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Expense management software acquired by Certify.

Abacus, the #1 mid-market expense reporting software listed on G2 Crowd, is the only truly real-time expense reporting solution on the market. It is the easiest way for a company to reimburse its teams, implement their expense policy, and reconcile corporate credit cards throughout the month. More than 1,000 customers use Abacus, including GLG, Coinbase, and Betterment.

We invested in Abacus based on team quality, total addressable market, product quality and user experience, early traction, and Abacus’ potential attractiveness to large acquirers. Abacus’ founders came out of FourSquare and Venmo. The business had also assembled a strong investor base, including Y-Combinator, General Catalyst, and Google Ventures.

Abacus acquired by Certify

Part of Expedia. Powering 2,500+ hotels.

ALICE is the leading all-in-one hospitality operations platform that enables hotel staff to do their most impactful work without all the guesswork. Task management, real-time communication, and operational analytics reduce the complexity and chaos of hotel operations providing the transparency and flexibility needed to run efficiently. Founded in 2013, ALICE works with more than 2,500 hotels and tens of thousands of hotel staff across many of the world’s leading brands, including Marriott International, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Graduate Hotels, and Grupo Posadas.

We were first introduced to the ALICE team in 2014 and were impressed by the ALICE team and by their vision for how software could transform hotel operations. The ALICE founding team fit our model of investing in talented, balanced teams with a vision for how technology can impact a market. CEO Justin Effron brought vision and business acumen to the table, while Co-Founder and President Alex Shashou had domain expertise, having grown up in a family that managed a chain of hotels. CTO Dmitry Koltunov brought technical ability and ability to build a technology team, combined with an understanding of the business value of the technology ALICE was building.

ALICE acquired by Expedia

Runtime security for the entire application layer, with context.

At Alma Security we've created an app-sec solution that sits atop your observability tools, leveraging the already-collected runtime context for security. With Alma you can gain a full, real-time view of your application layer in run-time. No new integrations necessary.

Our new platform will identify logic based vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in the application layer by understanding the underlying business logic. For the first time, this allows security teams to gain a comprehensive view of the entire application layer, including APIs, microservices, internal communications, databases, and data flow; with the objective of providing end-to-end application protection within a single platform.

High-speed internet for $25 per month.

Andrena is a provider of low-cost, fixed wireless (FWA) Internet service that is priced at less than 50% of the cost of traditional broadband, has comparable speed, and can be installed in minutes because it doesn’t require third-party installation. Andrena’s proprietary software and antenna infrastructure enables Andrena to wirelessly provide broadband service to customers in a convenient manner. Founded in Princeton, NJ Andrena focuses on providing internet access in secondary geographies, including Princeton, Trenton, Newark, Paterson, Jersey City, Hoboken, Brooklyn, and Queens. They also provide dedicated Internet, managed WiFi, and Private LTE services for a range of large institutions including Industry City and a Philadelphia-based hospital system.

We were introduced to the Andrena team in early 2019 and were immediately impressed with the team and the technology. As we dug further, we were able to quantify the massive opportunity the team was going after. The fixed wireless market is poised for rapid growth over the next decade. The current fixed wireless market is around $2B in size, a fraction of the total market, which we estimate to be in the $55B range for broadband in the U.S.

Second hand furniture shopping made easy.

AptDeco is a rapidly-growing online marketplace that enables consumers to easily buy and sell furniture. AptDeco links buyer and seller, facilitates the transaction, and coordinates pickup and delivery, receiving a transaction fee plus a mark-up on the delivery charge. They are currently based in New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and expanding. AptDeco is led by Reham Fagiri (CEO) and Kalam Dennis who both noted the difficulty of re-selling and purchasing furniture while moving apartments. As Reham puts it "In the U.S., people move a lot. The average person moves nine times after the age of 18 — so that’s a lot of moves, and whether they’re moving to a bigger place they’re going to need to buy furniture or update their furniture, or they’re consolidating and moving to a smaller space, getting married… they’re going to have to get rid of furniture, so there’s a need for this. Especially now [in the sharing economy age] — people are just more comfortable sharing their possessions with other folks.”

We believe AptDeco leverages the sharing economy to simplify the process of buying and selling furnishings and elevates it to an experience built on trust. As the NYC furniture market is valued at as much as $2B, and 40% of New Yorkers move once every 5 years we believe AptDeco is positioned to facilitate this mobile population and create a more positive experience for movers.

Q&A with Reham Fagiri Inside the Home of Reham Fagiri YC’s AptDeco Gives Apartment-Hopping New Yorkers A Better Way To Buy & Sell Furniture

Digital Adoption Platform

Apty is a Digital Adoption Platform that enables enterprise businesses to integrate new technology at scale. As emerging software makes workflows more efficient and more organized, one aspect that has not changed is the speed at which employees are able to learn and correctly adopt new software. Apty helps enterprises get more value out of their mission critical software investments by making it easier for employees to on-board and use the software as well as retrain on customization of the software based on evolving business workflows. In addition to serving enterprises seeking to improve adoption of third-party software for their own internal use, Apty also serves SaaS software developers looking for a tool to facilitate their new customer on-boarding and product training. In this case, the software vendor incorporates Apty within its delivered solution and pays Apty subscription fees based on implementations.

Our investment in Apty is a bet on the continued growth of the Digital Adoption Software Market. We further believe that Apty can carve out a leadership position for itself in the market. We assume the DAP marketing will continue to grow as cloud application software spending was $102 billion in 2020, according to Gartner, and is projected to grow to $145 billion by 2022. Enterprises will be seeking to extract more value from this additional $43 billions of SaaS spend, and DAP software solutions are well-positioned to solve this problem.

Apty Raises $7.5M in Series A Funding

The content platform for the real estate industry.

Exclusive: Boston’s Aryeo Raises $3.65M Seed Round

Bakery-inspired line of cruelty-free cosmetics.

Beauty Bakerie is building a digitally native and authentic brand. The team leverages innovative social media marketing, plug and play direct to consumer e-commerce infrastructure, and select distribution channels, which are all driving sales. Their products capitalized on recent product innovation in the market space such as smudge free, water proof, and long-lasting make-up.

The ubiquitous presence of the internet and rapid growth of e-commerce combined with social media marketing has catalyzed new consumer purchasing behaviors and expectations are requiring old juggernaut beauty companies to rethink marketing and sales strategies.

Profile on Beaty Bakerie Founder & CEO Cashmere Nicole How Breast Cancer & Beyoncé Fueled This Beauty Mogul's Appetite For Success

Themed monthly boxes full of enviable gear.

Bespoke Post is a lifestyle brand dedicated to helping their members discover under-the-radar Goods and Guidance that enrich their day to day experiences. Through Bespoke's innovative subscription commerce & e-commerce platform, they combine lifestyle goods with immersive content to ignite curiosity and confidence in their customers. The New York-based company was founded in 2011 to introduce customers to products from under-the-radar brands, once a month. Since then, they've worked with thousands of small brands, expanded their offering to thousands of products available to purchase each month, and grown to over 300k active members. "We're extremely proud of the fact that 90% of the brands we carry are small," said co-CEO of Bespoke Post Rishi Prabhu. "They're fundamental to our ability to fulfill the promise we make to our members about discovering new gear and experiences. We also find small brands share our values in terms of having a deep commitment to authenticity, quality, and craft."

