Led · Equity · Feb 2021

Professional Fighters League is an MMA organization that operates a season-style competition format and produces premium live events for a global audience. The league emphasizes an athlete-first model, official rankings, and storytelling around fighters, rivalries, and championships to deepen fan engagement. Under new CEO John Martin and an expanded executive team, PFL intends to refine its product format and introduce a transparent rankings system. Looking ahead to 2026, the organization has outlined plans to stage 24 live events across international markets such as Dubai and Madrid while also increasing its presence in the United States. These initiatives are designed to elevate competition quality and bolster the league’s global footprint. Backed by investors with expertise in sports, media, and live events, PFL is positioning itself for long-term growth with a strengthened balance sheet and greater operational flexibility.

Participated · Debt Financing · Mar 2017

SoundCloud is a creator-led music streaming platform often described as the “YouTube of audio,” hosting over 200 million tracks from roughly 25 million creators with listeners in 190 countries. The company emphasizes tools and features that deepen connections between creators and listeners to fuel discovery and career growth. It maintains an ad partnership with Pandora (owned by SiriusXM), which resells SoundCloud’s inventory on its programmatic platform. SoundCloud reached a forward revenue run-rate of $200 million in Q4 2019 and had previously raised $404 million before this round. The new funding is intended for product development and launching new services to accelerate its roadmap. Founded in Berlin in 2007, SoundCloud has undergone restructurings and leadership changes but continues to expand its creator and listener base. SoundCloud operates a streaming service built around user-uploaded tracks, remixes, and DJ sets, with a catalog the company says exceeds 170 million tracks. The company is positioning itself as an "anti-Spotify," emphasizing a $5 tier of ad-free access to independent music, legally grey remixes and DJ sets, and new commerce tools to help artists earn beyond royalties. After laying off 40% of its staff and securing $169 million in emergency funding, SoundCloud has runway to execute product and positioning changes. Its first product push is a home-screen redesign that prioritizes curated and personalized discovery over a social feed. The refreshed home highlights featured playlists (e.g., Hip Hop Supreme, In The Mix), a Discover-Weekly-style personalized list called The Upload, algorithmic recommendations like More Of What You Like and Artists You Should Know, plus charts and editorial collections such as New & Hot, Top 50, Fresh Pressed, SoundCloud Next Wave, and Playback. CEO Kerry Trainor frames the change as a way to "elevate and celebrate the incredible talent" on the platform and make SoundCloud more accessible to new users while improving discovery for longtime listeners. Soundcloud is a platform where creators post and share music and other audio, hosting around 150 million tracks and reaching approximately 175 million listeners across free and paid tiers. The company is unprofitable; its February report covering fiscal 2015 showed losses of €51.22 million on revenues of €21.1 million. A filing and company statements project revenue rising to €52.75 million this year, and Soundcloud said it expects 2.5x year-over-year growth in 2017. The annual report noted theoretical runway until December 2017 but warned that risks could cause the company to run out of cash earlier. The company plans to use new financing to build more technology, hire personnel and build a financially sustainable platform. Soundcloud was founded by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss out of Berlin, has offices in New York, and its business is registered in the UK. SoundCloud is an audio streaming platform used by many emerging artists to self-promote. Its core product includes on-demand audio streaming and a recently launched $9.99 monthly subscription, SoundCloud Go, which the company is rolling out globally. The company has been signing licensing deals with music labels to support the subscription offering and to drum up interest. Despite its popularity, SoundCloud has struggled to convert that attention into sustainable revenue and earlier said it needed a cash infusion to stay alive. Twitter’s venture arm made a $70 million investment in SoundCloud at a $700 million valuation, reuniting the two firms roughly two years after a botched buyout attempt. SoundCloud said the investment will enable it to remain focused on building value for creators and listeners and to continue the global rollout of company initiatives. SoundCloud is a music streaming platform and community known for remixes and yet-unheard artists. The company has roughly 150 million registered users and a growing younger audience, according to Bloomberg and comScore. In November it launched a dedicated app for creators and has recently debuted an ad-free subscription service to pursue monetization. SoundCloud has not disclosed revenue since 2013, when it reported $14M in revenue and a $29M loss. To support its growth, the company secured a flexible credit line with Tennenbaum Capital Partners early in 2015. Competition from Apple, Google, Amazon, Pandora and Spotify is intense, but SoundCloud positions itself as a differentiated product in the streaming ecosystem.

