• Social Tables

  Participated · Series B · Oct 2016

  Social Tables provides a cloud-based collaborative event software platform that enables planners and properties to work together and manage events online. The platform supports event planning across a range of sizes, from small meetings and receptions to city-wide conventions. Customers include hospitality brands such as Hyatt Hotels, House of Blues and media like Forbes. The solution is used by more than 100,000 professionals across 4,300 customers, and the company employs more than 135 people. Social Tables closed a $13M Series B in 2016 and plans to use the proceeds to develop new products slated for launch in 2017. To date the company has raised $22.6M. SocialTables offers a collaborative event-planning platform and seating-arrangement tools that deliver sales and operations functionality for hotels, venues, and event planners. The product is used by both venue owners and party planners, with notable customers including Hyatt Hotel Corporation and Caesars Entertainment. The company reports 2,500 customers and 30,000 users, roughly two-thirds venue owners and one-third planners. Founded by Dan Berger, the platform evolved from clever seating software into broader hospitality SaaS aimed at streamlining event sales and operations. SocialTables plans to use new capital to better serve current customers and build additional hospitality products to drive efficiencies in the industry. The company previously raised $1.6 million before this round. Social Tables builds web-based software that creates 2D and 3D diagrams and seating arrangements to help event spaces design layouts and sell spaces to clients. Customers use the product both to plan events and to generate quick visual proposals for potential clients. The company reported revenue growth of 65% month-over-month since September 2012 and serves over 500 enterprise customers, including major hotel chains and museums. Headcount has grown from four employees to 18, and the team is actively hiring following the new funding. Founder and CEO Dan Berger will be taking a salary for the first time since founding the company. SocialTables provides an HTML5, browser-based platform (with iPad support) that lets planners create venue mockups, drag-and-drop guests, and collaborate on floorplans in real time. The system pulls social data from guest lists to help seat like-minded people or create deliberate matches. The product emphasizes a polished UI and non-linear collaboration so multiple users can edit simultaneously. The service is free to try, with enterprise versions available and pricing starting at $500 per event. The company has served roughly 3,500 events and over 100,000 guests, indicating early traction. Dan Berger founded the company at Fortify Ventures in DC, and Gary Vaynerchuk is listed as an adviser.

• Hinge

  Participated · Series A · Nov 2013

  Hinge is a dating app available on iOS and Android that matches people by surfacing friends-of-friends its "romance graph" algorithm thinks will be compatible. The app is live in 28 cities across the United States and positions itself as a more relationship-oriented alternative to swipe-first apps. Founder Justin McLeod aims to improve the app’s speed, chat, and usability and has hinted at features to better schedule and facilitate real-world dates. Hinge competes for users who also use Tinder but targets those seeking more meaningful connections. The company raised a $12M Series A to fund international expansion and product development, and the founder said the new capital will allow Hinge to delay monetization until at least 2016. The business has now raised over $20M in total funding. Hinge's core product is a mobile dating app that uses a "romance graph" built from Facebook data and user-added tags (religion, ethnicity, favorite date spots, personality) to suggest compatible matches. The app shows fuller profiles with mutual friends, last initial, employer, and education, and delivers a curated daily set of around 30 tailored matches. Hinge operates in nine cities and reports its iOS and Android userbase is up 300% this year across DC, Philadelphia, NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and L.A. The service is free for now, with potential monetization through subscriptions or premium features (promotions, more matches) and a possible option to license the romance-graph data. Founder Justin McLeod says Hinge aims to expand beyond romantic matching into a broader social discovery network for meeting people users haven't met yet. The company plans to use new capital to focus on product features that foster meaningful interactions and to expand its engineering team in NYC. Hinge is a mobile-first dating app that aims to match people through a "romance graph" of friends-of-friends rather than anonymous nearby users. It pulls Facebook data to surface matches with similar schools, jobs, and deeper cross-group patterns. The app is available on iOS and Android and has officially launched in Washington D.C., New York, and Boston. After expanding beyond D.C., Hinge doubled its user count to about 60,000 and reports roughly 85% of downloads active after one week and 75% active after one month. The company raised new capital to fund growth into additional cities and to revamp its apps. Hinge positions itself as a mobile successor to sites like Match.com and OkCupid, emphasizing relationship-oriented matching rather than casual hookups.