Bespoke Post is an emerging leader in the online mens’ lifestyle category, with a foundation based in a subscription business and a growing online store presence. The combination of a growing market that is historically under-targeted, a strong executive team, and a strong underlying economic model give BeSpoke high potential for success.

Bespoke Post Raises $40 Million Series B The Evolution of Bespoke Post Small Businesses Boosted by Bespoke

Geospatial analytics platform for P&C insurance.

Betterview is the only property data platform that informs every transaction for decision-makers who want to reduce risk, cost & waste in an increasingly competitive environment. They provide software and services that capture, organize, and analyze data for buildings and properties to unlock valuable insight. Our company is quickly becoming essential to every transaction by making every property thoroughly understood. Betterview was founded in 2014 by David Lyman and David Tobias. David Tobias was born into the insurance industry having grown up in the family business of performing property inspections. Realizing that the number one most problematic part of any property was the roof, he teamed up with his fellow Bay Area friend, David Lyman, to find a solution. David Lyman is a repeat startup founder with a deep background in enterprise software.

When 645 first invested in Betterview, the team was focused on utilizing drone footage to help insurance companies in capturing and analyzing roof inspection data . Although they have since pivoted slightly away from that vision, the core attributes of the company that first got us excited remain in place today. The founders had deep domain expertise and were moving quickly in a large and nascent market. This has continued to serve them well as they have built Betterview into a leader in the space

Betterview Names Jeff Heine Chief Revenue Officer InsurTech startup Betterview closes $7.5M funding round Betterview inks three-year deal with Nationwide

Automatic data quality monitoring for teams.

BigEye has developed a technology that automatically recommends and monitors data quality. For example the platform may tell a customer what type of data metrics to collect and alerting the customer if there is an issue such as an ordering system going down before it becomes a bigger problem.

BigEye is tackling the existing lack of insight into current data stacks. The ability to monitor and observe data in real time is a true pain point for many SaaS companies, and a pain point that BigEye can eliminate. Additionally, the team has a strong background with building data-quality monitoring at Uber. We are excited to see what this team can do.

Bigeye, closes second round this year with $45M Bigeye scores $17M Series A

Enabling self-managed resilient applications

Causely bridges observability and automated orchestration to enable self-managed resilient applications. They are developing the industry's first causal AI platform, eliminating human troubleshooting and enabling faster, more resilient cloud application management. Their platform automates defect identification and remediation, streamlining operations for organizations and enhancing user experiences.

The Causely Founding team brings extensive IT management experience. Their executive team includes Ellen Rubin, founder, and CEO of ClearSky Data, acquired by Amazon, and Shmuel Klinger, founder of Turbonomic and former CTO at Dell EMC. We are excited to partner with this talented team at the seed stage.

Financial management platform for clinical trials

Backend infrastructure for analytical data access.

Cube is on a mission to provide developers with analytical data access layer to build modern applications. They focus on developer success, bottom-up adoption, and open source. Their flagship open-source product, has 11,000 stars on GitHub and 4,000 developers in the community Slack. They power customer‑facing analytics, features, and business intelligence tools on top of cloud data warehouses. Cube.js is used by companies ranging from Apple, Intel, and Walmart to fast-growing Silicon Valley startups.

Cube is building an analytics API platform to let engineering teams easily build data-driven applications, ranging from customer-facing use cases to internal business intelligence dashboards. This saves developers time as well as making applications more performant by offering features like query pre-aggregation and caching by default. Their product falls under our investment theme "The Engineering Value Chain Revolution." We believe they will become a category-definer in Enterprise infrastructure.

Cube Dev launches hosted cloud version of open source analytics API Cube.js Cube raises $6.2M Cube Dev raises $15.5M

Helping devs to automatically improve their code quality.

DeepSource is a fast and reliable static analysis platform that helps developers and engineering teams systematically improve code quality and security and save time in code reviews.DeepSource continuously analyzes source code changes and identifies bugs categorized as security, performance, anti-patterns, and potential bug-risks, and even formats code to follow style guidelines. DeepSource integrates with your existing code review workflow in GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket and runs analysis on every commit and pull request, automatically

The 645 team was impressed by DeepSource as soon as we became users of the product. The DeepSource team has and continues to build their product with a user-centric approach that prioritizes delivering learnings quickly and efficiently. In the early days the team was also able to build deep trust with their user base due to <5% false positives being flagged in their testing. We are excited to back this brilliant team and can't wait to help them get to the next stage of their journey.

How a small-town kid built a product used at NASA, Uber, and Intel DeepSource announces $2.6M Seed round

B2B on-demand primary care platform.

Eden Health raised $60M Series C

Eden Health is a nationally recognized medical practice on a mission to create a world where every person has a relationship with a trusted healthcare provider. Working with employers across the country, Eden Health offers employees 24/7 digital care, same-day in-person primary care, mental health services, physical therapy, and benefits navigation. The Eden Health team is driven by a patient-centric approach, delivering relationship-based collaborative care. With this model, Eden's clients have healthier workforces, increased productivity, and reduced healthcare costs. “Our aim at Eden Health is to rebuild trust in the healthcare system by moving the patient to the center of a team-based preventive care model, and taking responsibility for each patient’s care journey,” says Eden's CEO Matt McCambridge. Patients can use a chat and video interface to get in touch with their care team through Eden's mobile app. Their customers include include Stack online software community Stack Overflow, Emigrant Bank and men’s grooming and shaving company Harry’s.

645 invested in both the Seed and Series A for Eden Health. Eden's Founder and CEO Matt McCambridge and 645 GP Nnamdi Okike worked together at Insight Venture Partners prior to the founding of both Eden and 645 Ventures. When Matt set off to build Eden, the 645 team was impressed with what he was able to accomplish in the early days. Eden was presenting a highly compelling value proposition and starting to see traction in a market with massive open opportunity.

Eden Health banks $60M Series C This Startup Raised $60 Million To Bring Concierge Medicine To Employees How Eden Health is Poised to Streamline Healthcare Costs

Providing capital in a fast, seamless & cost-effective manner to SaaS Businesses.

Efficient Capital Labs (ECL) provides access to non-dilutive capital to Indian and South Asian- based SaaS companies. The Indian and South Asian SaaS markets are emerging very rapidly; however, there are limited capital sources to support the scaling of these companies. ECL aims to use software and APIs to plug into the company's data sources to pull out key underwriting metrics to rapidly approve the companies for revenue-based loans that turn MRR to ARR.

ECL falls under our investment theme Saas For The Second Wave, there is limited access to non-dilutive capital for SaaS companies in Southeast Asia. ECL will support the capital needs of pure play SaaS companies. The India SaaS market is undergoing rapid growth with an expectation to reach over $42 billion in revenues in 3 years and $100 billion in 8 years. However, it is difficult to access growth capital in India and South East Asia. By leveraging new technology solutions to support underwriting combined with cheap debt, ECL applied the revenue-based financing model for SaaS companies pioneered by Capchase and Pipe to emerging markets that have a difficult time accessing non-dilutive capital.

QED leads $7M

Allowing Citizen Automators to increase productivity in enterprises.

