Participated · Equity · Feb 2022

Ro operates a patient-centric telehealth platform offering at-home tests and care in areas including fertility, chronic conditions (cholesterol, A1C, testosterone) and weight management. The company has grown via acquisitions over the past 12 months, buying Workpath, Kit and Modern Fertility and is reported to be in talks to acquire at-home sperm storage startup Dadi. CEO Zachariah Reitano highlighted product gaps such as the lack of male factor semen analysis, limited treatment capability after testing, incomplete remote patient monitoring for weight management, and the absence of a mobile app. Ro has experienced employee churn and internal tensions as it seeks to expand beyond its initial wins. The business appears to be continuing an offensive growth strategy to close platform gaps and broaden services. Financially, the company remains a private unicorn and recently raised additional capital at an increased valuation. Ro operates a hybrid primary care model that combines telemedicine with in-home visits and a growing direct-to-consumer pharmacy to vertically integrate care delivery. The company is expanding its pharmacy footprint to enable next-day shipping nationwide and plans 10 pharmacies by the end of this year and 15 by the end of next year. Ro already offers 500 common drugs at $5 per month and intends to ramp that to 1,000 drugs by year’s end. Management says the platform will continue to invest in telemedicine, logistics and pharmacy operations, in-home care, diagnostics, and remote patient monitoring. The company positions vertical integration and technology as levers to reduce patient costs and improve proactive care. Financially, this growth effort is funded amid a recent large equity raise that adds to its cumulative capital since founding. Ro builds technology to power three digital health clinics — Roman for men’s health, Rory for women’s health, and Zero for fighting smoking cessation. The company also operates Ro Pharmacy, an online pharmacy where every generic medication is $5 per month. Ro’s nationwide network of physicians and pharmacies provides a personalized healthcare experience from online treatment to delivery of medication and ongoing care. Led by Co‑Founder & CEO Zachariah Reitano, Ro was founded in 2017 and is based in New York, NY. Ro completed a $200M Series C round led by existing investor General Catalyst. With this round, Ro has raised a total of $376M since its founding. Ro started as a cloud pharmacy and telemedicine portal focused on erectile dysfunction medications, enabling diagnoses and prescriptions via phone and text. The company has sold prescription ED drugs (e.g., Viagra and Cialis) and driven over a million patient-physician visits, calls, and messages through its platform. Ro recently launched Zero, a $129 quit-smoking kit that includes a month of prescription bupropion, nicotine gum, and an app for tracking progress. The startup says it plans to build out its own pharmacy and backend electronic medical-record infrastructure to support additional verticals, including women’s health, over the next two to three years. Less than a year after launching with $3 million in initial funding and a five-person team, Ro grew to ~70 employees and a revenue run-rate in the tens of millions, up 720% since January. The company currently charges $15 telemedicine appointments, does not accept insurance for its products, and acknowledges early margins on the Zero kit are modest.

Led · Debt Financing · Jul 2021

Outbrain operates content-recommendation widgets that display sponsored links beneath news articles on publishers such as CNN, Le Monde and The Washington Post. The company runs an open-web advertising platform that generates revenue by serving clickbait-style sponsored links to third-party websites. Outbrain has filed for an IPO and said the recent $200 million financing should be its last traditional private round ahead of going public. In its IPO filing Outbrain reported $767 million in revenue for 2020 and $228 million in revenue for Q1 2021, with net income of $4.4 million in 2020 and $10.7 million in Q1 2021. The company was previously in talks to merge with rival Taboola but that merger was canceled; Taboola went public via a SPAC. Outbrain’s leadership says it plans to continue delivering innovation to premium media partners worldwide and expand its global advertising platform as the advertising market recovers. Outbrain is an online content discovery platform that delivers personalized online, mobile and video content to audiences while enabling publishers to better understand their audiences through data. The platform serves 200 billion personalized content recommendations per month and reaches over 561 million unique visitors globally. Top-tier publications using Outbrain include CNN, ESPN, Le Monde, Fox News, The Guardian, Slate, The Telegraph, New York Post, Times of India and Sky News. The company intends to use new funding for product innovation both organically and through acquisitions. Outbrain recently acquired Los Angeles-based software company Reeve to algorithmically maximize revenue for publishers. Founded in 2006, the company is based in New York City. Outbrain operates a content-recommendation platform that places organic and paid story suggestions (including sponsored content) on publisher pages. The service is installed on more than 100,000 sites and works with a network of about 700 premium publishers, including CNN, Hearst, Rolling Stone, and Fast Company. Outbrain says it serves roughly 100 billion recommendations each month. The company monetizes by including sponsored content alongside organic recommendations. Leadership says the next year’s priorities are scaling the business, building out mobile and self-serve products, and expanding into new markets. The company recently hired its first CFO as it evaluates growth and potential public-market options. Outbrain is a content discovery platform that helps online publishers recommend additional content through a widget using contextual analysis, collaborative filtering and personalization. The system personalizes links based on cookies without tying recommendations to personally identifiable information and does not share data across publishers. It serves inbound links to a publisher's own content (unpaid) and outbound links to other sites that are paid for by Outbrain's buyers and involve revenue sharing. Outbrain's recommendations are viewed more than 3.5 billion times per month and generate over 200 million monthly clicks; mobile already accounts for about 5%–10% of its business. The company has soft-launched video recommendation technology and offers an Outbrain for Mobile widget to link to mobile-optimized content. Outbrain says it will use additional funding to invest in business development and global expansion, building on its acquisition of Surphace and offices in London, Paris and Hamburg, with further moves into Europe and Asia planned. Outbrain provides an online content-recommendation service for publishers that recommends content links to increase page views, generate revenue and enhance user experience. The core service is free for publishers and is used by outlets such as USA Today, iVillage, Boston.com, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, TheStreet, The Boston Globe and Slate. The company recently acquired Surphace Inc. (formerly Sphere) and said it will invest in advancing its recommendation technologies. Outbrain plans to use new funding to scale operations, expand business development and sales teams in the United States, and continue growth in Israel and across Europe. Founded in 2006 by Yaron Galai and Ori Lahav, Outbrain has R&D in Netanya, Israel and is New York–based. To date the company has raised $29M.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2021

