Participated · Equity · Jun 2021

Vetster operates a virtual veterinary and pet care marketplace that enables pet owners to find, book and pay for preventative and urgent care appointments via video and audio calls. The company launched in November 2020 and has established its marketplace across the US and Canada. Vetster’s core product is a telehealth marketplace connecting pet owners with veterinarians for virtual appointments. The company is led by Mark Bordo (CEO and CoFounder) and Regan Johnson (CTO and CoFounder). Vetster intends to use new funding to accelerate growth and expand its offerings and services into new regions including the UK, Australia, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The business is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

Participated · Equity · May 2021

Vetster is a veterinary telemedicine marketplace connecting pet parents with veterinary professionals over video, text or audio. Its mobile app (iOS and Android) and online marketplace let pet owners find, book and pay for appointments, with thousands of veterinarians on the platform and appointments starting as low as $50. The service includes VetsterRx, enabling in-app prescription purchases and home delivery where available, and provides veterinarians tools to set rates, schedule, and receive automated weekly payments. Vetster emphasizes choice, flexibility and a seamless virtual experience for pet owners while enabling veterinary professionals to expand practice and generate revenue. Following its oversubscribed Series B, the company plans to expand availability across North America and globally and to scale its virtual-first, data-driven pet care marketplace. It has formed a strategic partnership with PetMed Express to integrate telehealth and pharmacy fulfillment for U.S. pet owners. Vetster operates a marketplace that lets pet owners find, book and pay for veterinary services remotely via video, audio or text. Since launching in November 2020 the company has grown rapidly and says it has become the largest veterinary marketplace in the US and Canada, with thousands of veterinarians and technicians on the platform. The company reports exceeding its initial growth targets by more than 250 percent and bookings occur daily. Vetster is expanding its preventative and urgent care offerings and plans a mobile app for iOS and Android due in early June. The platform supports automated billing for providers and enables vets and technicians to set rates and schedules, creating new revenue streams outside the clinic. Management says the company is on a trajectory to expand into the UK, Australia, Europe and Asia‑Pacific.

Participated · Equity · Feb 2018

Jiffy On Demand is a mobile service platform that enables consumers to instantly book same-day service from top-rated, vetted home maintenance and repair professionals. The company vets each professional and backs all work with a satisfaction guarantee. Its platform also helps home service professionals build their business by automating marketing, lead generation, appointment scheduling and payment collection. Jiffy is available via iOS, Android and the web and is led by co-founder and CEO Ryan Shupak. The company recently launched in Boston and has additional North American cities in the pipeline for 2018. Jiffy raised additional funding to support platform development, marketing initiatives and geographic growth. Jiffy operates a mobile platform (iOS, Android, web) that connects homeowners with pre-vetted and insured home service professionals across 24 categories in the Greater Toronto Area. The product focuses on quick, small maintenance and repair jobs rather than large renovation projects, enabling same-day bookings. Since launching last fall the company reports growing popularity with both service professionals and homeowners and a run rate GMV of $3 million. Jiffy emphasizes delivering qualified professionals quickly without requiring homeowners to sift through many reviews. The company plans to use new funding to expand its presence in Toronto and to launch in a second market, Chicago. Contact and service information is available at jiffyondemand.com. Jiffy (branded Jiffy on Demand) operates an on-demand home maintenance service that lets users request help across dozens of categories such as painting, carpentry, gardening, plumbing, car detailing, and electrical. The company hand-picks and certifies tradespeople to ensure skilled professionals within its community. Jiffy launched its on-demand service in Toronto and went live just over a month before closing its seed round. The app is available on iOS and via the web. Jaimie Grossman is CEO and highlighted the strategic value of investor Jordan Banks. Jiffy plans to expand outside of Toronto in early 2016. Financially, the company closed just over $500,000 in seed funding to support its growth.

