The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Mar 2015

Lendio operates a high-tech marketplace that matches small-business borrowers with a pool of suitable lenders via a 15-minute online application, machine learning matching, and expert loan review—often facilitating funding within 24 hours. The company also offers an online bookkeeping platform, Sunrise by Lendio, used by hundreds of small-business owners and slated for deeper integration with its loan marketplace. Lendio plans to use new capital to expand its lender services division, enhance its white-labeled SaaS application for banks and lenders, and grow bookkeeping and lender-facing offerings. Over the past two years Lendio’s year-over-year growth has averaged 75%, and it has become the largest small-business financing marketplace in the U.S. To date the company has facilitated over 100,000 loans totaling $2 billion. Lendio reports that its small-business clients have generated an estimated $6.5 billion in economic output and created nearly 45,000 jobs. Lendio is a Salt Lake City, UT-based online marketplace that helps small-business owners find short-term specialty loans and long-term low-interest traditional loans. The company offers a free online service intended to decrease the time and effort it takes to secure funding. Led by founder and CEO Brock Blake, Lendio connects borrowers with loan options via its platform. In Q3 2016 the platform facilitated over $63M in loans to more than 2,900 businesses across 46 states. The company intends to use recent funding to accelerate growth through marketing, sales and brand awareness. Lendio operates a free online marketplace that matches small business owners with a range of loan products, from short-term specialty financing to long-term low-interest loans, delivered within minutes. The company is led by founder and CEO Brock Blake. In March 2015 Lendio raised $20.5M in funding to support growth. Management says the proceeds will be used to accelerate online innovation, expand its partnership program and grow its team of trusted loan advisors. The company also announced board additions tied to the round. No operating metrics or prior financing details are provided in the article. Lendio, founded by Brock Blake and Levi King in 2011, operates a marketplace that helps Main Street small businesses find suitable loans and lenders. The platform aggregates more than 3,500 loan options across hundreds of partner lenders and asks business owners four questions to build a profile and surface appropriate products. It integrates via APIs with tech-savvy lenders to enable often same-day pre-approval and to streamline underwriting handoffs. Lendio says it has helped hundreds of thousands of small business owners connect with loans and reports roughly a 70% approval rate for applicants; the platform also offers tools to help unapproved applicants prepare. The company positions itself as a next-gen broker that reduces friction and cuts out traditional middlemen. Financially, Lendio recently closed new financing that increased its total invested capital. Lendio, formerly FundingUniverse.com, operates a marketplace that connects small-business owners with banks, credit unions, and other lending sources. The platform uses technology to identify loan categories and the specific lenders most likely to approve an application based on credit, industry, revenue, and other parameters. Less than three months after its debut, users had requested about $1 billion in business loans through the service. Lendio says it works with roughly 3,500 lenders and provides access to more than 13,000 lending options. The company has been expanding its executive team, adding hires such as Zinch co-founder Brad Hagen and Nelson James of SEO.com. It has also offered promotional pricing to early users (e.g., a TechCrunch reader discount) as it scales adoption.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2014

GutCheck offers a global, online agile market research platform that instantly recruits target audiences and delivers quick consumer reads. The company pairs its flexible quantitative and qualitative platform with a full-service team to provide insights customers need to act. GutCheck reports triple‑digit growth and sees rising demand for agile research across technology, financial services, and healthcare. Recent hires include a Chief Research Officer and a Chief Commercial Officer; the company will use new capital to invest in research, products, and engineering to create new offerings. GutCheck has raised a total of $25 million and closed a $12 million Series D. Headquartered in Denver, the company said it will announce additional strategic initiatives and will release an e-book on the state of agile market research in November. GutCheck offers an on-demand solution that enables researchers, marketers, brand managers and product managers at corporations and agencies to conduct internet-based research at any stage of the customer or product lifecycle and obtain immediate insights from specific consumer segments. The company is led by CEO Matt Warta and counts clients such as Subway, Logitech, The Home Depot, P&G, Hallmark, Intel and Symantec. GutCheck is based in Denver, CO. It closed a $4M funding round to support its operations. The company intends to use the funds to continue expansion of sales, marketing and product development. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article. GutCheck provides a self-service online platform that lets marketing agencies, brand managers and enterprise clients recruit and conduct one-on-one qualitative interviews. Users sign up, define target demographics, build a project and chat guide, and GutCheck sources qualified participants from a roughly 4 million-person pool supplied by partner providers. Interviews are delivered via a web-based client at a listed price of $40 per 30-minute interview, with partner providers receiving a cut of revenues. The company positions itself as the "SurveyMonkey for qualitative research" and aims to simplify and bring qualitative research online. GutCheck was founded by Matt Warta, Carl Rossow and Jen Drolet and is currently in beta testing, with an official launch expected in the next few weeks. The startup has raised a $2 million Series A to support its growth.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2012

