The Venture Codex

Participated · Seed · Jan 2022

CYSEC develops confidential computing software, notably ARCA Trusted OS, an operating system that protects sensitive data at runtime. The company serves sectors including financial services, critical infrastructure (IoT) and the space industry. It positions its products for NewSpace use cases and has experience with cloud and edge computing on board satellites. CYSEC has entered partnerships with key industry actors and has received European Space Agency support since 2020 for strategic projects. An early version of its edge computing was embedded on a SpaceX rocket in January 2022 for in-space testing. The company recently raised additional funding to accelerate deployment in the space sector and to expand sales and engineering headcount. CYSEC develops ARCA, a hardware-based trusted execution environment (TEE) that secures sensitive data and workloads with full-stack protection from hardware to kernel to application. ARCA is designed to protect data on premise, in the cloud and at the edge. The company is focusing on Digital Assets/DeFi and Edge Computing — including Space — where protection of data in use is increasingly demanded. CYSEC closed a CHF4 million seed extension that brought total company funding to CHF7 million. The additional financing is intended to support the company’s growth in its target European markets. CYSEC also plans to open new offices in Paris in 2022 and advance collaboration with the European Space Agency to reinforce its presence in Europe. CYSEC has developed ARCA, a versatile and highly scalable security solution that stores sensitive data and runs critical software in a trusted environment to simplify deployment of secure applications. ARCA integrates certified security hardware and provides key management, encryption/decryption, digital signatures and strong authentication using modern cryptographic algorithms. The product is designed to be easy to install, cost-effective and flexible to adapt to changing security and business requirements. CYSEC has formed industry partnerships with METACO, Astrocast, Geosatis and Build38 and won a contract with the European Space Agency to protect ship-tracking communications. The company holds registered patents and participates in academic and industrial programs including Innosuisse, EUREKA/EUROSTARS and H2020, and was selected for the ESA BIC incubation programme; it has also won IMD and ITU innovation awards. Management is led by Patrick Trinkler (CEO), Yacine Felk (COO) and Alexandre Karlov (CTO); the company recently received new financing in the form of a FIT loan to support growth.

Participated · Series A · Jan 2020

Wyden builds institutional infrastructure that covers the full digital asset trade lifecycle, supporting front-, middle- and back-office functions and full trade lifecycle automation. The platform integrates with custody, core banking and portfolio management systems. Current clients include banks and brokers such as Banque Delubac, Smartbroker+, Baader Bank, Luzerner Kantonalbank and InCore Bank, and the company is in active discussions with potential Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks and brokers pursuing CASP licenses. Wyden recently launched Wyden Infinity, a cloud-native flagship product to support full automation of the digital asset trade lifecycle. The company plans to expand beyond Europe into regulated markets including the EU, Switzerland, Turkey, the UAE, Singapore, Hong Kong and Brazil. Wyden aims to onboard up to 20 additional banks, brokers and exchanges in 2025 and grow its team to about 100 professionals to accelerate product development and global sales. AlgoTrader offers a modular digital asset trading platform that orchestrates the entire trade lifecycle, from pre-trade risk checks and order generation to automated settlement and custody reconciliation. Its platform supports direct market access, custody and core banking integration, and full trade lifecycle automation, targeting banks, prime brokers, OTC desks, market makers and crypto funds. The company emphasizes a modular approach that differentiates it from pure OEMS providers. AlgoTrader reported a record growth in 2021, including an ARR increase of 200% in Q4 alone. The firm has raised $11.1 million in total to date and will use new capital to further roll out its platform globally and to drive platform and team development. Management has stated the round also positions the company to pursue an upcoming Series B. AlgoTrader operates two business lines serving traditional finance and crypto finance through a single, fully integrated algorithmic platform. The platform handles the buying and selling of both traditional and digital assets and allows users to fully automate trading from strategy to execution. Founded in 2014 by Andy Flury, the company is Zurich-based. Leadership says AlgoTrader has built one of the world’s most powerful quantitative trading and trade execution platforms and will use new funding to develop its own technology. With the new capital the firm aims to strengthen Switzerland’s financial leadership and the domestic digital-asset ecosystem. The company expects pending Swiss legislation on crypto securities could act as a springboard for growth. AlgoTrader provides a fully integrated, event-driven algorithmic trading platform written in Java that enables buy-side and sell-side firms to develop, simulate, automate and deploy quantitative trading strategies. The platform supports any instrument type and market and was initially designed for equities, futures, forex and options. AlgoTrader now fully supports automated and algorithmic trading in cryptocurrencies. The product is available on-premise or in the cloud and is designed to give users control over their trading experience for consistent results. The company intends to use the proceeds of its recent financing to continue to expand its business reach. AlgoTrader was founded in 2014 by Andy Flury.

