Participated · Series D · Jun 2023

PayNearMe is a fintech that provides Payment Experience Management software and money-movement services for non-commerce businesses. The company’s newly rebranded PayXM platform lets enterprises manage the entire payment journey across all major payment types—including PayPal, Venmo, Cash App Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, cards, ACH, and cash—within a single integration. PayXM is designed to accelerate payments, reduce the total cost of acceptance, and improve cash flow and profitability for clients. PayNearMe supports cash payments at more than 62,000 U.S. retail locations and serves thousands of businesses in sectors such as consumer lending, iGaming, online sports betting, property management, and tolling. By optimizing every customer, support, and operational touchpoint, the platform turns payments from a cost center into a strategic differentiator. With fresh capital, the company plans to expand into new markets and continue developing features that simplify the end-to-end payment experience.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2022

Kogniz is a Berkeley, CA and Montreal, Canada-based provider of an AI-driven computer vision SaaS platform for improving safety and operations, led by CEO Daniel Putterman. Its product suite focuses on gun detection, safety, and anomaly detection and integrates with clients' existing camera infrastructure. Kogniz Gun Detection identifies firearms in real time using multi-pass AI backed by human verifiers to minimize false alarms and delivers real-time alerts via phone, SMS, Slack, and email. The platform includes prebuilt automated workflows, two-way communications, emergency response plans, visual simulations, and dynamic reports to support incident, evacuation, and incident management. The company says the platform is used by more than 50 enterprise clients, can be implemented in days, and integrates with a customer’s existing infrastructure. Kogniz raised funding to bring its technology product suite to commercial, industrial, school, and governmental organizations. Kogniz provides a suite of products that use computer vision and artificial intelligence to enhance security, safety and efficiency in physical environments. Its cameras process video in real time to recognize people, objects and activities using next‑generation facial and object recognition technologies. The company reports cameras are live in twenty implementations across the United States. Led by Daniel Putterman, Kogniz operates from San Francisco and maintains development offices in Montreal, Quebec. The $4M seed funding will be used to expand the engineering and data science team and to grow product distribution. The company focuses on scaling deployments and improving its AI-driven security product suite.

Participated · Series A · Jun 2020

Haus operates a co-investing platform that invests alongside homeowners in exchange for immediate access to home equity and discounted monthly payments. The platform includes a customized dashboard that tracks property value and lets owners buy more equity or cash out with funds delivered in days. Since launching the platform last July, Haus has focused on offering flexibility and savings to homeowners, particularly those under financial stress from COVID-19. The company is headquartered in California and says the new funding will enable it to expand partnerships with more homeowners across California, Washington and Oregon. CEO Jonathan McNulty framed the product as an alternative to traditional lending that makes homeownership more manageable. The company did not disclose operating metrics in the article. Haus provides a co-investment financing product that buys equity in a homeowner's property so consumers make monthly payments that both purchase equity and pay the company and its investors, replacing the traditional mortgage relationship. The company was created by Garrett Camp as part of his startup studio Expa and launched in 2016; former Trulia executive Jonathan McNulty joined as CEO and introduced the co-investment model. Haus says its monthly payments are on average 30% lower than a traditional mortgage and caps the option portion so homeowners always purchase at least as much equity as with their first payment. The startup can also work with existing homeowners to replace part or all of a mortgage while sometimes recommending keeping mortgage debt for tax purposes. Haus is currently active in Washington, California and Oregon and the CEO described early demand as significant. The company plans to use new funding to expand its team, increase marketing, and enter new geographies.

Participated · Series A · Jun 2020

BoomTV operates a platform that enables organizers—especially smaller community groups, youth sports organizations, school clubs, and influencers—to create, manage and broadcast esports events with automated production tools. The company launched its platform on the strength of the Code Red pro-amateur series and runs a biweekly Code Red event that reaches millions of monthly users. Over the past year Code Red has averaged 2.7 million unique viewers and BoomTV has more than 4 million fans across social platforms; players have earned over $3.9 million across 11,000 events since fall 2018. More than 75,000 content creators and 1,600 college programs use Boom.tv. BoomTV monetizes primarily through sponsorships for its biggest events and has 24 employees. The company plans to invest further in the Code Red ProAm series by increasing prize pools, deepen relationships with top influencers, and develop original esports programming. Boom.tv constructs a 3D experience from a player's game stream in real time, enabling fans to view eSports gameplay from any perspective on PC or mobile devices. Its first application lets streamers engage with fans, provides instant replays and multiple viewing angles, and enables one-click highlight montages for social sharing. The app is available in beta and currently supports CS:GO and LOL. The company will soon release an update allowing streamers to broadcast in virtual reality so viewers can experience the game stream in full VR using the headset of their choice. Led by CEO Sumit Gupta and based in Redwood City, California, Boom.tv plans to use the funding to support the top ten eSports titles and expand to the larger gamer and eSports communities. The company raised $3.5M in seed funding to support these product and expansion plans.

Participated · Series C · Jan 2019

Uplift provides point-of-sale financing for travel by partnering with airlines, travel sites and vacation-package sellers to let consumers pay for trips in monthly installments. The company works with partners including United Airlines, Southwest, American Airlines, Allegiant Travel Company and Kayak, and uses a bank partner to underwrite loans. Uplift says it can make booking easier and reduce upfront cost for consumers, giving an example of a $2,000 Disneyland trip financed as roughly $189 per month over a year. Launched less than two years ago, the company is on track to originate nearly $1 billion in loans in 2019 and for some partners represents about 20% of their business. Uplift positions itself as the only lending company focused entirely on travel, distinguishing the product and technology from general retail BNPL players. The company plans to use new funding to add partners, roll out new services and grow the business while continuing to reach consumers through its travel partners rather than building a consumer marketplace. UpLift provides a travel-industry-focused financing solution under the UpLift Pay Monthly product, enabling consumers to pay for travel in monthly installments integrated into the booking process. The solution is designed to increase suppliers' booking values, extend booking windows and boost ancillary sales. UpLift Pay Monthly is available on the vacation sites of American Airlines Vacations, United Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines, and is coming soon to Vacation Express and Lufthansa German Airlines. The company is led by Founder and CEO Brian Barth and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. Financially, the company closed financings totaling $90M, which supports its product deployment and partner integrations. UpLift's core product is a Payment Marketing Platform that gives large online merchants real-time payment analytics to show cardholder attributes, expose revenue opportunities, increase conversion rates, and support performance monitoring. The platform is positioned to promote preferred payment types, boost usage of merchant co-branded cards, build brand loyalty, and propel channel shift across travel, e-commerce and nonprofit verticals. UpLift is easy to implement and compatible with all payment processors and works with merchants and third-party service providers. The company plans to use the new financing to expand platform applications for merchants and third-party providers, introduce UpLift into new verticals, and integrate additional data sources. Financially, UpLift completed an $8.2 million Series A financing led by IDG Ventures. The company was founded by Brian Barth and Stu Kelly, the co-founders of SideStep.