Participated · Series A · Jul 2017

SnapTravel provides a conversational AI travel assistant that curates personalized hotel offers via SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, RCS, Viber, Slack, Alexa and voice. The service is powered by machine learning and natural language processing, supplemented by occasional human intervention. The company says it has had conversations with over 2 million consumers across more than 150 countries. SnapTravel was co-founded by Hussein Fazal and Henry Shi in 2016 and is based in Toronto, Canada. The company plans to use new funding to further enhance the user experience, with continued development of its machine learning and NLP capabilities. No revenue or other financial metrics are provided in the article. SnapTravel provides an app-less hotel booking service that lets customers search and book hotels through messaging channels like Facebook Messenger, SMS and Viber, combining chatbots with human agents. The service filters thousands of hotels using machine learning to surface options based on price, location, quality and user preferences, and agents handle complex requests such as confirming check-ins or negotiating upgrades. SnapTravel is free to customers and earns revenue from commissions on hotel bookings; it reported over $1 million in revenue on Facebook Messenger and has since surpassed that figure. The company plans to invest its new funding in Natural Language Processing to reduce reliance on human agents as it scales, and to expand onto additional platforms such as WeChat and Line. The team includes roughly a dozen product engineers based in Toronto plus a U.S. operations team, and SnapTravel expects to grow to a 20–25 person team. SnapTravel operates a half-bot, half-human service for booking hotels, using a bot to handle most customer interactions and routing ambiguous cases to human agents. The platform filters thousands of hotels from numerous sources through an advanced machine learning algorithm to present the best options from a broad hotel inventory and partners. The company plans to use the new funding to launch its service and expand operations. SnapTravel was founded by Hussein Fazal and Henry Shi and is hiring new people to support growth. Financial details in the article note a $1.1M funding raise; no revenue or user metrics were provided.

Participated · Series B · Jun 2017

Figure 1 operates a specialty social network used by clinicians to view rare conditions, learn treatments, and teach cases through images and text-based case posts. Only verified medical professionals can post photos or comment, while anyone can join with a limited experience. The app supports text-only cases and has expanded language support in Spanish and Portuguese to serve a large Latin American user base. The company reports more than 2 million registered users and hundreds of thousands of monthly active users, with about two-thirds in the U.S. It has been experimenting with monetization via sponsored content and says revenue efforts are working, with sponsors responding strongly. Figure 1 is exploring premium features for institutions, new technologies and revenue streams, and has hired a senior machine-learning lead. The startup is four years old, roughly 50 people, and based in Toronto. Figure 1 operates a HIPAA-compliant medical photo sharing app often described as the "Instagram for Doctors," used by more than 500k medical professionals across 100 counties. The app organizes high-quality clinical images by anatomy and specialty, including X-rays, MRIs, CAT scans, ECGs, and EKGs, and is used by medical and nursing students as a study tool for exams like the USMLE and NCLEX. Four out of ten U.S. medical students use the app, and medical cases on the platform have been viewed one billion times by members. The company says it has no immediate plans to monetize the platform, prioritizing growth and user experience before launching paid offerings. Figure 1 plans to accelerate global expansion with a launch in Brazil, add Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese language support, and establish a small team in Asia to pursue partnerships. The startup has raised capital to support these plans, bringing its total funding to date to $9 million. Figure 1 is a Toronto-based, mobile-first network for healthcare professionals to share and discuss medical images and other content. Led by CEO Gregory Levey, the platform is used by more than 125,000 healthcare professionals at thousands of hospitals. The company maintains medical and nursing student ambassadors at 200 schools, including Johns Hopkins, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University Medical Center. Since launching in May 2013, users have viewed 100 million images on the platform. The company closed a $4M Series A and, in conjunction with the funding, added board members and an independent director; the startup is hiring. Figure 1 is a crowdsourced, searchable repository and mobile app that lets medical professionals upload, annotate and share clinical photos while preserving patient privacy. The app includes consent forms, auto-blocking of faces/text/distinctive markings, and adjustable share settings so users can comment, earmark or email images. Six months after launch the service had attracted tens of thousands of users and integrated with physician network Doximity. The founders are critical care physician Dr. Joshua Landy, mobile developer Richard Penner and writer Gregory Levey, and the startup and product were formed early this year. The company launched on iPhone and iPad in the U.S. and Canada, expanded to the U.K., and now plans to hire a developer to build desktop and Android versions in the coming months. Financially, Figure 1 completed a $2 million seed financing from venture and angel funds to support those product expansions.