Led · Seed · Jul 2020

Senso has built a cloud-based, AI-powered platform that anonymously analyzes first- and third-party data to generate predictive insights about consumers, enabling financial institutions to anticipate behavior and improve retention. The startup currently focuses on the mortgage market and positions its product to help banks allocate marketing budgets, manage inbound channel capacity, and proactively service customers. Senso was founded in 2017 and maintains research and development offices in Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo while expanding its sales presence in the U.S. The company has a team of 25 and plans to more than double its employee base across Canada and the U.S. over the next year and a half. Management says COVID accelerated demand for its product in the U.S., and the company is using new funding to accelerate that expansion and product efforts. Senso.ai develops vertical-specific data pipelines and cloud-based predictive AI products for the Canadian financial services sector, generating continuously improving insights about consumer portfolios. Its offerings include a predictive credit portfolio monitoring solution designed to simplify embedding operational intelligence into large institutions' workflows. Since its founding in 2017 the company has graduated NextAI (inaugural cohort) and Techstars, and participated in TribalScale’s Venture Studios program. Senso.ai has grown a customer and partner base that includes the Royal Bank of Canada. The company recently closed a CA$1.5M seed financing to support growth. Management says the funding will be used to accelerate product development and expand into the U.S. market.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2019

GameClub curates a subscription library of premium App Store games, offering access to over 100 titles (around half available at launch) for $4.99 per month with a 30-day free trial. The service focuses on high-quality, previously released games that run without ads or in-app purchases and often includes titles that made Apple’s editorial lists. GameClub works with indie developers to relaunch older games—updating them to 64-bit, Retina assets and modern screen sizes—while using original code and design. At launch the library spans genres including Action, Puzzle, Adventure, RPG, Strategy and more, and the combined catalog has over 100 million collective downloads; additional titles will roll out weekly. Users download a central GameClub app that serves as the hub for browsing titles and editorial content; the company is not a cloud-gaming platform. Founded in 2018, the team includes industry veterans and the company says it plans to expand to Google Play, then PC and console, and to produce original content longer term; it is currently backed by $4.6M in funding. GameClub develops premium mobile game experiences, updating classic and indie titles for modern smartphones and tablets. The company offers a growing collection of high-quality games free of intrusive ads and microtransactions. Titles are designed for download to mobile devices and can be played anywhere with or without an internet connection. GameClub is currently live in soft launch on iOS smartphones and tablets in select test markets. Led by CEO and co-founder Dan Sherman, the company intends to use new funding to continue developing its games with a target to launch them in 2019. Its catalog includes Super Crate Box, Hook Champ, Hackycat, Gasketball, Legendary Wars, Incoboto, Sword of Fargoal, Space Miner, and Chopper 2.

Participated · Equity · Sep 2019

Starform is a Seattle-based game studio founded by former King and Z2Live leaders that builds online games across platforms. The team currently has a game in closed beta and hopes to launch an open beta later this year. The studio emphasizes rapid prototyping and close collaboration with players to create evergreen, scalable gameplay. Starform has a team of 11 people and has recently hired industry veterans in UX, combat design, engineering, and player marketing. The company raised $5 million to build and market its upcoming game, begin additional projects, and scale the team. It previously raised $1.5 million in fall 2019 and highlights culture and equity ownership as advantages in a competitive hiring market. Starform was founded by former Z2Live and King leaders (including CEO Lou Fasulo) who started the studio in early 2018. The company has built a platform intended to shorten the time from idea to test for online features and rapid prototyping. Its product focus is on multiplayer experiences that let players play together, meet new people and form communities across native platform controls. Starform intends to ship games across multiple platforms with an emphasis on authentic native controls for each platform and a strong opportunity in mobile. The team has six employees and is leveraging learnings from Z2Live, which launched four top-25 grossing mobile games that generated over $200 million globally and was acquired by King in 2015. Starform raised $1.25 million from a mix of institutional backers and angel investors to fund its launch and early development.

Participated · Seed · May 2019

Careerlist is a recruiting technology company founded in 2018 by Michael Scissons that combines recruiters with technology talent. The company operates in New York and Toronto and serves corporate customers including WeWork, Yext, AB InBev and more than 100 others. Careerlist matches recruiters with tech candidates to support employer hiring needs. In May 2019 it closed a $3.7M seed funding round. The company said it will use the funds to accelerate the attraction of recruiters, talent and employers and to advance technology investments. The capital is intended to support growth of its recruiting technology and customer outreach.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2019

Lucid Sight is an independent game studio and developer of Colyseus Arena, a fully managed cloud-hosted multiplayer service that handles server management, infrastructure, and scaling for games. The company acquired Colyseus, an open-source Node.js multiplayer framework, earlier this year and keeps the framework open-source while building a paid managed service. Colyseus Arena offers a free indie/dev tier, global availability across seven data centers, auto-scaling, enterprise load balancing, DDoS protection, and DevOps-as-a-service. Lucid Sight says hundreds of customers have signed up for Early Access and that customers’ games support millions of daily active users. The Colyseus open-source framework has had over 300,000 downloads since creation (about 10,000 downloads per month) and Lucid Sight reports over 5,000 projects started each month with 3,000 developers active in social channels. The company is based in Los Angeles and was founded in 2015. Lucid Sight develops blockchain-based games that emphasize digital ownership, including MLB Champions and Crypto Space Commander (CSC). The company plans to expand those titles to traditional gaming platforms — mobile, PC, and console — and expects a PC early access release of CSC on Steam in 2019. It is building Scarcity Engine, a developer tool that powers MLB Champions and CSC and is intended to bridge blockchain and traditional gaming platforms; Scarcity Engine 1.0 will launch later this year with select third-party developers. MLB Champions is an officially licensed MLB Advanced Media and MLBPA product, and CSC is described as a sandbox MMO with a real-time, player-controlled economy. Lucid Sight previously focused on an ad-supported VR game development platform but pivoted away from that business. The company has strategic partnerships to expand into Asia, including a deal with Animoca Brands. Financially, Lucid Sight has raised $11 million to date, including the new $6 million financing. Lucid Sight is an LA-based VR game studio that builds immersive titles and a VR Ad SDK to help developers monetize with in-app, immersive ads. The studio currently has three titles—Poly Runner VR, Gumi No Yume, and Space Bit Attack—available across major headsets and plans to expand to 20 free, ad-supported titles by year-end. Coinciding with its recent fundraise, Lucid Sight released a VR Ad SDK and says it will use the new capital to build out its content library, broaden presence across headsets, and showcase the ad platform. Financially, the company closed a $3.5M Series A that brings total funding to $4M. The founders, Randy Saaf and Octavio Herrera, previously built Jirbo into AdColony and later sold it to Opera, providing the team with prior ad-network and mobile experience. Early operating metrics cited include over 20% of users watching the full four-minute sponsored ad in PolyRunner VR (with an opt-out after 10 seconds) and the studio reporting its games are on a "high double-digit percentage" of Gear VR devices while Oculus said Gear VR surpassed 1 million users.