Participated · Equity · Feb 2023

Loliware develops seaweed-derived resins and materials intended to replace conventional plastics across a wide array of products. Its resins are fully compatible with existing plastic extrusion equipment, enabling manufacturers to swap seaweed pellets for plastic pellets. The materials compost easily and enrich soil once broken down. The company has commercially launched single-use drinking straws, cups, utensils and films. Loliware raised $6 million in its latest financing, bringing total pre-Series A funding to $15.4 million; the company says the funds will be used to grow the market for seaweed materials, launch new products and seaweed resins, and expand R&D. Founded in 2016 and based in San Francisco, Loliware has secured both institutional and strategic backers. Loliware develops kelp-based, plastic-like disposable straws (and planned cups and utensils) using a proprietary material and manufacturing process that preserves performance while enabling biodegradability. Founder and CEO Chelsea "Sea" Briganti led the company through extensive R&D and more than a thousand prototypes to create scalable material technology and new manufacturing practices. Demand has grown rapidly: the company says it has gone from a few million to a hundred million in recent years and projected a billion straws shipping in 2020. Loliware plans to license its automated manufacturing technology to strategic plastic or paper manufacturers rather than producing billions of straws in-house. The company is building supply-chain governance via an Algae Sustainability Council and a “Zero Waste Circular Extraction Methodology” to ensure sustainable, equitable seaweed processing. The recent seed funding will be used to accelerate scaling and further R&D for additional straw types, a cup and a utensil.

Participated · Series B · Oct 2022

SubjectWell is an audience engagement platform for healthcare that matches patients with chronic conditions to clinical trials and other new care options. It uses a direct-to-consumer approach and reports registering 250,000 new patients per month while saying it can engage the 96 percent of the population that has never participated in clinical research. SubjectWell now partners with 16 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and has expanded into oncology, recruiting for non-small cell lung cancer and breast cancer studies. Revenue has grown 800 percent over the past two years, and the company says it is poised to double revenue again in the next 12 months. The platform aims to accelerate clinical trial enrollment timelines, support cancer research, and increase awareness and engagement for post-approval treatments through new service offerings. SubjectWell plans to use its scale and media-channel patient aggregation to extend awareness initiatives and commercial support for pharmaceutical customers. SubjectWell operates a risk-free clinical trials marketplace that connects prospective patients with available clinical studies. The platform’s core product is a single marketplace to build awareness and increase participation in clinical research by matching patients to trials. SubjectWell uses a performance-based pricing model and is compensated only for patients who randomize into studies. The company says hundreds of studies are already recruiting through its marketplace. The recent funding will support international expansion beyond North America into Europe, South America, and the United Kingdom. SubjectWell is headquartered in Austin, Texas and aims to broaden its patient pool and accelerate study enrollment.

Led · Equity · Sep 2022

IVM Markets builds a SaaS investment content generation portal that helps financial distributors and resellers design, price, and risk-manage customized structured products. The platform leverages big data analytics and structured-product expertise to provide an end-to-end product design and pricing workspace that quantifies issuer markup. The company reports 21 clients across seven countries, with client feedback praising idea generation, pricing precision, and the wealth-manager workflow. IVM raised $4M in a funding round led by Geekdom fund with participation from Vibranium.VC. Proceeds will fund further automation within the product selection journey and expand operations, including plans to establish a US-based headquarters. Co‑founders Vlad Gubski and Ildar Farkhshatov position the product as built by structured-product specialists for structured-product specialists.

Led · Equity · Feb 2022

Place builds a unified software platform that combines revenue lifecycle management with financial forecasting, cash management, workforce planning and scenario modeling for early-stage SaaS companies. By embedding these tools into the operating systems sales, marketing and support teams use, the product aims to speed subscription and usage-based revenue generation and improve capital efficiency. Founded in late 2018 by Brandon Metcalf and Kabe VanderBaan, the Austin-based company targets SMB and mid-market customers that need more agile decision-making. The firm recently released its Revenue Lifecycle Management product, which it says has fundamentally changed how customers scale. With nearly $10 million in total invested capital, Place is expanding its senior leadership team and actively hiring a VP of Marketing and a VP of Engagement to support growth. The new funding will be directed toward product development, customer success programs and broader innovation initiatives.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2021

Kronologic builds an A.I.-powered active scheduling platform branded as a Calendar Monetization™ engine that automatically schedules and prioritizes revenue-generating meetings at scale. The platform targets knowledge workers in marketing, sales, and customer success and aims to generate revenue while lowering costs. The company highlights operating metrics around B2B lead follow-up: $4.8B is spent generating inbound leads, average response time is 42 hours, and 58% of leads never get followed up; Kronologic customers report a 100% email follow-up rate and an invite on the calendar in under 60 seconds. Kronologic says it orchestrates the workday to ensure no potential customer is missed. The product has been adopted by enterprise customers including VMware, CDW, PayScale, and Dialpad. The company was founded in 2018 and has reported continuous growth alongside customer expansion. Kronologic offers an AI-driven SaaS platform that automatically moves sales leads into calendar meetings using automation, bots and scheduling AI. The product integrates with Microsoft Outlook, Office 365, Gmail, CRM systems and Zendesk to detect signals and schedule time autonomously. Founders Trey Allison and Ben Parker developed the prototype while at VMWare, where the tool doubled revenue in six months for a 40-person team and reduced headcount to 25. Kronologic is based at Galvanize in downtown Austin and joined the RealCo accelerator at Geekdom in San Antonio. The company has raised an undisclosed amount of seed-stage funding, accepted a $100,000 RealCo investment, and is entering the market aggressively. It is running a pilot with Thompson Reuters and is targeting enterprise customers with a vision to make the calendar the primary workflow and automate scheduling across sales and support.