• Keen

  Participated · Series A · Jul 2014

  Keen IO operates a highly scalable cloud API that allows companies to collect, enrich, pipe, store, and analyze custom event data. The company also offers Native Analytics to white‑label real‑time analytics and custom visualizations and hosts an open‑source visualization library with over 900 forks and 8,500 stars. Keen’s platform queries trillions of events daily and has been integrated across mobile, gaming, e‑commerce, media, IoT, and retail. The company serves more than 3,000 customers, has surpassed 50,000 developers, and employs about 50 people. Keen plans to accelerate global growth and scale its footprint from the mid‑market to the enterprise, using the financing to meet rising market demand. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, Keen has raised approximately $30 million in venture capital to date. Keen IO builds a developer-focused analytics platform that lets customers gather data from any source, store it, and visualize it as they choose. The product targets companies that either can’t get specific data from existing analytics tools or prefer to write code rather than adopt opinionated solutions. The fastest-growing customer segment is Internet of Things devices, while the largest revenue source has been ad tech. CEO Kyle Wild said the company has seen 300% growth in data volume this year and 50% month-over-month growth in April. The startup plans to use new funding for marketing and continued product development, including additional open-source projects to demonstrate what can be done with the platform. Keen IO emphasizes giving customers the ability to write code so they can solve problems on their own terms. Keen IO describes itself as "the API for custom analytics," offering tools developers use to build custom analytics products via an API. The platform can gather data from any source, store it, visualize it, accept historical uploads, provide real-time access to new data, and be white‑labeled for customers. CEO Kyle Wild said the company is not trying to compete with Google Analytics and noted his prior role working with Google Analytics. Keen IO says it can scale to large amounts of data and relies in part on the open‑source Storm system for real‑time computation. The company launched a beta last year and began charging customers in April. According to Wild, Keen IO is "approaching profitability pretty rapidly." Customers come to Keen IO either instead of building their own analytics systems or when existing systems start to break. Keen provides an analytics-as-a-service API that lets developers define and send custom events, with the platform handling processing, scaling, analysis, and visualization. Developers add one-line API calls for events and receive customizable dashboards rather than fixed metrics. The founding team includes CEO Kyle Wild (a former Google Analytics employee) and cofounders Dan Kador and Ryan Spraetz, who previously worked at Salesforce.com. The company emerged from tooling Wild built at a prior Facebook-game startup and was rebuilt for broader reuse. Keen participated in TechStars and the team relocated to Austin after leaving their jobs. CEO Wild said the company deliberately raised less than it could have, and the team envisions expanding beyond mobile into devices like vending machines and cars sending data to Keen.

• Skit.ai New York

  Participated · Seed · May 2014

  SKIT! provides a smartphone and tablet app that enables users to create 20-second animated shorts—memes, remixes and skits—by combining their photographs with SKIT!'s backgrounds, props and effects and voice-recording the result. The app can be shared to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, text messaging and within the SKIT! community. It is available on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, and on Kindle tablets. The company was co-founded by Robin Johnson and Max Woon and is based in Los Angeles and Boston. SKIT! raised $500K in seed funding to support product development and growth. The funds will be used to grow and update the apps across platforms and to increase marketing and business development.

• Good&Co

  Participated · Seed · Nov 2013

  Good.co is a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a workplace psychometrics test and a professional social graph. Its core product is a personality-profile test that identifies users' professional archetypes and assesses fit with managers, teams, companies and jobs. The platform also provides a professional social graph and delivers insights to management, HR and recruiters for hiring, team development and improving employee retention. Led by CEO and co-founder Samar Birwadker, the company plans to expand features for employees, job-seekers, HR and recruiting. Good.co intends to use newly raised seed capital to build out its team and accelerate product development. Financially, the company raised $1.3M in seed funding in the round reported.

• Smart and simple way to ship

  Led · Seed · May 2013

  Postmaster provides a smart and simple way to ship, track and save on small parcel shipping. The company is based in Austin, TX. It announced that it has raised a seed investment round of $600,000. The seed round was led by Capital Factory, Cloud Power and Zelkova Ventures. The article does not disclose additional financial or operating metrics. The announcement appeared via Massinvestor, Inc., which directs readers to its about page for contact information.

• Postmaster

  Led · Seed · May 2013

  Postmaster provides an easy-to-use REST API that lets e-commerce developers and merchants compare rates, create shipping labels, and access tracking, reporting and auditing tools across multiple carriers. The service aggregates data from carriers including FedEx, UPS, Lone Star Overnight, Canada Post and the USPS to enable point-to-point shipping time predictions. That predictive capability aims to give small businesses shipping data and route-optimization insight typically available only to large shippers. The company launched earlier this year and was a member of the most recent TechStars Cloud class. Postmaster plans to use new funding to expand its development team and build additional carrier integrations. It has also completed its first carrier integration and partnership with Lone Star Overnight, which will white-label Postmaster’s portal for LSO customers.

No current team members are available.