The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Mar 2016

Attivio provides software that helps customers quickly access the right data and work with it to the point of informing decisions. The company targets customers in financial services, high tech, life sciences, and energy. Its solution is used by enterprises including Thermo Fisher Scientific, Citi, Qualcomm, UBS, GE, Nexen, and National Instruments. Technical partners include Hortonworks and BI vendors Tableau, TIBCO Spotfire, and Qlik. Led by CEO Stephen Baker, Attivio has raised capital to support growth and product deployment. The company intends to use the new funds to expand operations. Attivio is a Newton, Massachusetts-based developer of a unified information access platform. Its core product is the Active Intelligence Engine®, which combines enterprise search, business intelligence and big data to reveal actionable insight. The platform can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud for strategic applications and solutions. The company, led by CEO Ali Riaz, was founded in 2007. Attivio said it intends to use the $8M capital to continue to expand worldwide. In October 2012 the company raised $34M in a round led by Oak Investment Partners with participation from Per-Olof Soderberg and Tenth Avenue Holdings. Attivio, founded in 2007 and led by CEO Ali Riaz, is a Newton, Massachusetts-based enterprise software company. It provides a unified information access (UIA) platform, the Active Intelligence Engine® (AIE®), to integrate, correlate and analyze structured, unstructured and semi-structured information. The company serves large financial institutions and customers with information management challenges across life sciences, government, military, law enforcement, telecommunications and e-business. Attivio secured $34M in growth capital to expand sales and marketing, bring AIE to new global markets, and accelerate product research and development. The round was led by new investor Oak Investment Partners with participation from initial investors Per-Olof Soderberg and Tenth Avenue Holdings. In conjunction with the funding, Oak general partner Ifty Ahmed joined Attivio’s board of directors.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2015

Digital Guardian offers a cloud-delivered Data Protection Platform and DG Cloud analytics backend that detect and block threats to sensitive information across corporate networks, endpoints, and cloud applications. The platform is available on premises, as SaaS, or as a managed service and claims unique data awareness combined with threat detection and response. Digital Guardian currently secures more than 4.5 million endpoints across 50 countries and serves high-growth verticals including financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, technology, and professional services. The company says it has enabled data-rich organizations for more than 15 years. Management has added senior leaders in strategy, engineering, and product to support growth and product development. The recent financing is intended to accelerate product development and innovation to meet rising demand driven by regulations such as GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act. Digital Guardian develops a desktop agent that monitors data and system events, inspects content, clarifies data, and forms policies controlling where data can go. Its products have largely focused on endpoint data protection, and the company is working to integrate network-level DLP capabilities following a recent acquisition. Digital Guardian acquired Code Green Networks for roughly $18 million and has been integrating that network-level DLP with its existing offerings. The company serves about 450 distinct clients and employs 265 people with offices in the U.S., U.K., and Japan. With the new capital, Digital Guardian plans to expand the scope of its products and tightly integrate its technologies to better address cyber threats. CEO Ken Levine has said the company is beginning to evaluate what would make it a successful IPO candidate in 2016. Verdasys provides Digital Guardian, an integrated data protection platform that combines insider threat and cyber threat defense to enable visibility and real-time control over user and malware activities on endpoints. Digital Guardian is also available as a cloud-managed service. Customers include U.S. patent holders, government agencies, and Global 2000 and mid-sized companies. On March 19, 2014, the company raised $12m in funding. The company intends to use the funds to expand into new markets, add additional data protection use cases, and build industry partnerships and channels. Kenneth Levine, formerly SVP and GM of Security Management at McAfee/Intel Security, joined Verdasys as CEO, replacing Jim Ricotta. Verdasys develops the Digital Guardian Enterprise Information Protection (EIP) platform to monitor, classify, audit and control sensitive data across endpoints, servers, virtual environments, mobile devices and the cloud. The company emphasizes protecting intellectual property and regulated data from privileged insiders, third parties, and targeted cyber attacks. In 2011 Verdasys expanded platform support (including Linux distributions, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2), added integrations with TITUS and Attivio, and delivered the first phase of an EIP Mobile strategy. Verdasys also plans managed-service offerings to simplify adoption and management of data protection programs and intends to extend protection to tablets and smartphones. The business was profitable in 2011 and achieved double-digit revenue growth, with software license revenue up 60% over 2010 and a record 1.13 million new licenses delivered that year. Customers exceed 250 Global 2000 and government deployments across automotive, aerospace, pharmaceutical, chemical, defense and other industries.

Led · Equity · Mar 2014

Verdasys develops endpoint data-protection software, with its flagship product Digital Guardian providing deep visibility and real-time control over user and malware activities on endpoints. The company claims proven scalability with almost two million endpoint agents deployed globally and customers that include seven of the top U.S. patent holders and numerous government agencies. Digital Guardian combines insider-threat and cyber-threat defense in an integrated platform and is also available as a cloud-managed service. Verdasys was named a leader in Gartner’s 2013 Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention. The company says its customers protect more than a trillion dollars’ worth of sensitive data, intellectual property, and trade secrets. Verdasys intends to use new funds to expand into new markets, additional data-protection use cases, and to grow industry partnerships and channels.

Led · Equity · May 2011

Audoo’s core product is the Audio Meter, a discreet plug-and-play device that uses audio fingerprinting and AI to identify songs with up to 99% accuracy and transmit anonymised data to a cloud platform. The system is GDPR-compliant and is designed to replace manual or sampled reporting so lesser-known artists and songwriters receive fairer public-performance royalties. Audoo has installed its technology in thousands of venues and its Audio Meter is present in over 10 countries, with plans to double that footprint by the end of 2025 and accelerate expansion across Europe and the U.S. The company has formed partnerships with major licensing organisations including PPL and PRS for Music in the U.K. and OneMusic in Australia/New Zealand to standardise royalty tracking. Founder and CEO Ryan Edwards launched Audoo after discovering his own music was played in public without receiving royalties, and the company cites CISAC’s estimate that $2.5 billion in royalties goes uncollected annually as the market opportunity. Financially, Audoo completed a £7 million funding round (announced alongside a 2023 $5M raise), bringing total capital raised to over $30 million. High-profile artist backers and industry endorsements are positioned as accelerants to adoption and credibility in the music-rights ecosystem. TuneSat provides a proprietary audio fingerprinting service and an intuitive web interface that gives rights holders near‑real time visibility into when and where their music is performed on TV and the Internet. The platform detects music even in noisy broadcast environments, including under dialogue, sound effects, or voiceovers, and delivers reports within an hour of broadcast. TuneSat monitors hundreds of broadcasters and is crawling millions of websites daily, and is actively monitoring more than 200 channels across the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy. Founded by composers and producers Scott Schreer and Chris Woods, the company offers subscription access to worldwide detection data through a secure online portal. TuneSat will use new equity capital to expand the global reach of its content monitoring services. The company is based in New York City.