If consolidation like this happens, it would likely have an effect on M&A and startup investing by CPG giants. Kraft Heinz also targeted Mondelez (maker of Oreo cookies) in December.
Kraft Heinz, on the other hand, was built on a strategy of combining large, legacy brands and product portfolios.
(Each orange line represents an acquisition and each green line represents one investment round)
Kombucha cha cha
Meanwhile, in Washington DC where there’s really not that much going on (ha ha ha), a bipartisan group of lawmakers has joined together across party lines to finally … save kombucha. Yes, they are serious about this and have even come up with a corny acronym for their legislation.
That kombucha lobby is clearly raging out of control and taking no prisoners. #fermentordie
5: Ed tech startup Top Hat raised $22.5M in Series C funding from investors including Union Square Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, and Emergence Capital Partners. Fred Wilson of USV says it is the firm’s 5th investment to a Toronto-based startup, placing the city third, after New York and San Francisco, for locations of companies in USV’s portfolio. We recently looked at Toronto financing trends in our 2016 Canada MoneyTree report with PwC. As shown below, 2016 quarterly deal activity peaked in Q4’16.
$143B: Kraft Heinz Company announced an offer to buy Unilever in a $143B deal, but was declined, as Unilever said the proposal “fundamentally undervalues” its company. Unilever made headlines last year for its $1B acquisition of Dollar Shave Club. Unilever has also racked up over 40 patents since 2008 in a number of areas, from mending damaged hair to skincare applicators, and more.
$11.3M: The amount raised by mattress retailer Simba Sleep in Series B funding, from investors including Henderson Global Investors and Numis Securities. We previously looked at first disclosed fundings to mattress startups.
5: The number of fintech unicorns whose founders/CEOs will present at our Future of Fintech conference this June at Lincoln Center in New York, including Kenneth Lin of CreditKarma, Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, and Joe Lonsdale of Palantir. Today (Feb 17th) is the last day to get $1000 off tickets with the code SmartSpeaker. Just go here.
1.78 billion: Facebook announced a new jobs feature that will enable businesses in the US and Canada to post job listings that people can directly apply to on the platform. Facebook had 1.78 billion monthly active users in Q3’16, compared to LinkedIn’s 106 million users in the same quarter.
10: We put together a list of 10 high-momentum companies to look out for at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. For a full list of companies that will be present, check out the CB Insights MWA 2017 Collection on our platform.
$3.3B: SoftBank group acquired New York-based Fortress Investment Group for $3.3B. The company’s other US-based acquisitions include Brightstar in 2013 — for over $2B — and DramaFever in 2014. We previously looked at SoftBank’s investments in private companies in the US versus those made in other parts of the globe.
0%: Once powerful Blackberry’s share of the smartphone market has sunk so low that its Q4’16 market share value rounds down to a 0% share, according to this report. Android and iOS accounted for 99.6% of global market share in Q4’16. Individually, Android accounted for 352 million units sold in the quarter compared to the 77 million iOS units sold in the same time period.
60 years: That’s the amount of time it took English workers to see wage gains after the onset of industrialization in the early 19th Century, according to estimates cited by economist Tyler Cowen, in a piece published this week. If the US sees a similar stagnation in jobs and wages due to tech automation, Cowen argues, the impact on society, politics, and economies would be far-reaching and worrisome. Automation was one theme in our N+1 presentation on the trends driving tech innovation.
