February 2020 
INVESTMENT REPORT
 
The month’s top blitzscaling candidates:

Youtube for Mobile Games Early Cash for Employee Options

Blitscaling Score: 92 Blitzscaling Score:

Analysis & Scores 

January was an active month. As in January, there were 63 deals this month, but the total of $2.5 
billion, by the top US VCs across stages, was slightly higher due to a $400 million round by Boston 
based POS giant Toast. Seven of them had Blitzscaling potential, but only two got a score high enough 
to warrant a write-up. The largest deals announced were: 

Toast (Restaurant Automation) $400M 

SentinelOne (Security Software) $200M 

Roblox (Consumer Mobile Games) $150M 

NetScope (Security Software) $340M 

Iora Health (Health Care Management) $126M 

These five in aggregate are nearly $1.2B of the total. We selected EquityBee, a Battery-led Series A 
deal, and Roblox, an Andreesen-led Series G that included prior investors Greylock and Index. 

Roblox; Youtube for Mobile Gaming. 

Copyright 2019 - Blitzscaling Ventures

Total: 92/100 

 
 
Round Date  Round Size  Series  Investors of Note 

Feb 26, 2020  $150M  Series DG  Greylock, Index, 

  Andreessen 
 
Headquartered in Oakland, CA, Roofstock is taking the informal residential rental market and 
professionalizing it. They have created a marketplace for listings, where buyers and sellers can find 
one another. This is a classic local two-sided marketplace that need to be built city by city. But to win 
the entire country, they need to build presence in the major cities simultaneously. Chris Yeh has seen 
this market up close all his life, and knows how keenly the need is felt for better information on 
pricing, and better options for list as both a buyer and seller. 

EquityBee : A secondary market for employee options 

Total: 83/100 

 
 
Round Date  Round Size  Series  Investors of Note 

Jan 30, 2020  $10M  Series A  Andreessen 

 

Copyright 2019 - Blitzscaling Ventures

 
The big problem with options is that you can’t eat them. Or drive them. Or live in them. If you want 
real cash for private company options, you need an exit, which normally happen long after an 
employee wanted some liquidity. Equitybee has found a way to give investors who want exposure to 
unicorns a means of acquiring the right to the profits from an employee option. They supply a simple 
contract that helps the employee get cash and the investor to ride the upside (with any luck, 
pandemics notwithstanding). 
 
This is a classic marketplace play. Stock exchanges have long been shining examples of network 
effects at work. Good luck convincing Apple to list on your startup exchange instead of the NASDAQ. 
So Equitybee scores well on the all important “winner takes most” metric. After all, more investors 
means better execution, pricing and liquidity, which means more buyers, and it builds. Also, word 
travels fast within companies when suddenly an employee shows up in a Tesla and explains how. So 
EquityBee also gets high scores for distribution. Where we have caution is on product market fit. The 
bid/ask spread on such securities might make transactions hard to clear, and generally the sellers are 
not sophisticated, so getting them to understand tax implications, liquidity discounts, and preference 
stacks only exacerbate the problem. 
 

Copyright 2019 - Blitzscaling Ventures