The Venture Codex

Participated · Safe · Mar 2023

Wheel the World operates a travel-technology platform that aggregates and verifies detailed accessibility information for hotels, tours, and transportation services. Its core product pairs booking tools with a proprietary database covering more than 8,000 travel services across 150+ global destinations, allowing wheelchair users and other travelers with disabilities to reserve accommodations that genuinely meet their needs. The company’s Accessibility Verified program audits properties on-site to capture structured data points such as doorway widths, bed heights, and bathroom configurations. With fresh Series A capital, management plans to expand this verification program throughout the United States and Europe while embedding AI to accelerate data capture, validation, and distribution. Ultimately the team aims to make accessibility data as standard in travel as pricing and availability. Including the latest infusion, Wheel the World has secured $11 million in Series A financing to fund these initiatives.

Participated · Seed · Dec 2012

LiveNinja is best known for a chat and video interface sold to brands to interact with customers on the web. Its LiveNinja Messenger combines live chat with messaging via an embeddable widget, a dedicated short-link (ln.co/brand-name), and an iOS app tied into CRM. The company plans to build new functionalities within the Messenger, expand its sales team, and add support for messaging apps with available APIs starting with Facebook Messenger and Twitter. The product is currently offered free for a limited time and will transition to a “pay as you grow” model charging on a per-customer engagement basis. Key features include customer verification to limit spam and tools to centralize multi-channel conversations. Competitors named in the article include LivePerson, Intercom, Zendesk, and oLark. LiveNinja launched the Katana video-chat platform as a customer-service application after initially operating as a video marketplace to connect users with experts. Katana enables real-time video support for industries such as banking, financial services, insurance, real estate, retail and other service-focused businesses. The company positions Katana as suitable for large enterprises while remaining affordable for small-to-medium businesses. A new version with mobile device support is on the way. LiveNinja has raised new funding from Scout Ventures, though terms were not disclosed. Competitors mentioned in the article include Vee24 (which has had $5.5 million in funding) and Video Desk (which has raised $4.8 million). LiveNinja is a video chat marketplace that provides real-time video, audio, screen-sharing and text-based chat to connect experts and businesses with customers. The company previously operated a consumer-focused marketplace that grew to over 3,000 live experts and is preparing a mobile-optimized relaunch of that side of the business. It has launched Katana, a business marketplace that embeds on company websites and adds reporting, analytics and third-party integrations to support e-commerce and customer support use cases. Katana supports routing via an 'Available Now' system or a booking system for scheduled appointments, aiming to offer a richer sales and support experience than typical IM-like live chat. LiveNinja debuted in December 2012 and is based in Miami with 10 full-time employees; it faces competition from offerings such as Google Helpouts. The company plans to use new funding for marketing, distribution around Katana, and the forthcoming LiveNinja relaunch. LiveNinja is a video-chat marketplace that lets experts offer advice and services over live video without building their own sites. The platform provides tools for service providers to create an online presence, set pricing by the minute/half-hour/hour, schedule sessions, and receive payments via PayPal. LiveNinja hosts a community setting with optional ratings and reviews, and offers refunds or free replacement sessions if users are unhappy. The company takes a 20% cut of paid sessions; it reports the majority of sessions are paid and roughly one in ten are free. With seed funding the team grew to five and moved into new offices, and the company is building an iPhone app to allow providers to set availability on the go. The app was planned to launch in the spring as the company moved from beta to a public launch.