Led · Equity · Sep 2012

TreeRing offers an online social yearbook platform that lets users build yearbooks, print them on demand, and create personalized pages for each student. Launched in 2010 by CEO Aaron Greco and based in San Mateo, CA, the company expanded its platform to let students and parents sign yearbooks, share memories, and send graphic-based messages called “book bling.” TreeRing serves more than 1,200 schools across 49 states and Canada, has printed over 125,000 yearbooks, and users have shared more than 3.3 million photos. The company closed a $3.6m funding round and intends to use the proceeds to expand its team and scale marketing across the country. The product mix is focused on web-based creation, social sharing, and on-demand printing for K–12 yearbooks.

Participated · Equity · Aug 2007

Inventure Renewables is a Tuscaloosa, Alabama-based renewable process technology developer led by CEO Mark Tegen and located at the Alabama Innovation and Mentoring of Entrepreneur Center at The University of Alabama. The company develops patented and patent-pending chemical catalytic process technology to produce third-generation green chemicals, synthetic jet fuel, biodiesel, and green gasoline from biomass. It processes feedstocks such as palm waste, algae, corn stover and cobs, cane bagasse, switch grass, wood fiber, rice husk and rice straw to generate fuels, fuel intermediates, chemicals and chemical intermediates. Inventure has closed a $5m financing with an option to increase funding in a second tranche to a total of $12m. The round was led by Wilmar International, which has taken an equity stake in both companies, with participation from CMEA Capital and several other investors. The company intends to use a portion of the funds to build and operate a pilot plant to convert palm fiber waste and sugar cane bagasse into mixed sugars for fermentation into ethanol, butanol, and carbon-neutral building blocks for industrial chemicals. The pilot plant will be operated by its sister company, Inventure International (Pte) Limited, incorporated in Singapore. Inventure Chemical processes algae so it can be converted into biofuel. The company operates a test production site and plans to use new funding to expand that facility. It is developing processes to convert algae into jet fuel. The company raised $2 million in a first round of funding and said the capital will be used to expand the test site and further develop its algae-to-jet-fuel processes. Inventure Chemical is based in Gig Harbor, Washington, and disclosed the raise in a statement on its Flash-based website. VentureWire later listed the investors as Cedar Grove Investments, Brighton Jones Wealth Management and undisclosed angel investors.