• Speek

  Led · Equity · Aug 2013

  Founded in 2012 and based in Washington, D.C., Speek offers online and mobile tools that let users join calls via personal links and multiple connection methods (VoIP, phone ring, or mobile app). The platform provides visual indicators of who’s speaking, social profile integration, administrative controls (block/mute), messaging, file sharing with cloud services, and post-call analytics. Speek operates a freemium model with a paid Speek Pro tier at $10/month per user and a recently soft-launched "Speek for Teams" edition for businesses. The company says "hundreds of thousands" of people have been on Speek calls and that two-thirds of users primarily use native mobile apps; it currently has a 16-person team. With the new funding, Speek plans to add security controls, real-time collaboration features (document editing), slideshow sharing, and integrations with enterprise products such as Salesforce. The product competes with other modern conference-calling solutions like UberConference. Speek provides a conference call solution with a visual interface that uses personal or business links (e.g., speek.com/YourName) instead of phone numbers and PINs. The service shows who has joined, who is talking, and supports file sharing and call controls. The company runs a proprietary voice platform and launched Speek Pro, a premium version, in May. Speek raised $1.1M in bridge financing in advance of its Series A and has raised $2.6M in total to date. New investors in the bridge included Stewart Allen, Michael Chasen (via NextGen Angels), Timothy Chi and Sonny Ganguly, alongside a group of existing backers. The company intends to use the funds to continue improving its voice platform and to scale its user base. Speek provides a free and visual conference platform that uses a personal link (e.g., http://speek.com/YourName) instead of a phone number and PIN for conference calls. Users—individuals and small businesses—click the link to start or join a call from their phone, web, or mobile browser via VOIP or SMS without downloading software. The service shows who has joined, who is talking, and supports file sharing and call controls. Speek launched in beta in June and has been accepted into accelerators 500 Startups and AOL's Fishbowl Labs. It also won the Distilled Intelligence 2.0 pitch competition sponsored by Microsoft. The company is hiring and headquartered in Dulles, VA. Founders are CEO John Bracken and CTO Danny Boice. Financially, the company recently closed seed funding of $1.2M. Speek provides a SaaS "conference table" visual experience for web and mobile users that shows who is on a call and who is speaking. The product requires no downloads and includes features such as note taking, file sharing and the ability to mute certain speakers. Led by CEO John Bracken, the company targets an alternative to traditional conference calls with a visual, collaborative interface. Speek intends to use recent funding to build out its product and accelerate growth. As part of that plan it is hiring a developer, a designer and an intern. The company is based in Sterling, Virginia.

• Dashboard.io

  Participated · Seed · Mar 2013

  Dashboard.io is a Mountain View, CA-based community platform for startups that enables founders to talk to other founders and mentors from across accelerator networks. The platform connects users with mentors and founders from 500 Startups, TechStars, Y Combinator and Startup Chile. It provides tools to collaborate, get answers from across their network and to privately benchmark against their investors’ portfolios. The company was spun out by Paul Singh, the Venture Partner at 500 Startups, who will become its Founder & CEO. Dashboard.io recently raised seed financing as reported by FinSMEs.

• Uppidy

  Participated · Seed · Mar 2013

  Uppidy provides a solution to store, search and share text messages for free. Its product allows users to store texts, update their status on Facebook or Twitter, and create their own groups. The service is available as a free mobile app and desktop solution for Android, BlackBerry and the iPhone. The company raised an additional $550k in funding, with backers including Band of Angels, CIT, New Vantage Group, Harvest Group Holdings, Fortify Ventures and Paul Silber of Blu Venture Investors. The article does not specify the instrument of the funding. This raise follows a prior $50K disclosed in October 2012. Leadership includes co-founders Joshua M. Konowe (CEO) and Alex Rudnev (CTO). Uppidy is a Reston, Va.-based mobile sharing, search and storage technology company led by CEO Josh Konowe. It enables end-users to store, manage, share and search individual text and SMS messages on Uppidy.com free of charge. The company offers a premium subscription with advanced features such as increased storage, multiple device support, premier status, desktop publishing and reporting. Uppidy raised $50K in funding from the Center for Innovative Technology's GAP Funds. The company intends to use the funding to further expand the technical capabilities of its products.

No current team members are available.