Participated · Equity · Aug 2019

Lucidworks builds an AI-based search engine, Fusion, that personalizes results for enterprise and customer-facing use cases by applying machine learning and other AI techniques. The product pulls in multiple data sources and signals (past behavior, location, cohort behavior) to tailor results for scenarios such as e-commerce and knowledge-worker information retrieval. Around half of its business comes from digital commerce and digital content use cases and the other half from internal knowledge-worker applications. The company counts roughly 400 customers, including Reddit, Red Hat, REI and the U.S. Census. Lucidworks says it has been doubling revenues each year for the last three years and has raised about $200 million to date. It plans to invest the new funding to add more natural language processing and semantic search features and to support its next stage of growth, with an eventual public listing being a possibility discussed by management. Founded in California in 2007, Lucidworks provides a platform that enables companies to design and deploy intelligent search-based applications without building systems from scratch. The product surfaces relevant results from signals of user intent and supports features such as product recommendations, spell-check, auto-suggestions, device‑tailored results, and synonym management. Lucidworks targets sectors from financial services to e-commerce and cites customers including Reddit, Uber, Staples, Qualcomm, Dell, AT&T, Red Hat, and the Financial Times. The company says its platform helps customers better compete with large search providers like Amazon and Google by delivering “smart data experiences.” Lucidworks plans to use the new capital to expand its enterprise product and help leading companies bring smarter search and data experiences to market. CEO Will Hayes framed the company’s mission as solving the “last mile problem in AI,” making complex data science accessible to end users. Lucidworks provides the Fusion platform, built on Apache Solr, to help companies translate massive amounts of data into actionable business intelligence and intelligent search. The platform targets sectors including consumer retail, healthcare, insurance and financial services and is designed to operate at any scale. Lucidworks lists customers such as Red Hat, Verizon, Sears, ADP, Staples, Cisco, MapR and Hortonworks. The company is led by CEO Will Hayes. It raised $21M in venture capital and intends to use the funds to continue building the platform and accelerate growth. The business is based in San Francisco, CA. LucidWorks sells search software and commercial distributions built on Apache Lucene/Solr, plus training, commercial support, and tools that sit on top of the open-source technology. The company was founded in 2007 and launched in 2009, with early strategic backing from In-Q-Tel and later investments from firms such as Granite Ventures, Shasta Ventures, and Walden International. Leadership and operational turbulence have followed recent investor intervention that replaced CEO Paul Doscher with Will Hayes; LucidWorks has conducted multiple rounds of layoffs while also hiring (the chief marketing officer said nine people were let go and 20 hired since June). Sales have struggled: the company set a revenue target of $12 million for the year (in line with last year) and has lost at least one Fortune 500 customer to a rival, while other customers have migrated to Elasticsearch. Product delivery has reportedly missed customer shipping deadlines, and LucidWorks is facing two lawsuits involving a former SVP of engineering and a founder. The company is considering a move from Redwood City to San Francisco’s Union Square and has won some new government contracts, including with the FDA and the National Labor Relations Board. LucidWorks offers two core platforms: LucidWorks Search, built on Apache Lucene/Solr to simplify embedded search applications, and LucidWorks Big Data to help organizations analyze multistructured data. The company began as Lucid Imagination in 2008 to provide support, training, and consulting for Lucene and Solr before pivoting to product development. LucidWorks Search launched in 2011 and LucidWorks Big Data in 2012. The team includes roughly one-fourth of those who originally committed to the Apache Lucene/Solr project, and the company positions itself as the largest supporter of open-source search in the industry. Customers named in the article include AT&T, Nike, Sears, Ford, Verizon, The Guardian, Elsevier, The Motley Fool, Cisco, Macy’s, Netflix and Zappos. Financially, the company has raised capital across multiple rounds and recently added new funding to its balance sheet, bringing total capital raised to $26 million.

