Participated · Series B · Aug 2024

Outpace Bio develops engineered T cell therapies using AI-powered protein design to program immune cells for improved function inside patients with solid tumors. The company is advancing an internal pipeline of programmed T cell product candidates, led by CEO and co-founder Marc Lajoie, PhD. Its lead program, OPB-101, is a mesothelin-specific CAR T cell enhanced by Outpace’s OUTSMART™, OUTLAST™, OUTSPACER™, and OUTSAFE™ technologies. OPB-101 is on track for IND clearance and first dosing in 2025 for patients with advanced platinum-resistant epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer. Proceeds from the recent financing will be used to advance multiple candidates to early clinical proof-of-concept and to expand the company’s plug-and-play technology platform for future programs. The company is based in Seattle, WA. Outpace Bio is developing a platform to create next-generation smart cell therapies by applying protein design and synthetic biology. The company combines the design of improved biological functions with cellular control modalities to harness cellular biology's complexity and improve safety and efficacy of cell and gene therapies. Founded by Lyell co-founders Marc Lajoie and Scott Boyken and a scientific team spun out of Lyell Immunopharma, the team has spent the past two years addressing challenges facing anticancer T cell therapies. Outpace is expanding beyond T cells to bring its technology across the broader cell and gene therapy field. The company closed a $30m Series A financing and intends to use the funds to demonstrate proof of principle for its platform. It also entered a collaboration with Lyell Immunopharma for joint research and potential development and commercialization of an immune cell therapy for cancer.

Led · Series B · Jul 2021

Shape Therapeutics (ShapeTX) develops a suite of RNA technologies and delivery and manufacturing solutions to enable gene therapy. Its platform includes RNAskip, RNAfix and RNAswap payload technologies, the tissue‑specific AAVid delivery technology, and SquareBio manufacturing based on human stable cell lines, all driven by the ShapeTX AI engine. The company reported discovery of next‑generation AAVs that are central nervous system‑ or muscle‑specific in non‑human primates and a scalable cell‑line AAV production approach that outperforms transient methods. ShapeTX announced a $112 million Series B to continue building its portfolio into broad industry verticals and to accelerate development of treatment approaches. The company plans to prioritize key partnership opportunities to shorten development timelines and facilitate industry adoption. Target therapeutic areas mentioned include Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, alpha‑1 antitrypsin deficiency, and Rett syndrome. Shape Therapeutics is a development-stage biotechnology company building RNA and protein targeting platforms aimed at curing genetic and other human diseases. Its proprietary RNAfix™ technology enables direct in vivo RNA targeting and modification by recruiting native ADARs, using suppressor tRNAs, engineered AAVs, and short guide RNAs. The platform is designed to engage natural human cellular machinery to limit immunogenicity and avoid permanent DNA off-target edits associated with some CRISPR approaches. Founders include Prashant Mali, Francois Vigneault, and John Suliman; Francois Vigneault serves as President and CEO. The team has demonstrated in vivo proof-of-concept data in multiple rare disease mouse models, including work in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. ShapeTx is headquartered in Seattle with a satellite site opening in Cambridge and plans to use new capital to expand its IP portfolio, recruit scientific talent, and advance its platforms toward the clinic.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2021

Candidly, previously known as FutureFuel, provides AI-driven student debt and savings optimization products that employers, financial institutions, retirement and wealth management firms can embed into benefits engines. Its product set includes gamified repayment, auto-payment tools, public service loan forgiveness tools and a Federal Forgiveness Finder to help access federal relief programs. The company partners with distribution and benefits platforms such as Guild, Empower, Lincoln Financial Group, Vanguard, UBS and Fiserv and says it can serve over 35 million Americans. In 2022 it helped a customer, American Eagle Outfitters, enable employees to pay down more than $100,000 in student loan debt. Candidly reports strong operating momentum: 10x revenue growth and a 3,600% increase in payments flowing through its platform year-over-year, and borrowers using its tools sent an average of $45 in extra payments per month. The company is building employer-facing capabilities to operationalize provisions of SECURE Act 2.0, including tools to let employers match student loan payments, emergency savings and tax-advantaged retirement contributions. FutureFuel.io provides a Student Debt FinHealth platform that automates loan management, optimizes federal repayment-plan enrollment, and surfaces spare-change and cashback opportunities to accelerate student-loan payoff. The product offers integrated and non-integrated delivery options (API + widget, SSO, cobranded configurations) and four solution categories: Benefit, Change, Crush, and Learn. It partners with employers and financial-services firms to deliver student-debt benefits and is used by tens of thousands of employers, corporate customers, and millions of users while addressing America’s roughly 45 million borrowers. The company reports its average user finishes repaying loans about half a decade faster and saves between $15,000 and $40,000 on repayment. FutureFuel.io emphasizes scalability, security, and a flexible integration stack to expand adoption across employers, recordkeepers, and financial-services partners. The platform already counts UBS, Fiserv, and Salesforce among commercial partners and customers, using the product as an employee benefit. FutureFuel.io, founded by Laurel Taylor, provides a SaaS Student Debt FinHealth platform that uses technology, partnerships, and machine learning to help employers address employee student debt. The platform is modular, consisting of six offerings: Repayment, Round Up, Refinancing Marketplace, Roll Up, Recalibrate, and Read. Repayment enables employer contributions to loans; Round Up directs spare change to users' highest-interest loans; Refinancing Marketplace curates competing lenders; Roll Up aggregates multiple loans for easier management; Recalibrate projects total debt, dollars, and days saved; Read delivers student-loan financial literacy content. The company reports the platform can shorten users' debt load by an average of three to five years. FutureFuel has generated initial traction with customers ranging from small and medium businesses to Fortune 500 employers and channel partners including Colonial Life, Student Choice Credit Union, and Ultimate Software. Financially, the company recently closed an $11.2M Series A, bringing total funding to $15.7M.