ElectroNeek is a rapidly-scaling SaaS company in the Robotic Process Automation space. Having graduated from Y Combinator in the winter 2020 batch, the company grown incredibly quickly to 200+ clients, and 50+ globally distributed employees. Founded by pioneers in the RPA space, with deep experience in the domain, the team is anticipating continued and dramatic growth through the next several years, as they continue to enable unfettered access to the benefits of intelligent hyperautomation, without the typical enterprise-level costs and headcount. They were recently named G2’s momentum leader in the RPA space, and their team has garnered a host of accolades; in just one short year ElectroNeek made their way up the charts to become a top-ranked intelligent automation solution in the US, as ranked by both G2 and Capterra/Gartner.

ElectroNeek is consistent with 645's focus on investing in “Citizen Professional” businesses. That is, businesses which enable the average worker to replicate the skills of experts. Our team got excited about ElectroNeek's potential to bring RPA to a much broader range of companies and roles than was previously possible. Reduction of the technical barrier to adoption, an expert team, a capital efficient approach to scaling and a pricing model that is not based on volume, are just a few of the aspects of ElectroNeek’s competitive advantage.

ElectroNeek raises $20M Series A ElectroNeek raises $2.5M Eliminating Repetitive Tasks for Employees

The new startup Medicare agency helping independent agents grow faster.

Peer-to-peer renting marketplace for any item.

Fat Llama believes in buying less and experiencing more. A Y-combinator alumnus, they have become the world’s largest peer-to-peer rental platform since they launched in 2017. Fat Llama users save money by renting the items they only need on occasion (from cameras to power tools to camping gear), and make money by lending out their own items under the protection of the Fat Llama Lender Guarantee. With on-demand access to these otherwise expensive or niche items, Fat Llama user are doing, creating, and achieving incredible things every day. Even better than that? This circular model of renting and sharing maximizes the use of each individual item and reduces waste that comes from buying items that we don’t really need to own.

When we invested, rental behavior had proliferated across many areas of consumer demand that were previously geared toward consumer ownership. These areas included accommodations (AirBNB), fashion and apparel (Rent the Runway), education (Chegg), entertainment (Netflix), and several others. This behavior is driven by the desire of consumers to only pay for the consumption that they desire. We believed that it would be logical for there to be a category king of P2P goods rental and thought that Fat Llama could be that company.

Fat Llama set to go public Fat Llama launches enterprise platform Fat Llama raises $10M Series A

Helping companies navigate pending legislation changes.

FiscalNote went public on Monday, August 1, 2022

Since FiscalNote was founded in 2013, they have believed that leveraging technology is the key to providing transparency into the policy, people, and geopolitics shaping today’s world. Since that time, FiscalNote has grown into the premier information services company focused on global policy and market intelligence. The company pioneered the space of Government Relationship Management (GRM) software by combining AI technology, expert analysis, and legislative, regulatory, and geopolitical data, FiscalNote is reinventing the way that organizations minimize risk and capitalize on opportunity. Home to CQ, Roll Call, Oxford Analytica, and VoterVoice, FiscalNote's technology sustains products and services that power more than 5,000 clients around the world -- from small nonprofits to government agencies to large corporations (including more than half of the Fortune 100) -- with patented technology, expert analysis, and AI-powered data.

When 645 first met the founders in 2014, we were blown away by the drive and conviction of the team. Despite their relatively young age, they had identified an acute problem in a massive market and were positioned well to go after it. They were backed by premier early investors and were exceptional at evangelizing the vision that they saw before them. Our assessment is even more true today than it was in 2014 and we feel exceptionally fortunate to be on this journey with them.

FiscalNote Strikes $1.3 Billion SPAC Deal FiscalNote buys English advisory firm Oxford Analytica FiscalNote raises $160M to fund expansion

Acquired by of Google. 20M+ mobile videos generated.

When 645 invested, Fly Labs was a fast-growing provider of mobile video editing software. Fly’s products enabled users to create, edit and share high-quality videos using their mobile devices. The founder envisioned a future where mobile video creation and editing is ubiquitous. Fly was able to build a complete suite of mobile video editing applications to serve the needs of consumers.

Back in 2014 when we invested, video consumption on mobile devices was still in its infancy but growing at a rapid rate. At the time, mobile video consumption was projected to grow 10x between 2014 and 2020. It was our belief that video content creators had increasingly been designing and producing content specifically for mobile platforms to meet user demand. At the time, there was no complete suite of tools to allow amateur video content producers to create, edit and share high-quality video on mobile devices. Fly Labs filled this market void and their first product, released in mid-2014, generated over 1 million downloads in the first 6 months, was rated best new video app in 125 countries, and resulted in Fly being recognized by Apple as a top creator of mobile editing software.

Google Acquires Fly Labs

Empowering everyone to be a creator.

Genially was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Cordoba, a city in southwestern Spain. Genially was spun out of an advertising agency, Ecoavantis, where the founders previously worked. The goal of Genially is to “revolutionize the world of communication” and to make the creation of interactive content simple and affordable for everyone. Their product now features templatized, interactive presentations, infographics, quizzes and more. The product works not only for businesses but also for school systems and is exceptionally helpful for teachers engaging in remote learning. There are multiple communities on the platform that offer workshops and share learnings collaborate with the initiatives. The product now has users in over 200 countries and continues to grow.

In 2020 we noticed a growing demand for interactive content and a general re-imagining of the creative software space. We discuss these in our article: The Evolution of Adobe and Future of Creative Software. We noticed that there was a trend towards the democratization of design, or in other words, the notion that “design” no longer belonged simply to designers. We also noted that “content creators now range from small businesses, to freelancers, to social media influencers, all of which have the need to create content in order to capture audiences and promote their businesses.” Genially fits within this specific subcategory of our creative software theme, and embodies the proliferation of creative functionality. Through Genially, anyone can create an interactive, “magical” presentation, regardless of the individual’s technical or creative abilities.

Genially Wins EdTechX Award Genially raises $20M Series B to help make education interactive Genially Raises $5M Series A

Enabling nationwide delivery of gourmet local food.

Goldbelly snags $100M after 300% growth

Think back to your favorite food as a kid. Was it your grandma’s apple pie? Or those creamy mashed potatoes piled high on Thanksgiving? Much of our love for food comes from a sense of nostalgia. Memories are made through the tastes and smells of the foods we eat. Joe Ariel wanted to help food lovers nationwide tap into this nostalgia and launched Goldbelly in 2013 to help make nationwide delivery as easy as takeout. Goldbelly is a curated online marketplace that allows food lovers nationwide order the best beignets from New Orleans, barbecue from Austin, and bagels from New York. In 2020 during pandemic shutdowns, the site reported a 300% increase in year-over-year business and brought in one million new customers in that year alone. Goldbelly has secured its place in the massive and growing market thanks to a seriously extensive line-up of vendors from restaurants all over the country. Goldbelly boasts more than 850 restaurants on its platform and touts exceptional customer service for customers and vendors alike.

645 got to know Joe Ariel early in the Goldbelly journey and worked together to sketch out what the company could become during office hours and working sessions in a NYC WeWork. In 2015, when the company was ready to raise outside capital, 645 understood that there was national demand for premium food products not available locally. Small food makers could not offer nationwide food delivery efficiently and affordably. Therefore, a platform to discover, buy, and sell food directly from food makers was necessary to fill this gap. At the same time, Goldbelly had started to experience real traction going after an underserved market leading to team to lean in and invest.

Goldbelly is Launching a TV Channel Goldbelly snags $100M after seeing 300% growth in 2020 A $100 Million Bet on Cross-Country Restaurant Delivery

On-Demand attorney recruiting.

