• Illumitex

  Participated · Series C · Aug 2015

  Illumitex is an Austin, TX-based manufacturer of horticultural LED fixtures. Led by CEO Jeff Bisberg, the company incorporates digital sensors into its LED horticulture fixtures to create a dataset. That dataset powers an open application market designed to enable growers to predict, diagnose, monitor and improve all aspects of operations. Illumitex raised $4m in equity funding led by WP Global Partners with participation from New Enterprise Associates. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the development and deployment of its digital horticulture system. Its core product combines LED fixtures and embedded sensors to support software and applications for growers. Illumitex develops optically advanced LED lighting products designed to deliver more usable light while consuming less energy. The company produces horticulture fixtures that are used in numerous vertical farms to grow basil, spinach, kale and other vegetables. In addition to its horticulture business, Illumitex makes lighting for architectural, industrial and beauty sectors. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas and was founded in 2005. Illumitex is led by CEO Chris Hammelef. It closed a $16M C1 funding round. Illumitex is a US-based LED innovator founded in 2005 that develops precision beam packaged LEDs and optically advanced lighting products. Since beginning production of precision beam LEDs in 2008 the company has demonstrated momentum across its business and has generated revenue primarily through packaged LED strategies. Its core technology integrates die-level optics to extract and direct photons, producing uniform, highly precise beams and reducing the need for secondary optics. The company announced it secured an additional $9.3 million in funding to support development of lighting fixture product lines and further development of its proprietary precision beam packaged LEDs. Management said it will shift focus from packaged LEDs to feature lighting fixtures as the lead product offering. Illumitex also hired Chris Hammelef, formerly VP and GM of Hadco Group (a Philips division), as CEO effective April 16, 2012 to help scale and commercialize its fixture business.

• DialogTech

  Participated · Equity · Sep 2014

  DialogTech provides a call analytics and automation platform designed to optimize the entire sales funnel. Its Voice360™ suite offers applications to control, measure and optimize the impact of phone calls across every stage of the customer lifecycle, from discovery to purchase to retention. The company currently serves over 5,000 global customers, including Uber, Zendesk, Sleep Train Mattress Centers, Experian and Yale University. DialogTech was founded in 2007 and is based in Chicago, IL. The company received a $10M credit facility and intends to use the funds to continue to grow operations and expand its offerings. Ifbyphone builds voice marketing software and sells tools that let marketers and salespeople track incoming calls from search results and advertising campaigns. Its Voice360 platform scores calls and routes them to the appropriate people; the company says new funding will be used to further develop Voice360. The company announced it has almost 5,000 customers. Earlier this year Ifbyphone reported a $9 million Series D; the new funding doubles its total funding to $60 million. Part of the new capital is being used to acquire competitor Mongoose Metrics; financial terms of that deal were not disclosed. Mongoose’s Cleveland office will remain open and Mongoose CEO Brad Reynolds will join Ifbyphone to lead integration, a move CEO Irv Shapiro said creates a market leader in call tracking. Ifbyphone offers products that track and automate calls for marketing, sales, and customer support teams, including interactive voice response and virtual call centers. The company positions itself as giving managers control over voice conversations and associated data. It has nearly 4,000 paying customers and processed more than 200 million phone calls and 600 million minutes as of December of last year. Ifbyphone plans to hire 25 people in the first half of the year, bringing headcount to more than 115. The company has raised funding previously and continues to expand its product and go-to-market efforts. Ifbyphone is a Skokie, IL-based provider of a software-as-a-service voice-based platform that enables customers to manage, measure and automate voice interactions in the marketing process. Its platform supports lead capture, lead nurturing, lead routing and lead analysis. Led by CEO Irv Shapiro, the company serves small-to-medium-sized businesses and plans to build infrastructure to serve mid-market clients as well. Ifbyphone recently received a $2m debt financing commitment to increase capacity and develop new capabilities. The company has also recently received funding from the National Association of REALTORS. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article. Ifbyphone offers a web-based platform that lets companies route, track and automate telephone calls via a public cloud server, enabling features like virtual receptionists, voicemail and phone voting. Developers can build web services against the platform to control every phase of a call through open APIs. The company acquired Cloudvox to gain access to open APIs and tooling for developers to build call‑routing and interactive voice applications. Users can pay for basic services or upgrade for more in-depth analytics and interactive voice features; pricing in the article ranges from $50 to $75 per month. The product targets call centers and enterprises that want to integrate telephony with web applications and analytics. The company is Skokie, Ill.-based and has grown its offering through both product development and acquisition.