Participated · Series E · May 2019

Marqeta is the first global modern card issuing platform, offering advanced infrastructure and tools for building highly configurable payment cards. Its open API is designed for businesses—fintechs, digital banks and commerce disruptors—that need a simple, tailored way to manage payment programs. Marqeta is headquartered in Oakland, California. The company says Mastercard’s recent financial investment and expanded partnership validate its technology and will support growth. The expanded collaboration aims to accelerate Marqeta’s international expansion beginning in Asia Pacific, streamline global network certification, and open access to Mastercard products. Marqeta will also participate in Mastercard digital enablement programs like Digital First and Fintech Express and will collaborate on launching additional card programs; the firms have worked together since 2014 on products including the Square Card. Marqeta offers a global card-issuing platform and payment tooling that enables fintechs and commerce companies to issue cards, wallets and other payment mechanisms. Its platform also supports services such as payment reconciliations, real-time fund transfers and customer interactive voice response. Customers named in the article include Square, Uber, Affirm, Instacart and DoorDash. The company remains unprofitable but has attracted large private investment: a $260M financing last year that valued it at $2B, and a new $150M equity infusion valuing it at over $4B. Management says the new capital will accelerate international expansion — the company opened an office in London and is targeting markets including Latin America, with a goal to “issue a card on every continent.” CEO Jason Gardner has also said Marqeta views itself as a public company despite not pursuing an IPO at this time. Marqeta provides card-issuing infrastructure and supporting services — including payment reconciliations, real-time fund transfers and customer interactive voice response — to commerce and fintech customers. The company serves large partners such as Square, Affirm, DoorDash, Kabbage and Instacart and focuses on physical, virtual and debit card offerings. Marqeta has been growing rapidly, doubling revenues each year for the last three years, though it is not yet profitable. The startup plans to use the new funding to continue building out its platform with an emphasis on global expansion; it recently opened an office in London and is targeting growth opportunities in Asia. Management has indicated an IPO is likely within the next 18 months. The company is roughly nine years old and was valued at close to $2 billion in this round. Marqeta is a cloud-based, developer-friendly card issuing and core processing platform that powers physical, virtual and tokenized cards. The company provides an open-API system enabling businesses to build customized, PCI-compliant card experiences that legacy platforms cannot support. In 2017 Marqeta announced products including the Marqeta Digital Wallet SDK for Apple Pay and Google Pay, Marqeta.js, and a Virtual Card Wizard. Its system already powers card programs for Instacart, Square, Affirm, Kabbage, Alipay and several others. Marqeta is led by founder and CEO Jason Gardner and is based in Oakland, California. The company plans to use the funds to extend its leadership in consumer and commercial card solutions and to accelerate domestic and international growth. Marqeta, founded in 2010 by CEO Jason Gardner, provides a documented, open API issuer-processor platform to financial services, e-commerce, retail, and social media brands. The platform integrates with Visa, MasterCard and Discover to enable issuing and receiving payments, rewarding customers, and creating more efficient business processes. Marqeta announced a $25m Series D led by Visa and a multi-year, global partnership with Visa intended to drive new commercial and consumer payments experiences. Participants in the Series D included previous investors Commerce Ventures, 83 North, Granite Ventures, IA Capital and CommerzVentures GmbH, plus new investor CreditEase. The company has raised $71m in total funding to date. Headquartered in Oakland, CA, Marqeta positions itself as a payments infrastructure provider for companies seeking programmatic payment capabilities.

