | 10/21/2021 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Exit | Acquired | Acq - Fin | Acquired | ||
Companies | |||||
Valuation | |||||
Acquirer | |||||
Sources | 2 | 3 | 2 |
CircleUp Fund History
6 Fund Histories
CircleUp has 6 funds, including CircleUp Growth Partners II.
Closing Date | Fund | Fund Type | Status | Amount | Sources |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
9/19/2019 | CircleUp Growth Partners II | $200M | 1 | ||
5/5/2016 | CircleUp Marketplace Index Fund I | ||||
7/13/2015 | Consumer Growth Fund | ||||
Brooklyn Food & Beverage Circle I | |||||
B Corp Consumer Circle |
Closing Date | 9/19/2019 | 5/5/2016 | 7/13/2015 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Fund | CircleUp Growth Partners II | CircleUp Marketplace Index Fund I | Consumer Growth Fund | Brooklyn Food & Beverage Circle I | B Corp Consumer Circle |
Fund Type | |||||
Status | |||||
Amount | $200M | ||||
Sources | 1 |
CircleUp Partners & Customers
10 Partners and customers
CircleUp has 10 strategic partners and customers. CircleUp recently partnered with Crisp on August 8, 2021.
Date | Type | Business Partner | Country | News Snippet | Sources |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
8/5/2021 | Partner | United States | |||
7/26/2018 | Partner | United States | A spokeswoman for General Mills declined to comment on its partnership with CircleUp . | 2 | |
2/13/2018 | Client | United States | You can tell CircleUp 's business is built on partnering with early-stage CPG companies -- they understood our business inside and out , and were always on the same page and empathic to our needs . | 1 | |
12/13/2017 | Partner | ||||
7/26/2017 | Partner |
Date | 8/5/2021 | 7/26/2018 | 2/13/2018 | 12/13/2017 | 7/26/2017 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Type | Partner | Partner | Client | Partner | Partner |
Business Partner | |||||
Country | United States | United States | United States | ||
News Snippet | A spokeswoman for General Mills declined to comment on its partnership with CircleUp . | You can tell CircleUp 's business is built on partnering with early-stage CPG companies -- they understood our business inside and out , and were always on the same page and empathic to our needs . | |||
Sources | 2 | 1 |
CircleUp Team
12 Team Members
CircleUp has 12 team members, including current Chief Executive Officer, President, Nick Talwar.
Name | Work History | Title | Status |
---|---|---|---|
Ryan Caldbeck | Encore Consumer Capital, TSG Consumer Partners, Bain Capital, and The Boston Consulting Group | Founder | Current |
Rory Eakin | Humanity United, and The Boston Consulting Group | Founder | Current |
Nick Talwar | Chief Executive Officer, President | Current | |
Danny Mitchell | Sift, VoxPopMe, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley | Chief Financial Officer | Current |
Erik Andrejko | Chief Technology Officer | Current |
Name | Ryan Caldbeck | Rory Eakin | Nick Talwar | Danny Mitchell | Erik Andrejko |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Work History | Encore Consumer Capital, TSG Consumer Partners, Bain Capital, and The Boston Consulting Group | Humanity United, and The Boston Consulting Group | Sift, VoxPopMe, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley | ||
Title | Founder | Founder | Chief Executive Officer, President | Chief Financial Officer | Chief Technology Officer |
Status | Current | Current | Current | Current | Current |
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