Led · Seed · Jun 2016

Weave Visual Analytics develops interactive data visualization and analysis software, building on more than 20 years of research from UMass Lowell's Institute for Visualization and Perception Research. Its flagship product, Weave 2 (recently announced as commercially supported Weave 2.1), is an HTML5-based open-source platform for interactive visualization. The company offers professional support, training, customization and consulting around the product. Weave reports more than 250,000 users worldwide for its open-source offering. The seed financing will support commercial development and the product launch of the first commercially supported version of Weave. The company plans to continue expanding the offering and intends to raise additional equity financing from institutional venture capital firms.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2014

ezCater offers a purpose-built platform for businesses to centralize and manage their food spend in a single, customizable solution. The service connects companies to a network of 82,000 restaurants across the U.S. for needs ranging from daily employee meals to sales meetings. Customers include JLL, RingCentral, and The San Francisco 49ers. Led by co-founder and CEO Stefania Mallett, the company intends to use new funding to expand operations and broaden its business reach. The Series D-2 round brought total funding to $425M and a post-money valuation of $1.6 billion. ezCater operates an online marketplace for business catering, partnering with 60,500 restaurants and caterers to fulfill corporate orders without owning food or making deliveries. Founded in 2007 by Stefania Mallett and Briscoe Rodgers, the platform has grown roughly 100% annually for the past eight years. The company has raised more than $300 million in equity to date but is not yet profitable. Management said it held "quite a lot of money in the bank" from the prior round and raised again to hedge against a potential funding winter. EzCater recently acquired Monkey Group to bolster its catering management software. The company plans to use new capital to accelerate international expansion, pursue further M&A, and may consider an IPO or other strategic outcomes. ezCater operates a nationwide marketplace for business catering, offering online ordering, on-time ratings and reviews, and customer service to connect businesspeople with reliable local caterers. Its platform is used by organizations of all sizes, including AstraZeneca, Redfin, Tesla, and 90% of the Fortune 500. More than 60,000 restaurants and caterers partner with ezCater, from local independents to chains such as California Pizza Kitchen, Firehouse Subs, and P.F. Chang’s. The company has launched a catering product suite for restaurants — ezOrdering, ezManage, and ezDispatch — to enable online orders, manage catering operations, and connect to vetted delivery companies. Founded in 2007, ezCater says it has doubled revenue at least annually for six years and will use new funding to deepen products and continue rapid expansion. The company plans to extend market leadership and pursue international expansion. ezCater is the only nationwide marketplace for business catering, operating an online platform that connects businesspeople to local caterers and restaurants for meetings and events. Its platform features online ordering, on-time ratings and reviews, and award‑winning, five‑star customer service. Founded in 2007 and based in Boston, ezCater now lists nearly 50,000 restaurants and caterers in its marketplace and says it has helped provide food for more than 16 million businesspeople. The company has doubled headcount to 175 employees in the past 18 months and positions itself as a market leader in a U.S. business‑catering market worth $21 billion. Financially, ezCater has raised $35M in this round, bringing total capital raised to $70M. It intends to use the funding to accelerate product development, expand customer support, and bolster sales and marketing to continue growing its network. ezCater operates an online marketplace that lets business customers find and order catering with on-time delivery ratings, reviews, and 5-star customer service. The platform connects more than 43,000 caterer and restaurant partners and surfaces nearly 300,000 reviews and on-time delivery ratings to guide buyers. Customers range from Fortune 500 companies to local startups across industries such as construction, finance, and pharmaceuticals. ezCater offers enterprise features including centralized payment, visibility and controls, and integrations with expense reporting to help finance and procurement teams manage catering spend. The company emphasizes guaranteed reliability, nationwide coverage, and responsive customer support as core differentiators. With new funding, ezCater plans to scale operations and accelerate development of additional features and functionality for its marketplace.