Arrive Logistics operates a freight brokerage platform serving shippers and carriers with a trained workforce and a proprietary transportation management system that leverages machine learning and automation. Since its 2014 founding the company has grown headcount from ten to more than 1,000, with headquarters in Austin, Texas and an office in Chicago. Arrive reported $530 million of revenue in 2019, $810 million in 2020, and was on pace to exceed $1.2 billion in 2021. Prior capital totaling $50 million was used to develop its proprietary TMS. The company plans to use new proceeds to continue investing in its technology, create new service offerings, and expand the team. Arrive emphasizes eliminating waste in the supply chain, driving productivity, and delivering best-in-class service to shippers and carriers. Arrive Logistics is a technology-powered transportation service provider and freight brokerage that connects carriers and shippers. Founded in 2014 by Matt Pyatt and based in Austin, Texas, the company operates offices in Chicago, Chattanooga, Tenn., and Austin. Arrive employs more than 800 people. It expected revenue of $600m in 2019. Technology is central to its offering, and the company plans to accelerate investments in proprietary technology and further build its team using the new funding. Arrive Logistics is a next-generation freight broker offering brokerage and transportation management services for shippers and carriers. Co-founded in 2014 by Matt Pyatt (CEO) and Eric Dunigan (President), the company operates out of Chicago and Austin and employs more than 450 people. Arrive generated $30M in first-year sales, grew to $145M in 2017, and was on track to generate more than $330M in revenue in 2018. The company said it will use the funds to continue to expand operations. The article identifies Lead Edge Capital as the lead investor but does not disclose the financing amount or instrument.

Participated · Series B · Feb 2021

Cellarity applies single-cell technologies and proprietary deep learning models to identify cellular drivers of disease and design drugs against the cellular signature. The company links biology and chemistry with high-dimensional transcriptomic data to create medicines that target whole-cell dysfunction rather than single molecular targets. Founded by Flagship Pioneering in 2017 and based in Somerville, Mass., Cellarity has developed capabilities to unravel complex disease biology and reveal new biology for drug creation. The company reports compounds validated in vitro and in vivo, including in higher species, and has ongoing programs in metabolic disease, hematology, and immuno-oncology. Cellarity plans to use recent financing proceeds to grow its talent base, strengthen its platform, and advance its pipeline toward the clinic. To date the company has raised $274 million in total funding. Cellarity is a Cambridge, Mass.-based life sciences company founded in 2017 within Flagship Labs. It is developing a new method of drug discovery that targets the cell rather than a single molecular target. The company combines system and network biology, high-resolution data and machine learning to unlock treatments across multiple therapeutic areas. Cellarity is led by Fabrice Chouraqui, who serves as CEO of Cellarity and is a CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering. In February 2021 the company raised $123M in a Series B financing. The funds will support its platform and drug discovery efforts across its stated therapeutic focus areas.

Led · Equity · Jan 2021

Wren Therapeutics is advancing a unique, predictive chemical kinetics platform to discover small-molecule therapeutics for protein misfolding diseases. The company is progressing lead programs targeting amyloid-beta and alpha-synuclein, and reported a first clinical candidate for amyloid-beta in Q1 2021. Its pipeline has been expanded to include IAPP (diabetes), tau (Alzheimer’s and other tauopathies), and TDP-43 (motor neurone disease), and discovery work in oncology has commenced. Wren says its platform was industrialised over the past four years, building on more than a decade of prior academic research. Management and governance have been strengthened with board appointments (Andrew C. von Eschenbach and Owen Hughes) and senior hires including Alleyn Plowright as Head of Translational Science. Financially, the company has raised approximately £33 million to date, and the new financing is intended to accelerate its two lead programs toward the clinic and support its collaboration with Eisai. Wren Therapeutics is a spin‑out from the University of Cambridge and Lund University focused on drug discovery and development for protein misfolding diseases. The company advances a predictive, quantitatively driven platform built on concepts from the physical sciences and the chemical kinetics of protein misfolding. Wren is developing a broad pipeline of small‑molecule and antibody therapeutics, as well as diagnostics, spanning neurology, ophthalmology and metabolic diseases. The company is based at the University of Cambridge in the Chemistry of Health Centre and plans to open a satellite office in Boston, Massachusetts in the near term. Wren was formally founded in 2016 and has reported significant external interest across many important drug discovery targets. Financially, the company has completed an £18 million Series A financing led by The Baupost Group.