The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Feb 2012

Concordia Coffee Systems manufactures fully automatic, integrated self-serve commercial espresso systems that combine milk steaming, coffee grinding and brewing in one step. The company holds patents on its fully automatic espresso delivery process and integrates fresh milk, beans and sauces into a single system. Machines are manufactured at its Bellevue, WA headquarters and shipped worldwide, serving thousands of customers pouring millions of drinks every day. Key partners and customers named in the articles include Starbucks, Seattle's Best, Caribou Coffee, Hilton, Tesco, Costco, Google, United Airlines and several universities and foodservice operators. Management says the new capital will be used to ramp up international business and to fund the global market rollout of a new line of coffee systems. Concordia has raised new financing and maintains relationships with regional investors and strategic partners named in the articles.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2011

PayScale offers SaaS-based compensation data, analytics and software built on large-scale data, matching and prediction algorithms. The company positions itself as a market and technology leader in cloud compensation management and serves more than 8,000 customers. PayScale’s platform powers pay decisions for over 23 million employees across employers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Management says the investment will be used to build on strong momentum and drive product innovation. PayScale cites rising demand for modern, data-driven compensation tools amid broader social movements and increased scrutiny around pay transparency and equity. The company is Seattle-based and highlights customer names including Dish Network, T-Mobile, Macy’s and UnitedHealth Group as users of its platform. PayScale offers modern compensation software and real-time, data-driven salary insights, built on what the company describes as the world’s largest crowdsourced database of salary profiles. Its platform serves more than 6,000 customers and powers pay decisions for over 13 million employees. PayScale emphasizes big-data technologies and data science to deliver compensation benchmarking and management tools. Through the announced alliance with Mercer, PayScale plans to expand product capabilities and tailor solutions for larger, more complex global organizations. The company will collaborate with Mercer to develop new compensation and workforce data products and broaden distribution channels. Mercer will also take an equity stake in PayScale as part of the relationship; terms were not disclosed. PayScale operates a cloud compensation data and software-as-a-service platform that provides online tools for businesses and individuals. The company maintains a database of more than 40 million individual salary profiles to generate current market salary snapshots. PayScale serves over 3,000 enterprise subscription customers across 13 countries, including Cummins, Warby Parker, Zendesk, Clemson University and Covenant Dove. Founded in 2000 and led by CEO Mike Metzger, the company offers products built on its large compensation dataset. PayScale intends to use new proceeds to recapitalize the business and to fund growth initiatives, including hiring to expand its sales and product development teams. PayScale operates an online compensation platform built on a large database of individual compensation profiles to show current market salaries to employees and employers. Its flagship product, PayScale Insight, enables HR and compensation professionals at small, medium and large companies to benchmark their workforce and align compensation strategies with business goals. The company plans to use the new funding to expand sales and marketing activities and to develop products. PayScale reports a user group of 2,300 business subscribers covering roughly 1 million employees. Founded in 2002 and based in Seattle, the company is led by CEO Mike Metzger and Dave Smith, Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing & Business Development. The business leverages its dataset to serve both employees and employers seeking market salary information. PayScale is a Seattle-based online provider of employee compensation data. Its patent-pending, real-time profiling technology collects and indexes employee pay attributes worldwide and makes this compensation data available through online salary tools and benchmarking reports. The company's flagship HR compensation solution, PayScale Insight, helps HR/Comp professionals in small, medium and large companies benchmark their workforce and align compensation strategies with business goals. PayScale has received working capital financing from Leader Ventures. Leader Ventures' managing director Patrick Gordan described PayScale as a fast-growing startup seeking a flexible financing partner. Leader Ventures said it aims to provide flexible support to help manage and accelerate PayScale's growth.