Led · Equity · Jan 2020

Measure Protocol offers a platform that lets businesses access customer experience data and insights into how consumers use, interact, navigate and transact with websites, services and apps. The platform asks users to perform specific tasks for brands while their activity is shared through screen-capture technology. Proprietary techniques and machine learning are used to extract behaviours and data such as e-commerce transactions, digital usage and mobile icon layouts. Its MSR app, available on iOS and Android, allows individuals to share data via tasks and earn rewards. The company intends to use the new funding to continue development of its technology and to scale up marketing and sales efforts. Measure Protocol was co-founded by Owen Hanks, Paul Neto and John Martin. Measure Protocol is an open blockchain-based protocol and marketplace that enables individuals to take ownership of their data and monetize it directly with researchers, advertisers and brands. The company’s platform collects person-based data through surveys and other data-generating tasks, and by allowing users to grant access to existing sources such as purchase, location and health data via the MSR App for iOS. Measure was founded in 2018 by media, ad tech, and market research technology veterans and is built on principles of data sovereignty, privacy, transparency and fair compensation. The startup positions blockchain as a tool to address fraud, privacy concerns, transparency and low consumer participation rates in the market research and data industries. Measure plans to use the new capital to continue creating its blockchain-powered ecosystem and to support its mission of improving data quality and consumer participation. Investors and company leadership have framed the funding as validation of the approach—Dynata emphasized member-centric transparency and security, Blockchain Valley Ventures highlighted potential KPI improvements, and CEO Owen Hanks said the investment helps advance a fair model for consumers and data buyers.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2019

Veratrak is modernizing life‑sciences supply chains by linking the backend systems used by pharmaceutical manufacturers, logistics and contract manufacturing and packaging teams. Its product connects disparate systems to prevent costly mistakes—such as misprinted labels or incorrect paperwork—and provides role-specific visibility to drive better decisions at every stage. CEO and founder Jason Lacombe created the company after many years observing how these supply chains fail in practice. Veratrak works with over 90 companies across six continents, including very large global pharmaceutical firms and their supply‑chain partners. Financially, the company announced a £5.3M seed round led by Crane Venture Partners. The team positions the product to drive efficiency and resilience in drug manufacturing and delivery, with the goal of ensuring patients receive medicines when they need them. Veratrak offers a document collaboration and workflow management platform built for the pharmaceutical industry to onboard internal and external partners to verify, authenticate, review and sign-off critical documentation across production, packaging, shipping and dispensing. The SaaS enables chronological execution of steps required to release a product to market and lets users communicate with supply-chain partners at different organisations. The platform uses blockchain technology to create an "iron-clad audit trail" of all document events and is built to be GAMP 5 compliant to meet high security and quality standards. Veratrak says this reduces the regulatory burden on customers, increases visibility for supply-chain partners and improves the ability to react to events. The company charges a monthly per-head license fee, with volume-based pricing and free guest licenses for external partners to drive network effects. Veratrak was launched in August 2018 and recently secured seed funding of £1 million.

Led · Seed · Jan 2019

Teleport Global (operating under the Teleport Media brand) builds real-time peer-to-peer CDNs that turn regular endpoints—PCs, smartphones and Internet routers—into edge nodes for video streaming delivery. Its technology enables video platforms to upscale delivery to millions of viewers and currently counts clients including Russian TV Channel 1 and Canadian castr.io. The company is developing a blockchain-powered next version that would let anyone worldwide become a paid edge node, using otherwise unused bandwidth and requiring no special equipment. Teleport Global is incorporated in Zug, Switzerland, while most of its team is based in Perm, Russia; the Zug team focuses on marketing and sales in Europa. The firm has announced plans to grow its headquarters in Zug and strengthen ties to Switzerland, with co-founder Andrei Klimenko dedicating more time to the Swiss office. Financially, Teleport Global completed a seed financing of 460,000 Swiss francs announced alongside the product and expansion plans.