SendGrid provides a cloud-based customer communication platform for engagement and business growth. Led by CEO Sameer Dholakia, the company powers transactional and marketing email delivery for a broad set of customers. It currently delivers over 30 billion emails each month for more than 120,000 active customers, including 42,000 paying customers, across over 100 countries. Notable customers cited include Airbnb, Pandora, HubSpot, Spotify, Uber, FourSquare, Intuit and Costco. The company said it will use the new funding to accelerate its product roadmap—specifically its Marketing Campaigns email marketing product and Expert Services offerings—and to support global expansion. SendGrid is based in Denver, CO. SendGrid provides an email delivery platform used by 180,000 web application companies and developers, including Uber, FourSquare, Pinterest, Airbnb, Twilio, Spotify and Pandora. Founded in 2009 as part of TechStars and led by recently appointed CEO Sameer Dholakia, the company is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. The platform offers tools to improve email deliverability, surface actionable insights, and scale to meet high volumes of email. SendGrid intends to use new funding to expand platform functionality and increase channels to market. The company is backed by a mix of institutional and individual investors, which supports its continued product and go-to-market growth. SendGrid is a cloud-based SMTP email delivery and management service that helps businesses manage transactional emails. Its platform handles subscription management, bounce management, complaint feedback and provides analytics including request tracking, bounces, spam reports, invalid email requests, click tracking and unsubscribes. The service targets customers sending from ~100K emails per month up to millions, with clients such as Foursquare, Spotify, Twilio, Airbnb, Pinterest, Path and Hootsuite; plans range from free to $400 per month and include pay-as-you-go. Operational metrics reported in the article show SendGrid sends 2.6 billion emails per month, has sent 26 billion total, tracks over 400 million events per day, and grew to about 40,000 customers in 2011. The company was incubated in TechStars and has partnerships with Windows Azure (including a 25,000 free-emails-per-month package on sign-up) and RackSpace. SendGrid faces competition from Amazon Web Services and AuthSmtp and is focusing on product development, hiring, expanded operations, improved customer experience, and international expansion. SendGrid provides businesses a platform to manage transactional emails—handling subscription, bounce management, complaint feedback, deliverability and analytics for high-volume senders. The service is used by startups and larger customers, including Swipely, Hootsuite and Mychurch. At the time of the article SendGrid had processed roughly 1.2 billion transactional emails, had 400 direct-paying customers (up from 100 in December) and about 3,000 total users. Pay plans range from free to $800/month, with the average paying customer on the $79.95 “Silver” package. The company reported it was profitable, having “broken the profit barrier” in January. Product roadmaps focus on small add-ons (a newsletter creator), more customizable bounce management and improved usability as volume scales. SendGrid offers outbound email servers and analytics designed to improve delivery rates and solve scalability problems for transactional emails such as sign-up confirmations, shipping alerts, and notifications. The service includes CAN-SPAM compliance, link tracking, open-rate reporting, and metrics for clicks, opens, unsubscribes, spam reports, and bounces without requiring code. Incubated by TechStars, SendGrid targets developers and businesses that need reliable programmatic email delivery. At the time of the article the company had 100 paying customers and had delivered over 100 million emails on their behalf. The product emphasizes both deliverability and analytics to reduce operational overhead for customer teams. SendGrid said it will use the funding to expand development, marketing, and sales efforts.

Participated · Equity · Jan 2012

Balihoo provides Local Marketing Automation (LMA) technology and services that help national brands automate and scale local marketing execution. Its platform enables brands to control local marketing and the customer experience closer to the point of purchase and currently powers marketing activations for over 300,000 local marketers. Balihoo enhanced its platform with a Localized Social Media feature that allows corporate Facebook pages to supplement national content with locally provided, market-specific content. The company reported over 60% year-over-year revenue growth through 2012 and continued customer growth across financial services, retail, consumer brands, home goods and home improvement in the first half of 2013. Balihoo says it will use new funding to further invest in technology, product innovations and to support continued business growth. The company has received industry recognition, including being named to Outside Magazine’s Best Places to Work in 2013. Balihoo offers a Local Marketing Automation platform that automates local marketing execution and gives national brands control over the customer experience closer to the point of purchase. The company serves national brands across insurance, manufacturing and healthcare, with customers including Kohler, Pearle Vision, Geico and 1-800DOCTORS.com. Balihoo combines technology and services to help brands raise local visibility and drive regional sales through local outlets. The business has experienced triple-digit revenue growth for the past three years. Balihoo has received industry recognition, including appearing on the INC 500 list (2010, 2011), a 2010 Red Herring 100 North America award, and being named a 2010 Gartner “Cool Vendor” in marketing technology. The company plans to use recent financing to expand its customer base and reach additional market segments that can benefit from local marketing automation. Balihoo provides a service that helps national brands automate and manage local marketing efforts. Its platform includes an ad builder that can generate advertising for various media and tools for ad fulfillment and planning. Brands can grant access to local affiliates and franchises so campaigns stay consistent across regions. The service aims to reduce redundant costs caused by regional franchises recreating ads and to improve brand recognition by increasing consistency. Balihoo has been operating since 2006 and has raised over $12.5 million in total funding. The company recently closed a $7 million funding round led by OpenView Venture Partners.

Participated · Series B · Sep 2011

TechMediaNetwork publishes technology and science news and reviews across an owned-and-operated website network and via syndication partners. Its network includes sites such as Space.com, LAPTOP, Newsarama, TechNewsDaily, TopTenREVIEWS, iPadNewsDaily and SecurityNewsDaily. The company distributes content through its own sites and syndication partners including Yahoo, MSNBC.com and the websites of Fox News and CBS News. TMN says it will use new capital to complete additional acquisitions (it acquired the LAPTOP mobile technology magazine and website last June), expand its news operations, and increase distribution and content monetization. The business reports more than 24 million monthly visitors across its network. As part of the recent financing, ABS Capital Partners will add partners to TMN’s board.