• Lifefactory

  Participated · Series C · Aug 2015

  Lifefactory is a housewares company led by CEO Roy Mabrey that makes reusable glass water bottles, baby bottles and food storage solutions. Its products are manufactured in the U.S. and E.U. The company's products are available in over 3,000 premium retail locations and in more than 20 countries. Retail partners include Amazon.com, Bed Bath & Beyond and Whole Foods Market. Lifefactory plans to use new capital to expand the team, accelerate product development and build the brand. The company recently closed a $5M Series C growth equity financing to support those plans. Lifefactory produces BPA-free glass baby and adult beverage bottles with patent-pending silicone sleeves and silicone teethers; its products are marketed as free of toxins. The company is based in Sausalito, California. Lifefactory closed a $1.65M Series A funding round. The round was led by Greenhouse Capital Partners and Big Sky Partners. In conjunction with the funding, Peter D. Henig of Greenhouse Capital Partners and Katie Schwab of Big Sky Partners joined Lifefactory’s board of directors. Lifefactory’s products are sold by retailers nationwide and across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, including Whole Foods, Nordstrom and BabyGap. Lifefactory produces green consumer products for infants, focusing primarily on environmentally-safe baby bottles. The company, formerly known as Babylife, is based in Sausalito, California. Its products are sold through about 500 retail stores and online vendors across the U.S., Canada and Europe, including Nordstrom, Gap and Amazon. Lifefactory raised external seed capital after previously relying on contributions from family and friends. The business appears distribution-focused today, with retail partnerships forming a key channel. No revenue or user metrics were disclosed in the article.

• InsideView

  Participated · Equity · Jul 2015

  InsideView offers a big data market intelligence platform that triangulates company and contact data, social and news insights, and business connections for sales and marketing systems. Its products include APIs, InsideView for Marketing, and InsideView for Sales, with an added mid-priced edition called InsideView Essential. The company serves more than 20,000 companies and reports its platform data grew 3x since the beginning of 2015. InsideView says its APIs have grown 500% quarter-to-quarter in paid transactions since launching in Q3 2014, and its marketing products saw 138% revenue growth in the first half of 2015 versus the same period in 2014. Contact data is claimed to be up to 20% more accurate than competing providers, and European data expanded by 250%. The company plans to continue investing in three product areas: marketing products, APIs, and its big data platform. InsideView operates a platform that aggregates roughly 30,000 sources (including Twitter, Facebook, Reuters, and SEC filings) and feeds that intelligence into customers' CRM installations via APIs. Its products for marketing and sales fill in contact details, augment lead profiles, and present insights to salespeople within the CRM. The service maps to the data models of major CRM providers such as Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce.com, and Sugar CRM. InsideView's processing stack uses natural language processing alongside technologies like Hadoop and relational databases. The company competes with legacy data vendors such as Harte-Hanks and with newer data-driven providers that integrate deeply into business platforms. The platform emphasizes speed and lead routing velocity as key value drivers for sales outcomes. InsideView's flagship product, SalesView, crawls more than 20,000 websites, social networks and databases—including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Hoovers, Reuters and SEC filings—to deliver sales intelligence to enterprises. SalesView is available as a standalone web application and integrates with CRM vendors such as SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salesforce.com. The service reports over 75,000 users and is used by more than 1,000 companies, including Ariba, Centive, Cisco/WebEx, JobScience and SuccessFactors. InsideView reported 130% revenue growth in 2010 and CEO Umberto Milletti projected sales would increase by 100% in 2011. The company plans to use new funding to expand distribution partnerships and to invest in market education to train salespeople to use its applications. Milletti has stated the company intends to remain an across-platform independent business despite potential acquisition interest; competitors include Hoovers and Genius. InsideView's flagship product, SalesView, crawls more than 20,000 websites, social networks and databases—including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Hoovers, Reuters and SEC filings—to deliver sales intelligence. SalesView is available as a stand-alone web application and integrates with CRM vendors such as SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and SalesForce.com, and is ranked among the most popular free apps on Salesforce's AppExchange. The service has over 10,000 users and more than 1,700 companies accessing its feed, including Ariba, Centive, Cisco/WebEx, JobScience and SuccessFactors. InsideView raised $11.5 million in a Series B financing. The company said the new financing will be used for new customer acquisition and further product development. Competitors mentioned in the article include Hoovers and Genius.

No current team members are available.