Led · Equity · Oct 2019

Observa creates real-time, crowd-sourced retail audits that show brands and retailers how products are being displayed in physical stores and correlates that information with sales. The platform delivers source-of-truth analytics intended to measure the real-time sales impact of in-store promotion and merchandising. Customers report an average sales increase of 23% after using the platform. Revenue for the five-year-old company grew four-fold last year, and the business has 20 employees. Observa has raised more than $2 million to date and recently closed a $725,000 financing round. CTO and co-founder Erik Chelstad previously worked as an engineer for investor Paul Mikesell at Isilon. Observa offers an AI-powered platform that produces real-time, crowd-sourced retail audits by prompting app users to photograph product displays and analyzing those images to determine placements and correlate them with sales. The company also provides a platform for field representatives to check on brands and products. Observa charges customers roughly $8–$12 per surveyed location and pays contributors a few dollars per gig; its revenue is up five-fold year-over-year. New technology and sales services recently came online that allow the startup to serve brands with global reach, and the team says it is ready to take its product and services to the next level. Observa competes with Trax Retail and emphasizes flexibility, integrating inputs from phones, robots, drones, and shelf cameras and working with BI tools like Microsoft and Salesforce. Co-founders Hugh Holman (CEO) and Erik Chelstad (CTO) lead the company and cite proof-of-concept pilots and quick deployments as key early moves.

Participated · Convertible Note · Feb 2016

Poached Jobs operates a job board and hiring platform focused on the food-and-drink industry, headquartered in Portland, Ore. Its hiring platform, BackOffice, houses employers' hiring files and communications and offers a "flip book" view to sort, rate, annotate, and file resumes. The company charges $30 per job posting (with volume discounts) and keeps posted resumes attached for two years. Poached targets both restaurant employers and job seekers, offering free applicant access and tools to track applications and starred jobs. It currently operates in 12 markets (including Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, New York, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Denver, San Francisco, L.A., Portland, and Seattle), serves about 10,000 restaurant customers, and reports roughly 300,000 unique monthly visitors. Poached says it has facilitated about 1 million resumes submitted in response to 60,000 jobs and plans to use new funding to expand into many smaller U.S. cities.