Participated · Series F · Dec 2017

Anaplan offers cloud-based connected planning solutions to speed and improve organizational planning and decision-making. The company also provides support, training and planning transformation advisory services. Led by President and CEO Frank Calderoni, Anaplan serves customers through a global footprint of 18 offices and more than 150 expert partners. The company raised $60M in a Series F and has now raised $300M in total capital. Management plans to use the proceeds to scale sales and customer success, enable partners, expand internationally with a focus on key lines of business, and grow the development team to accelerate product evolution and innovation. Anaplan sells financial planning as a service to large organizations, enabling shared planning and collaboration across stakeholders. The product competes with incumbent enterprise vendors such as Oracle, IBM and SAP and, to some degree, with Microsoft Excel. The company reports over 400 customers in 20 countries and plans to expand internationally, with a particular focus on growing in India. Management says this will be the last private round before an IPO in the “not-too-distant future” and has hired James Budge as CFO. Over the next year Anaplan plans to add engineering and go-to-market personnel and to build up the cloud infrastructure that supports the product, and expects about 900 employees by year-end. Financially, the company has raised a total just over $234 million across all rounds after the latest financing. Anaplan offers a cloud-based planning application that lets companies build and run complex planning models without managing code or infrastructure. The company introduced Anaplan Hub, a marketplace for pre-designed planning models that customers can preview, review, download and adapt, which is planned to go live this summer. CEO Frederic Laluyaux positions the Hub as an app-store–style community to help planners share models and accelerate deployment. Anaplan counts customers including HP, Kimberly-Clark, Procter & Gamble and Pandora. The product aims to create a “planning cloud” analogous to Salesforce’s sales cloud or Workday’s HR cloud, enabling users to plan where and when they need to. With the Hub and community focus, Anaplan is emphasizing both product functionality and network effects among planners. The company has significantly increased its funding to support these initiatives. Anaplan offers a cloud-based, in-memory modeling and planning platform that targets finance, sales and operations teams. Its applications let business users dynamically test and operationalize plans, manage multi-dimensional models, collaborate across functions and regions, and share insights via a built-in community. The company has introduced packaged offerings for finance, marketing, operations and HR, plus a sales performance management suite covering quota, territory and commissions management, real-time quoting and price optimization. Clients named in the article include McAfee, Diageo, Kimberly-Clark Eastern Europe and Pandora. Anaplan is led by CEO Fred Laluyaux and has expanded its presence in Europe, acquiring Vue Analytics and opening a European headquarters in Paris. The company plans to use new funding to expand into the UK, France, Sweden and Singapore, build new data centers globally and accelerate development of its business-user-centric platform. Anaplan provides a cloud platform that lets business users create rich, self-service planning and performance-management applications in days rather than months. The platform supports enterprise applications such as quota management, sales commission management, forecasting, project tracking, budgeting, and network capacity planning. The company emphasizes reducing reliance on traditional IT and consultants by enabling nontechnical users to configure solutions. Anaplan plans to use new funding to expand its sales force, enter new markets and build a global partner network. The company was founded in 2008 and is led by CEO Guy Haddleton and Chief Architect Michael Gould. It is based in San Francisco, California.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2015

HireVue provides a suite of AI-driven talent assessment and video interviewing solutions that combine industrial/organizational science with predictive artificial intelligence. The platform blends video, games and AI to help employers discover, hire and develop talent. Its solution is available worldwide in more than 30 languages. HireVue has hosted more than 11 million on‑demand interviews and one million assessments. The company serves over 700 customers, including more than one‑third of the Fortune 100 and clients such as Unilever, Hilton, JP Morgan Chase, Delta Air Lines, Vodafone, Carnival Cruise Line and Goldman Sachs. The current executive team continues to lead the company under Chairman and CEO Kevin Parker. Led by founder and CEO Mark Newman, HireVue offers team acceleration software for managers to improve hiring decisions using predictive analytics, video and digital tools. The platform is aimed at enterprise customers and is used by brands such as Hilton Worldwide, Marathon Petroleum, UnitedHealth Group, Chipotle Mexican Grill and Urban Outfitters. HireVue is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company closed a $45m funding round in 2015. The financing was led by Technology Crossover Ventures with participation from several existing investors. The round's proceeds are noted as part of the company's current financial position in the article. HireVue is a South Jordan, Utah-based digital recruiting platform led by CEO and founder Mark Newman. The company released its Talent Interaction Platform™, which is designed to augment applicant tracking, talent management, business and social applications. HireVue serves customers including Ocean Spray, Dow Jones and Walmart. The company intends to use new capital to expand its platform, services and team. The article reports a $25M funding round to support that expansion. HireVue builds a video-based job interview and hiring management platform that lets interviewers prepare questions and candidates record single-shot answers on their own time, avoiding scheduling friction. The platform includes hiring-management solutions for application reviews and decision-making and is used by customers such as Nike and Starbucks. HireVue recently acquired CodeEval to add programming challenges to its hiring process. CEO David Bradford said the company will invest the new funding to expand research and development, customer support, sales and marketing. Bradford also said HireVue will be expanding internationally. Financially, the company announced a $17 million Series C led by Investor Growth Capital plus an expanded debt facility for a total of $22 million in new funding, and the company has raised $28 million in total according to the announcement. HireVue is a Draper, Utah-based provider of video interviewing and decision management solutions. Its platform allows employers to conduct and capture video interviews over the Internet to screen candidates. The service is used in over 110 countries. The company closed a $5m Series B equity financing led by new investor Granite Ventures, with participation from previous investors including JCP Capital. In conjunction with the funding, Chris Hollenbeck joined the company’s Board of Directors. HireVue previously closed a Series A round in September 2009.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2015