Hire an Esquire has been innovating the way legal professionals work since 2011. The team has reinvented legal staffing with a proprietary online platform that analyzes a candidate’s experience and expertise to best match them with contract and permanent positions at law firms and legal departments of all sizes - the first system of its kind. The result is efficient and flexible legal staffing, built for a modern workforce.

Using AI to combat medical misinformation

InpharmD is developing an AI-based medical application designed to answer any clinical question or drug formulary request with custom data. This can drive down the clinical research process from hours to minutes - allowing for physicians to spend more time with patients. InpharmD’s platform also automates the personalized formulary creation process per hospital and helps pharmacy and therapeutics (P&T) committees cut down the people power required to finalize this previously manual task.

Atlanta startup InpharmD uses AI to combat misinformation in the medical field

Cross-channel growth marketing platform.

Iterable surpasses $100M in ARR

Iterable is a cross-channel platform that powers unified customer experiences and empowers marketers to improve on every interaction taking place throughout the customer journey. With Iterable, brands create individualized marketing touchpoints that earn engagement, solidify trust and galvanize loyal consumer-brand relationships. Developed for the enterprise, Iterable is built from modern technologies that transform cloud, partner and tool-specific data into integrated, personalized engagements. No matter the audience size or degree of campaign sophistication, Iterable empowers brands to implement where it matters most—creating experiences and promoting connections with over 2 billion people world-wide. Leading brands, like Zillow, DoorDash, Calm, Madison Reed, and Box, choose Iterable to power excellent customer experiences throughout the entire lifecycle.

We originally got to know the founders of Iterable in 2014 when we invested in the company’s seed round. Iterable was 645 Ventures' very first fund investment. We believed in the founders early product vision, investing when the company only had 5 people, 6 customers, and a few hundred thousand dollars in revenues. At the time, the founders saw an opportunity to bring predictive analytics, real-time A/B testing, and advanced cohort analysis to SMBs looking for better marketing automation software. During our early due diligence, we were impressed by how a small company with little resources could get customers to switch from much larger incumbents including Constant Contact, SailThru, and MailChimp whom, according to those customers, were not innovating fast enough.

Iterable Surpasses $100M in ARR Iterable adds Confluent CMO to BoD Iterable Hires a new Head of D&I

Facilitating the purchase of lottery tickets.

Jackpot.com is a leading online platform that facilitates the purchase of official state lottery tickets online, in the United States and across the globe. Customers can order their Powerball, Megamillions, or one of a number of other official state lottery game tickets from the comfort of their home on their phones, tablets, or computers. The company prides itself on its responsible marketing of official state lottery games and works with state lotteries to bring in new lottery players and additional revenue to the states.

A unified security platform for SMBs.

Based in Detroit, Judy has created a cost-effective, all-in-one cloud-based platform to provide smart, simple and effective cybersecurity protection designed specifically for the needs of small and midsize businesses. At the heart of the Judy system is a virtual cybersecurity assistant working 24/7 to protect customers from the most common cyber threats leveraging a powerful set of features including, password management, single sign on, endpoint protection, threat detection & automated remediation, anti-phishing, one-click compliance mapping and more.

The 645 team was introduced to Judy in spring of 2019. Raffaele Mautone, founder and COE, was just starting to think through his new company after leaving his position as Chief Information Officer of Duo Security ($2.4B acquisition by Cisco). Raffaele's depth of experience was hard to ignore. Before Duo, he was at other exceptional security companies including FireEye, McAfee and Dell. In addition to Raffaele's strong resume, he was going after an exceptionally large (and underserved) market in SMBs. Most existing solutions in the market were geared towards large enterprises.

AaDya Security and BitLyft partner to bolster services Detroit's growing cybersecurity industry

Remote wellness coaching platform

Test intelligence platform by the creator of Jenkins.

Launchable is building the intelligence layer for all software testing, allowing companies to speed up their test runtimes, free up developers time, and save money on cloud cost. As CI adoption has grown, companies' test suites have grown in size, leading to very long testing times and high cloud spend. Launchable’s product uses machine learning to predict which subset of all tests is going to give the team enough confidence, while also shortening run times. Launchable was founded by Kohsuke Kawaguchi, CTO of Cloudbees and creator of Jenkins, and Harpreet Singh, VP Product at Cloudbees and Head of Product for Bitbucket at Atlassian.

Harpreet and Kohsuke have played a huge role in evangelizing the CI market over the last decade, and we’ve now seen multiple unicorns being created in that space. We believe that the next phase of the market is building an intelligence layer on top of testing pipelines, which will save engineering teams money and time by shortening test times without sacrificing confidence. We are excited to partner with the team to define a new category with them.

Launchable Raises Series A

The fastest growing sports management platform.

Born and bred in New York City, LeagueApps is the operating system and community for youth and local sports leaders—providing them with the technology and professional network they need to succeed. They power thousands of clubs, tournaments, leagues, camps, and facilities with a platform that reaches more than 10 million participants nationwide. “We’ve built all the tools they need to power their programs,” said Brian Litvack, LeagueApps CEO and co-founder. Those tools include giving these leaders the means to do things like build a website, accept registrations, send messages to coaches and parents and help them share information with governing bodies or associations. In addition to its flagship software, the company’s NextUp platform is designed to provide organizers with opportunities for leadership development and networking. It also runs FundPlay, a philanthropic program focused on sports-based youth development programs in underserved communities. Through the FundPlay program, they donate a percentage of every dollar spent on our platform back to the communities and families that need it with the goal of impacting 500,000 underserved athletes by 2022.

At the time of 645's original investment, the offline, non-digitized nature of sports league management head lead to disorganization, lack of information, and excessive time required by league administrators to run the leagues. There was $70B being spent on organized sports each year and this number was growing rapidly. We believed that much of this spend would move online in the years to follow which was validated by the early traction LeagueApps showed. The company was showing strong revenue growth, attractive unit economics, and a talented team with an outstanding culture.

LeagueApps Raises $15M Best Employers in Sports LeagueApps keeps leagues in play during the pandemic

All-in-one ordering platform for restaurant chains.

Lunchbox Raises $50M Series B

More than 110,000 U.S. restaurants (nearly one in six) permanently closed in 2020, according to the National Restaurant Association. Of those that survived, many were forced to rely heavily (or exclusively) on delivery and take-out orders. Unfortunately, in an industry already known for razor-thin margins, third-party platforms like GrubHub and Uber Eats can charge commissions of 15 to 30 percent per transaction on take out orders. Lunchbox and their industry insider CEO Nabeel Alamgir are out to return the power to where it belongs, in the hands of the restaurant owners. Instead of charging a per-order commission, Lunchbox operates on a SaaS model, charging restaurants a flat fee of per month per location. "We want to be an afterthought," says Alamgir. "The better you do, the more we don't matter."

Although the online restaurant marketplace and delivery category appeared crowded, restaurants were desperate for a different offering than what they were receiving. Their margins were being squeezed by delivery companies that take large percentages of the transaction value (30%+), and reduced customer loyalty by driving customers away from restaurant sites themselves. Restaurants wanted a software solution that gave them back margins and drove more orders through their own sites. Lunchbox provided this and 645 was excited to invest.