Participated · Equity · Mar 2017

Regent Education provides automated financial aid management and enrollment optimization solutions for schools via a software-as-a-service model that integrates with institutions' existing systems. Its flagship product, Regent 8, automates financial aid management across term-based, non-term, self-paced, and competency-based education. The company also offers a variety of other solutions to help institutions attract students and manage onboarding and administration more efficiently. Led by CEO Jim Hermens and based in Frederick, Md., Regent serves educational institutions and integrates with their student management systems. Regent completed an $8.5M funding round and intends to use the proceeds to accelerate product development across its suite of financial aid automation products, strengthen implementation services, and invest in innovation and growth. Regent Education provides a software-as-a-service financial aid management system called Regent 8 and a variety of other solutions to help colleges attract, onboard and administer students more efficiently. The platform integrates with a variety of other systems that institutions use to manage their operations. The company is led by CEO Randy Jones and was founded in 2006. Regent announced it closed funding to accelerate its growth. The funding package totaled $9M and combines equity and debt financing. No revenue or user metrics were disclosed in the article. Regent Education provides software to institutions of higher education to streamline the administration of student financial aid. The company offers tools for managing financial aid workflows and related administration tasks. It plans to use its new funding to drive market penetration and continue product development. Regent has drawn board representation from lead and prior investors, reflecting ongoing investor engagement. The article reports a recent infusion of capital but does not disclose operating metrics such as revenue or user counts. Regent’s headquarters are in Frederick, Maryland.

Led · Debt Financing · Jan 2016

Green Charge Networks offers the Power Efficiency Agreement, a no-cost, performance-based financing model for behind-the-meter energy storage and software that time-shifts power use and optimizes EV charging, solar and efficiency measures. Its offering includes equipment, construction, operations and maintenance for installations. The company reports more than 31.3 megawatt hours of energy storage projects in operation or under construction across school districts, retail, government and utility customers. School district customers alone expect to save more than $36 million using energy storage without upfront or ongoing payments. Green Charge positions its systems as a way to lower utility bills, support renewable generation and promote grid stability. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., with offices in NYC and San Diego, the company is leveraging financing to expand its project portfolio. Green Charge Networks sells modular energy storage devices paired with predictive energy-management software that smooths electricity usage to reduce demand charges for businesses. The systems use thousands of Samsung lithium-ion cells and are rated for indoor and outdoor use; a single module stores 30 kilowatts and typical installations are under half a megawatt. The company has deployed pilot projects with ConEdison and rollouts on grids operated by Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and Silicon Valley Power. Green Charge emphasizes software-driven optimization to shrink required battery size and maximize economic benefit. It raised $56 million in outside financing to scale customer deployments and financing offerings that lower upfront costs for customers.

Led · Debt Financing · Oct 2015

Sonian provides cloud-based archiving that stores, secures and enables fast search and retrieval of business data across the world’s five largest public clouds. Its platform is used by more than 20,000 customers in 40 countries and manages over 20 billion objects, with about 17 million new documents uploaded daily. The company says customers rely on its solution to retain and protect business email and other valuable data. Sonian has grown quickly, adding more than 2,500 customers in the past year and 13 employees over the same period, and recently appointed Tim McKinnon as CEO. The business reported a record quarter in sales and profitability. Sonian plans to continue investing in new technologies and products to meet rising demand for line-of-business big data visibility. Sonian offers a secure, scalable cloud-powered information archiving platform designed to address discovery, regulatory compliance, and IT cost reduction. The company archives email and other human-generated data with rapid search capabilities and claims deployment in minutes with no hardware or software. Sonian reports more than 14,000 customers across 40 countries and archives over eight billion objects, with datasets growing an average of 300 gigabytes per day. Recent product activity includes the release of Central Archive for IBM Domino users and expansion of its global channel network through major MSP additions. Sonian has received recognition including placement in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving and a Top 100 Cloud Solution Providers nod from Talkin' Cloud. The company plans to unveil its next-generation DiscoverStor platform in Q1, extending support to new file types and adding advanced analytics to broaden appeal to global enterprise customers. Sonian provides cloud-based archiving and search services for enterprises, including scalable storage management, regulatory compliance, and eDiscovery. The company serves about 9,000 businesses and says its customer base doubled in each of the past two years, reporting 'record' growth over the past four quarters. Key verticals include financial services and healthcare. Sonian runs part of its business on Amazon Web Services and has partnerships with Tech Data Corporation and ISI; it also acquired Webroot's Email archiving business in January. The company plans to use new funding to expand customer relationships, build out sales and marketing teams, and develop new features for its core archiving products. The article cites industry data projecting the email archiving market will be worth $2.2 billion by 2014, with cloud-based archiving services accounting for roughly half. Sonian provides a cloud-powered information archiving platform compatible with many email, instant messaging, and social media systems. The platform is positioned to help organizations meet eDiscovery requirements, achieve regulatory compliance, and lower IT costs. Sonian says more than 5,000 customers use its cloud-based archiving solutions. The company plans to use the new funding for continued research and development of its archiving platform and for business expansion. Sonian recently appointed Jeff Dickerson as president and CEO. To date the company has raised $14.6 million in venture capital.