Participated · Seed · Jan 2018

Splitty is an Israel-based hotel booking platform that finds unique hotel prices by splitting and combining multiple bookings under one reservation. The platform analyzes and splits over 1.5 million transactions to create exclusive deals quickly and provides services for more than 500,000 properties in 127 countries. Founded in 2015 and led by CEO Eran Shust, Splitty currently offers room booking options mainly in Europe and America. The company plans to expand into the Asian market following the financing and intends to use the funds to grow its team and accelerate global market expansion. Its current financial update is a $6.75m Series A raise. Investors include Fosun RZ Capital as lead, with participation from 2bAngels, Techstars Ventures, Cockpit Innovation and 11-11 Ventures. Splitty is an online hotel booking platform that leverages proprietary “Split & Match” technology to create new room deals by combining offers from multiple sources. The product assembles multiple reservations to access promotional rates for low-occupancy dates and secure the lowest priced rooms for each night of a stay. The company plans to use the new funding to continue expanding operations and to further develop its product. Splitty was launched in 2015 and is led by CEO Eran Shust and CTO Avi Wortzel. It has 10 employees and maintains partnerships with American Airlines, Trivago, AOL, Deloitte and Cox Enterprises.

Participated · Series B · Apr 2017

Crunchbase operates an API-driven database and SaaS prospecting platform that combines proprietary company and funding data with contact information and a news division. The product is used for account-based prospecting and includes discovery filters, machine learning recommendations, a Chrome extension, Salesforce sync, and email integrations. The company reports over 75 million unique annual visitors, more than 60,000 paying customers, and representation from over half of the Fortune 500. Crunchbase employed about 220 people and plans to grow the team to around 275 by year-end. In the first half of the year it drove $9 million of net new ARR at $2 million burn and aims to double its business-to-business software ARR to roughly $38 million for that segment. The platform faces competition from PitchBook, CB Insights, Owler and others, and plans include a HubSpot integration and further ML-powered suggestions and dashboards. Crunchbase emphasizes measured growth and efficiency as it scales its product and sales capabilities. Crunchbase provides private-company prospecting and research solutions, combining a rich database with prospecting software used by salespeople, entrepreneurs, investors, and market researchers. The platform includes features such as a Salesforce integration, enhanced search, and updated company profiles. Crunchbase reports over 55 million users and more than 3 billion API calls per year. Customers have reported significant ROI gains from recent features. Leadership says the company will continue building new features and investing in data to help customers grow. Crunchbase is headquartered in San Francisco. Crunchbase began as part of TechCrunch and was later spun out into an independent database and directory of company information. Its core product aggregates company profiles, funding history, executive data, original coverage, and third-party integrations (for example, Siftery and SimilarWeb) to provide market intelligence. The company reports about 55 million annual visitors and "tens of thousands" of paid subscribers, with subscription pricing noted at $29/user/month (varying by contract); it has 120 employees after tripling headcount since 2017. Crunchbase says it performs 3.9 billion annual data updates sourced from user uploads, manual and automatic inputs, and roughly 4,000 data partnerships that drive about 1.6 billion annual API calls. Management is winding down advertising and plans to focus on expanding paid subscribers and adding predictive, personalized features using machine learning and other AI technologies. Since 2017 it has grown its annual revenue run rate tenfold and more than doubled traffic since being spun out, and it is pursuing subscription and licensing revenue growth. Crunchbase is a database that charts startups, other tech companies, the people who work for them, and those who fund them; the company spun out from TechCrunch in September 2015. Its core products include a free service, the Pro tier (launched September 2016 at $29/month), and the newly announced Crunchbase Enterprise business-intelligence product. Enterprise enables BI-style queries to follow investment trends, identify growth industries, and find peer companies, and about 5,000 companies are using it, including Microsoft, IBM Watson, Nestle, Samsung, Slack, Target, Volkswagen, and Deloitte. The free service draws roughly 27 million visitors per year and about 10 million sessions per month. Crunchbase is planning a Marketplace to integrate third-party data via APIs (aiming to secure about 15 providers) and will use the funding to expand analytics, data visualizations, and platform capabilities. The company employed 40 people at the time of the article and plans to double headcount to about 80 by year-end, hiring in engineering and data science. CrunchBase, spun out of TechCrunch/AOL/Verizon late last year, provides a searchable database of private-company information, funding events, investors and people in startups. The company has launched paid data-access plans that tier access to its APIs and live data. It previously offered data under varying Creative Commons and non-commercial licenses and now provides commercial and non-commercial licenses with priced tiers. The free plan offers a 2013 historical MySQL snapshot and limited access to an Open Data Map API but not the full REST API. Paid tiers include a $999/month plan for live internal-business data use and a $4,999/month plan for developers building public apps; CrunchBase positions three tiers as Basic, Commercial and Advanced. CEO Jager McConnell said the new funding will be used to accelerate growth and invest heavily in engineering to build the next generation of CrunchBase.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2016

Zirra uses proprietary AI to evaluate startups by aggregating data across as many as 80 parameters (team quality, media momentum, funding gaps, etc.) and calibrating results with qualitative input from a network of domain experts. Its outputs include estimated valuations, competitor lists, estimated time to exit, risk and success factors, and ratings for team, product, momentum, and execution. The company sells Startup Spotlight Reports for investors and entrepreneurs, a version for job seekers, deeper bespoke reports, and plans to launch an on-demand chatbot. Zirra serves several dozens of institutional clients in Israel and the United States and employs around 15 people. The company reported a self-stated valuation of $6 million and has raised $2.5 million to date.

Participated · Seed · Mar 2016

Shoppimon provides eCommerce businesses and agencies with a SaaS solution that monitors online store performance by mimicking the experience of customers. Its technology notifies users in real time about issues without requiring integration, indicating when and where problems occur before they prevent a purchase. The company is led by CEO Roy Rosinnes and is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Shoppimon plans to grow its team, expand its product offering to additional eCommerce platforms, and continue scaling to more clients around the globe. The company closed $2.3M in seed funding to support these efforts.

Led · Equity · Mar 2010

Patch is a hyperlocal news platform that operates local news sites for 41 small towns and communities across New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and California. Each Patch site is produced by a professional local journalist who creates original objective news and curates user-contributed events, announcements, photos and video. AOL has committed $50 million to Patch and is launching Patch.org, a charitable offshoot to fund and sustain Patch-modeled sites in underserved communities. Patch.org will partner with community foundations and other organizations to launch sites, and any profits from Patch.org-funded sites will be returned to the communities they serve. The foundation will operate alongside Patch’s Give 5 program, which donates advertising space and employee volunteer time to local charitable organizations. According to a recent 10-K, AOL acquired Patch for $7.0 million in cash and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong previously invested $4.5 million in Patch via his private investment firm Polar Capital; AOL has also developed the Seed CMS and integrated StudioNow to boost video content on editorial sites.