Participated · Series E · Sep 2021

Aviatrix delivers advanced cloud networking, network security and operational visibility with cloud-native simplicity and automation. The company provides a proven multi-cloud network reference architecture to design, deploy and operate a repeatable network and security architecture consistent across any public cloud. More than 550 customers worldwide leverage Aviatrix’s platform. Led by CEO Steve Mullaney, the company emphasizes enterprise-grade network and security operations for cloud environments. Aviatrix raised $200M in a Series E at a $2 billion valuation and plans to use the funds to scale its worldwide sales and support operations. Aviatrix offers a cloud network platform that delivers advanced networking, security, and operational visibility and control with cloud-like simplicity and automation. The company targets enterprises moving mission-critical applications to multiple cloud service providers and emphasizes repeatable multi-cloud network and security architectures. More than 500 customers worldwide leverage Aviatrix and its multi-cloud network reference architecture. Aviatrix also offers the industry’s multi-cloud networking certification (ACE) to support adoption. The company plans to use new growth-stage funding to scale sales, partner channels, customer support, and product development to meet rising enterprise demand. Aviatrix is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. Aviatrix provides networking and security services for enterprises moving mission-critical applications from on-premises to the public cloud. Its offerings include advanced transit networking, network segmentation, next-generation firewall integration, smart SAML VPN and site-to-cloud VPN access. The company also provides cloud-to-Internet egress filtering, high-performance encryption and other enterprise networking capabilities. Aviatrix serves more than 300 multi-cloud enterprises, including Jefferies, Experian, NASA, QuickenLoans, Pfizer and Netflix. It recently raised $40M in a Series C and has $76M in total funding to date. The company plans to use the proceeds to scale sales, channel, customer support, marketing and product development, and is led by CEO Steve Mullaney with John Jendricks as COO and James Winebrenner as SVP of worldwide sales. Aviatrix offers a one-click, CLI-free hybrid cloud networking solution built for AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud that uses a centralized controller and lightweight gateway software to create, delete, and manage hybrid cloud networks. The product enables scalable, secure interconnections across private data centers and public cloud regions and supports cloud-native and multi-cloud architectures. Aviatrix says customers can accelerate hybrid cloud network deployments by more than 90 percent, shorten development cycles, and reduce costs; customers include Fortune 1000 and cloud-native companies such as Hyatt, Robert Half, and GREE. The company plans to use new funding to expand operations, drive strategic partnerships, and extend the reach of its cloud networking solutions. Financially, the company announced a $15 million Series B that brings its total funding to $25 million. Aviatrix publicly cites strong customer momentum since its 2014 launch. Aviatrix builds software that enables enterprises to create hybrid clouds by easily, elastically and securely connecting to dozens of AWS virtual private clouds (VPCs) and Azure VNets without buying additional networking equipment. The platform also allows employees and partners to connect directly to the cloud without traditional corporate VPNs and helps software vendors migrate on‑premise applications to the cloud and transition to single‑tenant SaaS. Current customers include large and small enterprises, and Aviatrix is an AWS partner and a Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance partner. The company was founded by Pankaj Manglik and Sherry Wei, who bring prior experience from Aruba Networks, Cisco and Huawei. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Aviatrix positions its product as a way for CloudOps to hide network complexity and build networks as dynamic and disposable as compute and storage. Management frames the offering around addressing hybrid cloud networking challenges as adoption increases.

Participated · Series C · Jul 2021

CAPE Analytics uses machine learning and computer vision to create instant property intelligence and attributes that traditionally required on‑site inspection. The company’s product is aimed at organizations that finance, insure, and invest in residential and commercial properties. Since its founding in 2014, CAPE has grown to serve over 50 subscription customers, including Hippo Insurance, Amica Insurance, and State Auto Insurance. The business plans to diversify its suite of data sources and partnerships, expand its coverage footprint across the U.S., Canada, and beyond, and grow its machine learning, data science, and risk teams. The company emphasizes rapid, scalable property insights for underwriting, valuation, and risk decisioning. The Series C funding will accelerate creation of new property insights for its growing client base. Cape Analytics applies computer vision and machine learning to geospatial imagery to produce property intelligence at the time of quote. Its platform delivers comprehensive property attributes with the accuracy of on-site inspection and the speed and coverage of property record pre-fill. The company maintains a historical database of over 90 million structures in the U.S., enabling time-series analyses, linking property characteristics to loss, and detecting property changes over time. Cape Analytics serves insurers and other property stakeholders, and is backed by leading venture firms and innovative insurers. Founded in 2014 and based in Mountain View, Calif., the company is staffed by experts in computer vision, data science, and risk analysis. It plans to accelerate development of solutions for property insurers leveraging geospatial analytics and other unique information sources. Cape Analytics uses computer vision and machine learning on geospatial imagery to create a structured database of property attributes for insurers and reinsurers. Its data includes building footprints, roof condition, nearby hazards, and other features, and covers over 70 million buildings across the United States. The product delivers instant property intelligence at the time of underwriting or quote, enabling more accurate pricing and faster online quotes with fewer consumer questions. Founded in 2014 and based in Mountain View, Calif., the company expanded coverage from Florida to nearly every single-family home in the country and has tripled headcount since its last financing. The fresh $17M will be used to expand sales and AI-centric product development teams in response to rapid customer interest and adoption. Cape Analytics also plans to explore expansion into new geographies and additional insurance applications to improve data quality used for insurers' critical decisions. Cape Analytics provides a cloud-based platform that uses geospatial imagery, computer vision and machine learning to automatically extract proprietary property data. Its API integrates with insurance carriers' quote engines to deliver near inspection-quality property feature data across entire portfolios. The data is intended to improve underwriting, speed and accuracy of quotes, and enhance the agent and customer experience. The company plans to use the funds to expand its engineering and sales teams and to bring its proprietary data platform nationwide. Cape Analytics was established in 2014 and is led by CEO Ryan Kottenstette and CTO Suat Gedikli. It is based in Palo Alto, CA, and maintains additional offices in Munich, Germany.