Restaurants Tire of Forking Over Delivery-App Fees Helping Restaurants Reclaim their Power Breaking Third-Party Dependence

Providing mobile charging stations globally

Lyte Charging Inc. is a venture-backed startup technology company founded by early executives of Lime Scooters building their company from their headquarters in Portland. Lyte maintains a network of kiosks where users can check out and return portable phone chargers to make sure they always have the juice they need to go about their day. Kiosks are conveniently located in venues, such as stadiums, malls, restaurants, schools, so users are never far away.

When 645 was first introduced to they Lyte team there was a major shift occurring in the rise of mobile. Battery life for mobile devices was not scaling the same pace of innovation as mobile application, device sizes, and data plans. Battery life innovation driven by modern day physics and dependent on major technological breakthroughs that don't occur as frequently as software development and adoption. Software performance was being driven by Moore’s Law and continued exponential increases in performance that led to power shortage problem, where devices reach "low power" after ~4 hours of usage. An innovative solution to this problem is to combine the behavioral change seen in the shared economy (Airbnb, Lime, Uber, etc.) and a network of physical charges that people can pick up when they need them. There could be an iteration where kiosks are not required if there are partnerships with venues and a mobile network (i.e. Uber or Lyft drivers). This thesis, coupled with the strength of the Lyte team and early adoption of this technology in China was enough to excite our team about the prospect of working on a solution with DJ and Jason.

The digital platform connecting artists, venues, and fans to live music.

Mandolin helps artists and venues create connections with fans and prosper through The music they produce. The product intentionally push the boundaries of livestream, giving artists the right tools to create content, share it widely, and then better understand how fans engage. Mandolin gives artists the ability to build a digital strategy, all while giving fans unprecedented access to the artists they love. Mandolin Live+ digitally amplifies in-person shows; turning every live fan into a digital fan, opening up opportunities only available in the virtual realm, and helping artists deepen fan relationships through data.

The coronavirus pandemic has created the “Behavioral Change Economy”, forcing consumers to adapt and try new behaviors for the first time. This also applies to musicians, venue owners, and avid music lovers who were forced to adapt to the near instant shutdown of live-music venues across the world and try online concerts for the first time. We believe that we have reached an inflection point and, even after in-person events come back fully, viewers from around the world will continue to demand access to concerts and experiences in an online forum. Mandolin can capture a meaningful part of the $30B+ live music industry.

Mandolin To Live Stream From Pitchfork Music Festival’s London Debut Concert livestreaming platform Mandolin raises $12M Mandolin Raises $12 Million to Fuel Post-Pandemic Livestreaming Strategy

Powering incredible AR and VR experiences.

Merge is a virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) company that pushes the boundaries of imagination and technology. Their products are transforming the way kids learn and create. Merge's customers include both families and K-12 schools.

When 645 invested in 2015 we believed that Merge was going to be the first mass-market consumer mobile virtual reality headset compatible with both iOS and Android mobile. It had a competitive price point and was going after a massive market. We have been proud to partner with Merge since that time.

Get Lost In Adventure With The Best VR Headsets How Augmented Reality Is Shaping the Future of Play Merge VR shows off Holo Cube

A wardrobe solution for professional women.

A wardrobe solution for professional women. M.M.LaFleur creates luxury apparel and accessories with the same attention to detail as high-end fashion houses.

Professional women have long been divided into two categories: high end (Chanel, Nanette Lepore, Diane Von Furstenburg) and minimalist (J.Crew, Theory, Banana Republic). Women in the workforce are demanding brands that combine quality, personal validation, and unique sense of style, with high-touch personalization, fast fulfillment, trial options, and memorable experiences. We see MM LaFleur as disrupting the market of women professional clothing.

Personalized sleep tracking and coaching for newborns

At Nanit, their mission is to support the journey of parenting by making life a little more manageable for new parents by connecting them to their child's development and well-being. Since its launch in 2016, the Nanit baby monitor has revolutionized the industry and helped parents and their babies sleep better. Nanit is the first smart monitor to merge computer vision with data-backed sleep science, to produce the most advanced and secure camera technology ever introduced to the home. Nanit works to measure a baby's sleep cycle and provide actionable insights that lead to improved sleep for the entire family. Nanit now offers a suite of products and services that help parents stay informed on their baby’s health, safety and well-being through smarter and better use of technology. The company has become the leader in the connected nursery space, with an incredible customer base of highly-engaged new parents who look to Nanit as a source of information and expertise on their parenting journey. They are a dynamic VC-backed startup with proven products, marquee investors, and a terrific team of people.

We got to know the Nanit team as the business was starting to take shape at Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech. We were blown away by the visionary founders and their passion for imaging systems, machine learning, computer vision, human-centric design, sleep science, and child development. We partnered with Nanit before the first product even launched and have been happy to be along for the journey ever since.

Nanit Raises $21M Nanit raises another $25M for its AI-powered baby monitor Nanit named one of Fast Company's "Most Innovative Companies" for 2019

Easily build, send, and track interactive product demos.

Navattic is an interactive demo software that allows non-technical users to create personalized, interactive demo environments. As former Sales and Solutions Engineers the team saw first-hand the pain-points around giving hands-on access to the product during the sales process. They believed there was a forward-thinking solution to product demos that leveraged PLG trends to drive lead generation and improve the demo experience. Today, Navattic empowers Go-To-Market Teams to use web recorders and customer design toolkits to create high-fidelity prototypes and showcase their product in an immersive method. These interactive demos can be embedded on websites and serve as a lead generation tool.

We first met the founders of Navattic in March, as members of Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 cohort. We were instantly impressed by the team as well as the product. Navattic’s software meaningfully improves the experience of selling a product or service. The platform allows non-technical users to create personalized, interactive demo environments, fitting squarely into our Citizen Professional thesis. The need for the experience that Navattic is enabling is stronger than ever. New distribution methods such as product-led growth (PLG) continue to change customer expectations of how software should be bought, and sales-led companies are rushing to catch up. This behavioral shift, has invited strong demand for Navattic’s product from both PLG and sales-led companies alike.

Customer Led is the Future

Cloud Native Storage for Kubernetes

Founded in London as StorageOS in 2015, Ondat provides DevOps, development and technology executives with an agnostic platform to run any data service anywhere, while ensuring industry-leading levels of application performance, availability and security.

When we first me the team, we were impressed by their strong prior backgrounds in financial services and deep technical knowledge. One of the founders had experience working with two prior startups, both of which sold to Oracle. The round was being led by Salil Deshpanade from Bain Capital Ventures which gave us further confidence in the team and product. Salil is one of the world’s leading infrastructure investors and it gave us confidence to see him lean in.

Building the next-generation global security fabric

CEO Matt Caulfield and team are building the Oort Cloud: a globally-distributed, pervasively-available platform for enterprise security. They envision Oort as the connective tissue of the digital supply chain. While every business is protecting its own four walls, the Oort Team is on a mission to connect and secure the sensitive pathways between businesses. At the core of their vision is identity-aware networking: a system where every user, application, and resource is uniquely identified and isolated to minimize exposure. For any user, any resource, any cloud, anywhere, Oort is there to seamlessly connect resources with our massively-scalable, distributed, and fault-tolerant architecture. They apply granular, just-in-time policy with absolute precision and delightful simplicity. Security should be easy for everyone except the bad guys. The vision for Oort is no exception.