HyTrust provides solutions that automate security controls for software-defined computing, networking and storage workloads to deliver visibility, granular policy control and data protection across private, public and hybrid clouds. The company positions itself as a leader in cloud workload protection and emphasizes automated policy enforcement and compliance to help enterprises and government agencies secure workloads. HyTrust said it will use its new funding to expand sales and marketing and to fund new product development. A portion of the proceeds is earmarked to finance the announced acquisition of DataGravity. The company cites adoption by large financial institutions and government agencies as validation of its approach. HyTrust is headquartered in Mountain View, CA and is backed by both strategic partners and venture investors including VMware, Cisco, Intel, Fortinet, In-Q-Tel, AVP, Sway Ventures, Granite Ventures, Trident Capital and Vanedge Capital. HyTrust develops software to secure next-generation datacenters by automating data protection and continuously enforcing security policies for the people and tools that operate private, hybrid and public clouds. Its products provide policy-based controls, visibility and data security to help enterprises meet compliance mandates, improve application uptime, and reduce the risk of compromise. The company positions itself as a leader in private and hybrid cloud security and lists technology and go-to-market partners including VMware, VCE, Symantec, CA, McAfee, Splunk, HP Arcsight, Accuvant, RSA, IBM and Intel. The latest funding round is intended to boost marketing, sales and product development and to support expansion into international markets. HyTrust is backed by strategic investors VMware, Cisco, Intel, In-Q-Tel and Fortinet alongside venture investors Granite Ventures, Trident Capital, Epic Ventures, AITV and Vanedge Capital. It has also expanded its relationship with City National Bank to provide additional venture debt and credit facilities to support future growth. HyTrust develops security technology designed for virtualized data centers that consolidate compute, storage and networking into a software layer. Its core product mediates between administrators and the virtual infrastructure, providing a role-based system to control and monitor administrative actions. The platform enables real-time visibility into administrator behavior versus permitted actions to reduce the risk of accidental or malicious changes. HyTrust emphasizes protecting modern data centers from both insider risks (e.g., administrators erasing or copying VMs) and remote attacks that can cross continents. The company positions its solution as a response to new security challenges created by management platforms in virtual environments. The articles note the company has secured venture funding to support its product and growth. HyTrust delivers real-time control, administrative account monitoring, logging and compliance assurance to enable secure cloud adoption and virtualization of critical workloads. The company’s products focus on enforcing policy, auditability and administrative controls at the virtualization and cloud layer to mitigate concentration of risk. HyTrust positions its solution to provide cloud control, visibility and operational readiness for mission-critical workloads and to satisfy security teams and compliance auditors. The company announced a strategic investment and technology-development agreement with In-Q-Tel to fuel product development and expand support operations. That partnership is intended to broaden HyTrust’s reach into the federal sector and address unique government agency requirements. HyTrust is headquartered in Mountain View, CA and is backed by investors including VMware, Granite Ventures, Cisco Systems, Trident Capital and Epic Ventures. HyTrust has developed a policy management system specifically for virtualization that enables IT departments to control and virtualize servers. The company helps organizations manage and control virtual infrastructure. TechCrunch reports HyTrust launched last year. It says the new funding will be used to drive product development and to fuel sales and marketing efforts. HyTrust faces competition from Catbird. The company has raised a total of $16 million to date following the latest round.