Participated · Series B · May 2020

Ascus Biosciences uses a proprietary technology platform to analyze native microbial communities in highly productive animals and select efficacious native microorganisms for product development. The company develops novel, multi-strain, naturally occurring whole-microbe products that are shelf-stabilized and compatible with standard in‑feed delivery systems. Ascus positions its approach as the first in the animal health and nutrition industry based on a comprehensive understanding of animal microbiomes. It has multiple microbial solutions in development, with some already in sales across dairy, poultry, beef feedlot, equine, and companion species. Headquartered in San Diego, Ascus maintains field, sales, and production operations globally. With the newly secured funding, the company plans to expand customer sales and service teams, advance products in its pipeline, and continue refining its core technology platform and intellectual property.

Participated · Equity · Sep 2019

Fieldwire provides a mobile-first field management platform for construction teams, enabling project managers, engineers, and craft workers to track and coordinate work from any device. The platform emphasizes labor coordination and is used on more than 500,000 projects worldwide, with the company stating it saves users more than 1 hour per day per person on average. Investors describe Fieldwire as cash-flow positive with a strong growth rate and a capacity to expand customers from small crews into large enterprise deals. Fieldwire is headquartered in San Francisco and has opened offices in Phoenix and Paris, with plans to open an additional office in Australia before the end of 2019 and to reach 150 employees by summer 2020. Yves Frinault is CEO and has emphasized staying nimble and customer-focused as the company grows. The company intends to use the new funding to fuel research and development and to further international expansion. Fieldwire is a mobile field management platform that connects workers in the field with their counterparts in the office via an easy-to-use mobile application for task management and real-time collaboration. The platform enables users to capture, organize, and access up-to-date drawings and files on- and offline, and it powers over 200,000 construction projects worldwide. Fieldwire reports saving its users an average of 20 hours per month on projects and cites deployments such as the Moscone Center and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. The company was founded in San Francisco in 2013 by a core team of construction and software engineers from Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT, and is backed by Bloomberg Beta, Trinity Ventures, Formation 8, and Brick and Mortar Ventures. Under a new strategic partnership with Hilti, Fieldwire plans to integrate its digital offering with Hilti's on-site tools (including Rangemeters) to create a more end-to-end field experience and shift focus to workers on jobsites. The partnership includes an undisclosed strategic investment from Hilti and a Hilti board seat; the articles do not disclose revenue, valuation, or the exact instrument of the investment. Fieldwire is a task-management and collaboration platform for construction, described in the article as more like “Asana for construction” (focusing on tasks) versus competitors that digitize blueprints. The product targets foremen, subcontractors and on-site labor to coordinate tasks and reduce idle time. At the time of reporting there were 35,000 projects on the platform owned by about 1,000 companies, and Fieldwire reports projects in 100 countries. The company offers a free tier for teams up to 15 people and charges $20–$30 per user per month for larger teams. Fieldwire had a very small team (five people) that had doubled in the prior four months and operates with a primarily engineering staff and no traditional sales or marketing unit. The founders describe a bottoms-up distribution approach and are pursuing the global construction market, which they cite as an $8.5 trillion annual spend opportunity. Fieldwire provides a website and mobile app that let project managers and foremen create, prioritize, and quickly reorganize task lists for active construction projects. The app enables field workers to document issues and receive updated instructions in real time, reducing downtime and improving on-site productivity. Fieldwire operates a freemium model—first three users are free, then the company charges $20 per person per month for premium features. Because project team sizes vary, the company is seeing more clients agree on seat counts and purchase enterprise licenses. The startup plans to use recently raised funding to support sales efforts and bring on more clients. The founding team includes Stanford and MIT engineers and CEO Yves Frinault, who founded the company after summers spent on construction sites. At the time of the report the company had a team of six.

Participated · Series C · Apr 2019

Founded in 2015 by Kiva co-founder Matt Flannery, Branch International operates a "branchless bank" mobile app that extends loans as small as $2 and as large as $1,000 to users in countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, and soon India. The app analyzes SMS messages and other phone data (e.g., bank balance alerts and utility payment receipts) to generate real-time credit scores, enabling instant disbursement without physical infrastructure. Since launch the app has been downloaded on more than one million phones in Sub-Saharan Africa, and new customers borrow an average of 20 times in their first year. Branch charges a flat 15% interest rate and has avoided overdraft fees, prioritizing repeat usage over immediate profitability on its smallest loans. The company was already profitable prior to its latest fundraise and reports 20% month-over-month loan-book growth. Headquartered in San Francisco with 100 employees spread across San Francisco, Lagos, and Nairobi, Branch plans to introduce mobile savings accounts as its next product once regulatory approvals are secured. Management views expanding financial services in under-banked regions as a multi-billion-dollar opportunity.