645 was initially introduced to Oort by the team at S28 Capital. We were impressed by the large market they were going after, the expertise of the founder and early employees and the opt tier list of co-investors including Bain Capital Ventures and several notable angel investors from exceptional cyber companies.

Catching waves and building clouds Matt Caulfield on why he started Oort

Helping companies optimize indirect spend.

Negotiatus is purchasing software that is transforming the way business administrators and users place orders, control spend, and submit payment across their vendors. They are trusted by over 200 of the fastest growing name-brand companies across a wide range of industries, from health and wellness to professional offices and co-working spaces. As the first platform built for customer's entire purchasing process, Negotiatus provides a consistent, simple, and powerful experience from sourcing through payment across every vendor and website. Businesses receive enterprise-level control and analytics without the burden of heavy implementation and maintenance, and are on-boarded in fewer than two weeks. Negotiatus is headquartered in New York City and its team services businesses across North America.

645 Ventures got to know Negotiatus over about six months in advance of making an investment. During that time, the company had more than doubled its annualized revenue. 645 had also been able to get to know the founding team well, and has been impressed by the team’s vision, resourcefulness, and commitment to building the leading procurement company for the mid-market.

$30M Series B and a New Name Negotiatus raises $10M to optimize procurement Negotiatus looks to save businesses money on the unsexy

The leading brand for the next generation of sports fans.

Overtime Raises $100M Series D

Based in NYC, Overtime is the leading brand for the next generation of sports fans. As both a publisher and an influencer, Overtime has built the inclusive world of sports we all wish was the norm by giving a platform to their community to be seen AND heard. They produce original content across YouTube, Snapchat and IGTV, as well as highly engaging shortform content on Instagram and TikTok. In 2021, Overtime announced that it was forming a new professional basketball league called Overtime Elite that offers high school basketball players the opportunity to showcase their talents and profit like never before. Beyond 645 Overtime is funded by top VC firms, industry leaders, and athletes, including Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, Sapphire Sport, Bezos Expeditions (the personal investment company of Jeff Bezos), Micromanagement Ventures (the family of the late David Stern), Black Capital, Morgan Stanley Counterpoint Global, Blackstone Strategic Partners, PROOF, Gaingels, Alexis Ohanian, Drake, and 30+ NBA stars including Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant.

645 got introduced to Overtime by Fitzgate Ventures, a VC firm focusing on companies founded by Princeton alumni. One of the first things to stand out to us was the world-class quality of the founding team led by Zack Weiner and Dan Porter. Dan had previously sold OMGPOP to Zynga after building the business for 4 years building mobile apps that scaled to hundreds of millions of users. The team sold a vision of Overtime by blending elements of successful sports media companies (e.g., Bleacher Report) with successful viral social media companies (e.g., Instagram, YouTube). We are proud to be backers of this innovative company.

Inside the New Basketball League Paying High Schoolers Six-Figure Salaries Overtime Elite Selects Atlanta for its Home Base Overtime Raises $80 Million From Jeff Bezos, Drake, NBA Stars and Others

Cloud-native SIEM powered by a Python engine

Panther raises at a $1.4B valuation

Panther is a cybersecurity company with the mission of detecting and responding to security breaches at a cloud-scale. The company was founded by security practitioners that lived through the challenge of protecting large organizations and wanted to build a solution that many teams could use. Panther solves modern security challenges with detection-as-code, a cloud-native architecture, and robust security data lake. Panther’s platform, used by many industry leaders, enables security teams to focus on security, detect attacks, and protect their organizations without prohibitive overhead or excessive operational costs. Backed by 645, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Innovation Endeavors, and S28 Capital, Panther has raised $20M and is quickly accelerating its mission and employee-base across the United States and Greece. Panther’s customers include industry leading technology companies such as GitLab, Coinbase, and Dropbox, and many others.

Panther Labs was originally sourced through Voyager (645's proprietary software). We were immediately impressed by the strong team with deep domain expertise. Jack Naglieri (Founder/CEO) had a background in cloud infrastructure and security. He had spent 4 years at Yahoo as a security engineer and 3 years at Airbnb as a security engineering manager. While at Airbnb, he co-created StreamAlert, an open source software that had been in production at Airbnb since 2017. It had 1.9k stars in Github when we invested and the user traction was very strong. In addition to all that, we valued the syndicate of co-investors that Jack had been able to attract. S28 had been incubating this project and their co-founder, Andrew Miklas, previously founded and was CTO at PagerDuty.

Panther Labs raises fresh funds at $1.4B valuation How Detection And Response Has Evolved Panther named #4 on EnterpriseTech30’s startup list

Optimizing credit card rewards for cost-effective flights

Pointhound is a standout company, known for its user-friendly platform that optimizes credit card rewards for cost-effective flights. By efficiently utilizing accumulated rewards, Pointhound addresses a common challenge faced by users who may not have maximized their points previously. The company's commitment to unlocking the untapped potential of credit card rewards places it as a leader in the evolving travel technology sector. Pointhound's dedication to delivering a superior user experience further enhances its appeal, positioning it as a promising player in optimizing travel through effective rewards utilization.

Poshly is the consumer intelligence company.

Poshly is the consumer intelligence company, named one of Fast Company’s “Top 10 Most Innovative Big Data Companies of 2015,” honored with L'Oreal’s “NEXT Generation Award" and led by one of Inc.’s 2015 “30 Under 30” listees. Launched in 2012, Poshly’s platform enables consumers to enter to win products by answering fun, fast questions about themselves. With this data, Poshly empowers clients (like L’Oreal, Unilever, Time Inc., Weleda and many other beauty, wellness and lifestyle brands) with unique insights that drive forward product innovation. Poshly’s tight-knit team is based in NYC and SF

When we were first connected with Doreen Bloch in 2014 we were impressed with her vision for the beauty industry as well as the user traction and engagement that she had been able to foster to that point in the company's lifecycle. We have been a proud partner ever since.

Delivering informed, media-savvy digital media services

Rad is redefining the global streaming for the modern era with NFTs, on-demand, live events, and TV featuring the biggest content creators and studios in the world; all powered by future foundational technologies like blockchain and XR. Discover the best in Music, Movies & TV, Comedy, Sports, Gaming and more or on demand, live, 180°, 360°, 3D content and NFT collectibles (non-fungible tokens). Watch thousands of hours of content, join watch parties, buy limited edition NFTs, get XR experiences, and collect crypto rewards.

When we first partnered with the team they were focusing primarily on the VR space. They were showing strong traction with the entertainment community and luxury brands and had amassed an impressive library of quality content, delivering a “threshold of delight” to early VR adopters. They had formed an experienced, deeply networked team and had already accomplished several impressive wins, including becoming the exclusive premium video provider for Sony PlayStation VR, being selected as App of the Month on Apple TV, and penning deals with multiple TV Networks (Discovery, ABC, Sci-fi) and YouTube influencers (Michele Phan).

API-driven tenant screening platform.

RentSpree celebrates 2 Million users milestone

Founded in 2016, RentSpree is an award-winning rental software known in all 50 states for its easy-to-use tenant screening process, renter management, partnership program, and rental screening API. In just five years, RentSpree has grown its database by partnering with some of the most trusted names in real estate and serves over half a million agents, owners, and renters across the country. It covers every step of the rental process and the platform is also the first of its kind to support the collaboration of multiple parties because renters typically interact with a combination of real estate agents, landlords, and property managers to secure a single rental. RentSpree facilitates these interactions by providing universal rental applications, report sharing, a rental forms library, digital signatures, renters insurance, and much more.