• Sittercity

  Participated · Equity · Nov 2013

  Sittercity operates an online platform that connects families with local in-home caregivers and provides detailed sitter profiles, parent reviews, availability, references, and screening tools including two levels of background checks and motor vehicle record checks. Founded in 2001 and based in Chicago, the company reports over four million members and is the Department of Defense’s solution of choice under an exclusive DoD contract. Sittercity offers employer-sponsored programs (SelectPlus) and tools to help families through the hiring process, and it emphasizes caregiver vetting and safety resources. The company announced it closed $13 million in financing and a strategic partnership with Bright Horizons as part of its current financial position. Sittercity plans to use the latest funding to expand and strengthen its position as a leading solution for families seeking nannies, babysitters and other in-home care. The Bright Horizons partnership is intended to broaden employer-sponsored access to Sittercity’s caregiver network and engage more families. SitterCity operates an online marketplace that connects families with caregivers for childcare, pet care, eldercare, home care, and tutoring. The site guides clients through an in-depth screening process that includes background checks, references, and parent reviews, and it hosts more than 2 million caregiver profiles nationwide. SitterCity has helped connect hundreds of thousands of parents with in-home caregivers. The company has also built a corporate program offering branded SitterCity portals as an employee benefit. Corporate clients include the U.S. Department of Defense (which provides paid memberships to military families), MasterCard, Avon, Sega, Fox and Northwestern. SitterCity has raised $30 million to date, including a new $22.6 million round. The new funding will be used to develop additional corporate partnerships and to expand the site’s services internationally. Sittercity operates an online care-giving directory connecting care seekers with babysitters, pet sitters, senior caregivers, tutors, and home sitters. The site provides sitter profiles, a four-step screening process, free access to background checks, and sitter video interviews. It runs a subscription business model allowing caregivers to sign up free while charging care seekers $8 per month; the average babysitter rate on the platform is $13/hour. Sittercity also offers a corporate program with clients that include Mastercard and Monster. The company reports over a million caregiver profiles and hundreds of thousands of care seekers, has increased job postings 150%, added an average of 2,000 caregivers per day, and grown annual revenue 60% year-over-year. To support continued growth it opened a second round of funding to accommodate new investors.

• TrunkClub

  Participated · Series A · Sep 2011

  Trunk Club operates a personal styling and retail service for men in which professional in-house stylists curate and ship "trunks" of clothing that customers try on and return unwanted items. Users sign up online, answer a style questionnaire, and receive handpicked collections delivered via FedEx; customers are only charged for the clothes they keep and are not charged for shipping, and outside Illinois they do not pay sales tax. The company pivoted from offering Skype-based personal shoppers to employing staff stylists who purchase and stock inventory, buying at wholesale and selling at a standard retail markup without discounts. Trunk Club reports over 3,500 active clients and stocks its own inventory. CEO Brian Spaly, who co-founded Bonobos, leads the company. The firm is launching a new customer center for on-demand orders, detailed feedback, and data-driven, Netflix-style recommendations, and plans to use new funding to support hiring, marketing, and further expansion.

• SiliconBlue Technologies

  Participated · Series D · Jun 2011

  SiliconBlue Technologies develops low-power, single-chip CMOS SRAM mobileFPGA devices and offers accompanying IP and design services for handset and handheld applications. The company is focused on ultra-low-power, standard CMOS process mobileFPGA families. Management plans to commercialize next-generation 40-nm device families. These products are positioned to support an increasing number of sensors in handheld devices and to enable DVI and MIPI interfaces for video, multi-display, and high-bandwidth memory interface applications. SiliconBlue raised $18 million in a Series D financing to fund the rollout of its 40-nm families. Brian Long of Atlantic Bridge has been elected to the company's board. SiliconBlue Technologies designs ultra-low-power, single-chip SRAM field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices tailored for handheld consumer products. The company’s iCE65 mobileFPGA devices are engineered to meet the power, area, capacity and price requirements of battery-operated products such as mobile internet devices, smartphones, eReaders and digital cameras. SiliconBlue is based in Santa Clara, California. It closed a $15m Series C preferred stock financing to support its operations. The company intends to use the capital to strengthen customer support infrastructure, expand sales channels, ramp up production and develop new products. In conjunction with the financing, Apex Venture Partners’ Mr. Pauker will join the company’s board of directors. SiliconBlue produces field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips designed to deliver high processing performance at very low power for battery-powered mobile devices. The company’s chips aim to address mobile power constraints by integrating functionality that reduces external component needs. Its new 45-nanometer processor does not require external configuration memory, which the company says could provide a competitive edge. SiliconBlue plans to use the new funding to scale its operations. Financially, it has raised a total of $40 million in venture capital since it spun off from Kilopass Technology in 2006. The company is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

No current team members are available.