2020 was a challenging year for everyone. We are so pleased that through it all the Band has remained a source of constancy and comfort. We continued to meet weekly in our SiGs and monthly at our dinners, invested in many new startups, supported our existing portfolio companies, and collaborated convivially with one another.
We start the year celebrating our 15th Band IPO. Airbnb went public on December 10th at $68/share and closed the day at $144. As of press time, it is trading at $170 and a market cap in excess of $100B. We got Airbnb shares by investing in Localmind, a location-based Q&A platform, in 2011. The company was acquired by Airbnb in 2012.
During 2020 we made 17 investments: 14 initial investments from the Band Deal Dinner and 3 follow-ons from the Second Look portfolio update. The Software category leads in the number of deals funded with seven (41%), followed by Life Sciences/MedTech with five (29%), HardTech with two (12%), Other with two (12%), and AgFoodHealthspan with one (6%). New funded deals include: RoboTire and Xpan Medical (January 2020 Dinner), Perceive (February 2020 Dinner), EternaTear (April 2020 Dinner), Butlr (May 2020 Dinner), Inhalon Bio and MilkRun (June 2020 Dinner), Journey (July 2020 Dinner), C. Light Technologies and Virtanza (August 2020 Dinner), CapConnect+, Champions Round, and Lingrove (September 2020 Dinner), and OpsCruise (October 2020 Dinner). Second Look portfolio follow-on investments were: Strategikon Pharma (January 2020 Second Look), VisgenX (June 2020 Second Look), and IrriGreen (September 2020 Second Look).
2020 set a low bar to exceed but we hope that 2021 is the best year yet for all of us. Happy new year!