We invested in both the Seed and Series A of RentSpree having watched the team quickly find product-market fit. Nnamdi Okike (Co-Founder and Managing Partner at 645) explained our re-investment as the Series A by saying, "The real estate industry has seen significant growth in rental activity over the past decade, and RentSpree is on the forefront of providing software that deploys quickly and streamlines crucial operations that haven’t seen innovation in a very long time. With the growth RentSpree has experienced in its user and customer base, as well as in their product offerings, we’re excited to see them become the leader in providing world-class renter management software."

What is PropTech and How is it Impacting the Real Estate Industry? RentSpree teams up with dozens of multiple listing services RentSpree Raises $8 Million in Series A

All your home furnishing needs, at one place.

Resident gets unicorn sized exit

Resident is an industry-leader in the Direct-to-Consumer mattress and home furnishings category. Since the founding of the award-winning Nectar Sleep in 2016 (with over 1 million happy sleepers and counting), they have also launched the Dreamcloud, Awara and Level Sleep brands to cater to a variety of sleep preferences. Their mission is simple... they strive to make inspiring products people love coming home to (and to help everyone afford a great night's sleep)! At its core, Resident Home is built around the ability to continuously introduce new customers to their products, and wow them with exceptional experiences through the shopping and post purchase journey. The company is headquartered in San Francisco with a dedicated New York City office and an R&D facility in Tel Aviv. Yet, at the heart of the company is the belief in building a team using the best talent possible, no matter where they reside. From 15 cities across 5 countries, Resident has a diversified virtual workforce of more than 200 employees.

The 645 team was introduced to Resident by Andy Berman, one of the firms Venture Partners. Andy had been an angel investor in the company and flagged it for 645 due to its exceptional growth and unique approach to performance marketing. After leaning in and getting to know the team, 645 was excited to partner with Resident in 2018.

Resident wins sales, profitability, and $130M in new funding Resident sees $12.5M in new funding Nectar parent rebrands as Resident

Real-time analytics for commercial real estate.

Rifiniti’s workplace analytics help businesses optimize their office space to reduce costs while delivering flexible, modern workplaces that engage employees. Using existing data and advanced analytics, the Rifiniti cloud-based solution provides powerful insight to workspace utilization that enables Corporate Real Estate leaders to make smarter, faster real estate portfolio decisions that reduce costs dramatically and improve employee productivity, innovation, and satisfaction.

When we first met the Rifiniti team, we were impressed with what they had been able to accomplish to that point in the company's life cycle. Revenue growth from the prior 12 months was off the charts, they had highly attractive unit economics, and their customer list was full of big names including EMC, Microsoft, Fidelity, Uber, Exxon Mobil, Cisco, Lenovo, and Allsteel. We were proud to invest in the team and watch them scale to a successful exit.

FM Systems Acquires Rifiniti

Pickup and same-day delivery from local grocers.

Rosie is the most trusted, locally focused ecommerce company. Rosie partners with leading local retailers, grocery stores, and their wholesalers to provide customers with same-day delivery or in-store pickup options, helping shoppers discover products from local stores. Launched in 2013, Rosie is built around the idea that everyone should be able to shop online from their favorite local stores. This audacious mission has been more critical than ever in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic but Rosie's increasingly diverse team is dedicated to making that vision a reality alongside their brick and mortar retail partners and the communities that they proudly serve. In January 2021 Rosie raised $10M in Series A financing to aggressively expand this model across the United States.

When 645 partnered with Rosie the company in early 2017, local and regional grocery stores were starting to be impacted by the Internet like never before, enabling companies like FreshDirect, Instacart, and Peapod to take market share. These local and regional stores were starting to realize that they were falling behind and losing customers to these online channels. There was demand from the stores themselves to build their own ecommerce businesses, while also optimizing their retail operations via marketing and analytics.

Rosie hires their first Chief Revenue Officer Rosie Raises $10M Series A Rosie Sets Itself Apart From Online Shopping Platforms

Next-gen infrastructure for asset-backed lending

A16Z leads $43M Series A for Setpoint

Setpoint is building the next-generation infrastructure for asset-backed lending, starting with real estate. Asset-backed lending is a complex process with numerous factors to manage. It includes various documents, stakeholders, vendors, and facilities. Today, the process is managed through spreadsheets and email with a high human error rate; this can have a considerable monetary impact on both the lender and the borrower. Setpoint streamlines an asset-backed loan application by improving automated document collection, collateral loan verification, and instant and accurate borrowing base calculations. By improving these factors, Setpoint reduces overall human error, reducing the process from 4-6 days to a 40-minute cycle.

A16Z leads $4M Series A for Setpoint3

Protecting transportation vehicles from cybersecurity threats

“World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2024” -Fast Company

Shift5 is a cybersecurity company that protects the world's transportation infrastructure and weapons systems from cyberattacks. Created by founding members of the U.S. Army Cyber Command who pioneered modern weapons system cyber assessments, Shift5 defends military platforms and commercial transportation systems against malicious actors and operational failures. Customers rely on Shift5 to detect threats and maintain the resilience of a wide variety of operational technology systems, including aviation, rail and metro, and defense.

Operational technology underlies our critical infrastructure, yet there continues to be a lack of resilience against cyberattacks. We believe Shift5 will be able to take on this critical issue when it comes to protecting planes, trains and tanks. As Co-Founder and Partner, Nnamdi Okike says: "Shift5 represents the best of what 645 looks for in an investment: a talented, driven and experienced team building a differentiated technology company to solve a critical and growing problem. The challenge of monitoring and securing commercial and government fleets, vehicles, and systems against cyberattack and malfunction is one of the most important in cybersecurity today. We’re excited to partner closely with them as they scale the business."

Shift5 Named a Gartner® Cool Vendor™ Shift5 Raises $20 Million Frontline Founders

The first e-commerce application operator.

Shop Circle wants to keep Shopify merchants from going ‘round and ‘round finding apps they need

Automating shipping for e-commerce

Skydropx provides advanced software to automate the shipping process for businesses in Latin America, making it easier to buy/print shipping labels, track and handle returns. Founded in 2014 by Tavo Zambrano, Armando Solbes, Óscar Victorín and Daniel Alvarado, Skydropx was founded in 2015 and the team participated in YC in 2018. The team has shown their product is able to provide up to 70% reduction in logistics expenses, a revenue growth of up to 3 times by being able to displace shipping options and costs in real time and up to 91% optimization of a company’s operations by avoiding data errors, Zambrano told TechCrunch.

E-commerce is undergoing a renaissance in LATAM, and Skydropx has emerged as the category leader in e-commerce fulfillment. The company currently operates exclusively in Mexico, but is actively entering new countries to take advantage of brand power and high e-commerce growth across the continent. As Aaron says, “In Latin America, e-commerce is undergoing a Renaissance, first around fintech and now with the emergence and surge in e-commerce. Customers talked about their product being essential to scale and get to profitability, and Skydropx is emerging as the dominant leader to automate fulfillment."

This startups solves the managment of shipments Skydropx taps new funding

Data-driven approach to clinical supply chain management.

