Participated · Series A · Oct 2018

CrowdRiff is an AI-powered visual content marketing platform purpose-built for travel and tourism brands, combining content discovery, digital asset management, and content delivery tools. The platform enables marketers to source and share top-performing visuals at scale. CrowdRiff works with over 500 leading travel and tourism brands across 24 countries and has processed over 500 million images to date. Customers include Destination BC, Colorado Tourism Office, CityPASS and the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions. The company plans to use new funding to expand its customer base globally and to develop new products. CrowdRiff provides a visual and social marketing solution that enables destination and travel brands to use photos and videos to create compelling experiences across their digital channels. Led by co-founder and CEO Dan Holowack, the company serves customers including Colorado Tourism, Travel Portland, Explore British Columbia, Azamara Cruises, Shedd Aquarium, Pebble Beach Resorts and the Royal Ontario Museum. The company raised $2m in funding to support product innovation, hire sales and marketing personnel, and build out its visual influence platform. Backers on the round included BDC Capital, Gibraltar Ventures, High Alpha Capital and Foundation Capital. CrowdRiff is based in Toronto, Canada.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2016

FanXchange provides white-labeled live event ticketing solutions for major loyalty programs, financial institutions, distribution partners and e-commerce marketplaces. Its platform gives users access to tickets for major sports, concert and theater events across North America. Founded in 2009 by CEO Brandon Koffler, the company is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. In February 2016 FanXchange closed a $5M funding round led by Azure Capital Partners and Plaza Ventures, with participation from existing investors including Gibraltar & Company. The company said it intends to use the funds to enhance its current suite of products. As part of the financing, Dan Park of Azure Capital Partners joined FanXchange's board of directors.

Led · Seed · Feb 2016

Vault, formerly Student Loan Genius, is an Austin-based student loan benefits platform that helps employers offer student loan repayment and advising programs. Its core products include Vault Pay (employer student loan contributions), Vault Advisor (custom payoff modeling and 1:1 advising), and Vault Match (a 401(k) product that can allocate unused 401(k) dollars to student loan benefits). Vault Match was enabled by a recent IRS private letter ruling allowing employers to contribute to employees' 401(k) funds on behalf of employees who are actively making student loan payments. The company cites recent customer wins including American Family Insurance and lists major employers such as New York Life, Ralph Lauren, Mastercard, and Pinterest as clients. Vault announced $3.5 million in funding and appointed Romy F. Parzick as COO to scale operations and client implementation. Student Loan Genius, led by co-founder and CEO Tony Aguilar, provides employer-facing student loan benefits through products such as Genius Match, Genius Advisor and Genius Pay. Genius Match allows employers to contribute matching dollars toward employees’ student loan payments. Genius Advisor identifies optimal repayment plans and offers 1:1 advisory services to employees. Genius Pay deducts payments directly from payroll and allocates them in the most advantageous way. The company raised $3M in seed funding and intends to use the proceeds to continue its growth and roll out new products. To date, 45 companies have incorporated Student Loan Genius’ student loan benefits into their employee offerings.

Led · Equity · Mar 2015

Pressly is a Toronto, Canada-based content marketing startup that provides a cloud-based platform for media companies and marketers. The platform lets users search the web, social networks, blogs, magazines and newspapers from a single dashboard, aggregate favorite sources, and syndicate content in real time. It also includes analytics and user engagement tools. The company was co-founded in 2011 by Jeff Brenner and Peter Kieltyka and counts clients such as GQ, IBM, Conde Nast, Deloitte, Docusign and Peroni. In 2015 Pressly raised $2.1M and intends to use the funds to expand its offering and extend into the enterprise market. The product and customer list position the company to pursue larger enterprise deployments. Pressly offers a SaaS platform that makes websites smartphone- and tablet-friendly using HTML5 technologies and customizable templates. The product has been used by publishers such as The Toronto Star and by projects for The Economist Group, and Ziff Davis has used it for a content marketing campaign sold to IBM. During beta the service accrued roughly 500 testers and the company reports engagement metrics of about 22 pageviews per visit and a 4% bounce rate. Pressly positions itself toward both publishers and B2B content marketers, emphasizing lead-generation features and a model that does not take ad revenue share. The company operates a 16-person Toronto-based team and charges businesses starting at $199 to $499 after a 30-day trial. Planned product work and go-to-market activity include hiring, marketing expansion, and new features such as Mailchimp integration and landing-page support.