Slope is a clinical operations solution company. Their goal is to make clinical trials boring with products, services, and technology that reduce operational complexity. They support clinical researchers and their patients around the world, with the ultimate goal of getting important drugs and devices to the market faster. As part of their solution they procure, package, and ship clinical trial supplies to destinations across the United States. As Slope mentions on their site, 75% of Research Sites have no policies, procedures, or tools in place to ensure they always have what they need. This makes preparing for all of your patient enrollments and follow-up visits incredibly difficult. Slope empowers companies to have a system in place that not only ensures they hit necessary deadlines both safely and accurately, but Slope also makes the process easy.

We invested in Slope in 2020 after being impressed by the tenacious team and significant market opportunity. We were deeply impressed by the two Founders, Rust and Michael Felix, and their vision for the future of clinical supply chain management. As clinical trials are of significant importance for drug commercialization, it can be costly when supply chain issues create roadblocks for researchers. Slope is addressing an acute pain point and is helping reduce inefficiencies in the clinical trial space.

The 10-slide presentation that convinced NEA to invest $20M Slope Raises $20M in Series A Funding Founder Spotlight #9: Rust Felix @ Slope

Market surveillance and risk monitoring hub for digital assets.

Solidus believes blockchain, crypto and digital assets offer an opportunity to transform financial services, making them more inclusive, transparent, liquid and efficient. In order to usher this transformation, their team is on a mission to enable safe and regulated crypto markets through tailored compliance and risk monitoring solutions. Named by Citigroup as category-definer for crypto market surveillance, Solidus Labs offers the first crypto-native, comprehensive, automated and testable market surveillance and risk monitoring hub tailored for digital assets. Crypto businesses, financial institutions and regulators globally rely on their solutions in order to apply for licensing, attract institutional investors, protect their users and grow faster and safer.

In 2021 we saw the rise of blockchain applications, such as NFTs and blockchain gaming. We also saw the growth of DeFi application creation and use. As this trend continues we believe providers of infrastructure software, such Solidus Labs will be critical to enable broad adoption. Co-Founders Asaf Meir, Praveen Dosodia, and Chen Arad impressed us from day one with their insight into the pain points of crypto infrastructure. The team had already signed up an impressive roster of customers, including crypto exchanges, financial services providers, and regulatory agencies, and assembled a top-notch team, with offices in New York and Tel Aviv, and planned expansion in London.

Solidus Labs rakes in another $15 million Solidus Labs Raises $20M From VCs

End-to-end mgmt of intellectual property in UGC

Source3 was the world’s first platform for end-to-end management of intellectual property in user-generated content (UGC). Prior to the exit, they provided IP recognition, licensing and rights administration services to connect creators, marketplaces and brands and enabled monetization of user content across physical and digital products. The team had previously built successful licensing platforms powering digital music, user-generated videos and 3D printing. Source3 offered scalable, turn-key solutions for global licensing challenges.

We were originally introduced to Patrick, the founder of Source3, by a friend at Google. When we met with the team, it was clear that the engineering talent was world-class and the CEO was “persuasively intense”: he struck us as the type of person that would run through a wall for his company.

Facebook acquires Source3

AI-powered Consumer Intelligence

Spiketrap is a contextualization company powering instant audience understanding for creators, platforms, and brands. The platform helps companies listen to the voices of its customers through social listening features that are monitoring conversations happening on social media. Spiketrap has built an an always-on platform for bands and companies to understand what their current customers and future customers are saying in real-time. This knowledge allowed brands to make data-driven decisions based on true market insights.

The Spiketrap founding team immediately caught our attention as they had deep domain expertise. Their CEO, Kieran worked for Amazon, and after Amazon acquired GoodReads, Kieran was tapped to lead the integration of the business. Kieran met his co-founders Andrea and Virgilio from the GoodReads team during the integration. Andrea and Virgillio have PhD in machine learning and a masters degree in computer science. The team found product-market fit in the gaming industry, and by the time we met with them they had 13 employees and a strong client list. We believe their NLP technology will be a need to have for market insights moving forward.

Spiketrap and Rainmaker.gg Partner to Empower Creator Economy Spiketrap and Rival Technologies Partnership Accelerates Insights for Market Research Industry Spiketrap raises $3 million

Helping barbers process more than $100M in bookings

Squire reaches $750M Valuation

Squire is the world’s leading and fastest-growing software technology platform for barbershops, a hundred-billion-dollar global industry. They provide a one-stop solution that helps small business entrepreneurs run and grow their businesses. Squire is also the premiere booking engine that connects people with great barbers nationwide. They make it easy to discover and book the best barbers wherever you are, in just a few taps. With headquarters in New York and a presence in major cities in the United States, U.K. and Canada, Squire has quickly become a market leader in technology solutions for the barbershop industry. Squire is currently a Series D company and has raised over $165M to date.

We first met the Squire team in August of 2016 while the company was in Y-Combinator. Our original impression was that the founders were strong and. that they were building an exceptionally innovative company however, it was not the right time for us to invest. Over several years, we continued to grow our relationship with the founders and tracked the company as it grew its ACV and added a subscription revenue stream. We were impressed by the founders’ ability to innovate and add new features to increase ACV. We invested $1m in the company’s Series A round, at a $17m pre-money/$25m post-money valuation. The investment is in the form of Series A convertible preferred stock, with a 6% dividend rate.

Squire is proving barbershops are big business How a lawyer and a finance guy ditched the rat race Squire triples its valuation (again) with Tiger Global

Tracking data from 400,000+ companies

Thinknum is a venture-backed alternative data SaaS startup. Thinknum creates datasets from a broad array of public online sources, capturing ephemeral information on the products, operating markets and labor markets of 500,000+ global companies across sectors, and provides rich toolsets for extracting intelligence. As economic activity comes online, new data trails are left behind. Thinknum’s proprietary machine learning algorithms index the public web in real-time, to create more than 35 structured datasets. They track job listings, headcount, social media traction, employee sentiment, product pricing, store locations, and more for over 500,000+ public and private companies around the world daily. Customers access the Thinknum data via an API or a user-friendly UI. No other web data vendor can match the breadth, depth, and quality of their historical and real-time data. Thinknum has 300+ clients across major corporations and investment firms.

645 got introduced to Thinknum co-founder Justin Zhen at a pitch event in 2014. 645 joined with Green Visor Capital to put together a seed investment round for the company, before the business went through 500 Startups accelerator. At the time, 90% of the world’s data had been created in the previous two years. Thinknum's product filled a gap in the market by enabling financial institutions to perform advanced analytics on data that was previously not able to be analyzed. This, mixed with rapid revenue growth and strong early customers got 645 excited about the opportunity of partnering with this exceptional team.

Capturing Customers Hearts With Grit and Resilience How Wall Street Is Keeping Tabs on WallSteetBets How Alternative Data Can Help You

Enhancing space security.

True Anomaly, the operator of a fully integrated technology platform, is committed to enhancing space security and protecting the freedoms and interests of the nation. The company focuses on merging advanced training and simulation tools, state-of-the-art spacecraft manufacturing infrastructure, and autonomous systems to revolutionize space security, stability, and sustainability. True Anomaly specializes in providing innovative space mission solutions and software to meet the needs of the commercial space market.

Building a new type of senior living community

Making holistic wealth management a reality for advisors and their clients.

Vividly provides tools to manage trade spend for CPG companies.

Vividly wants to put some sparkle in your next CPG trade promotion campaign