The Venture Codex

Participated · Series A · Aug 2024

Prana Thoracic develops the Prana System, an image-guided, minimally invasive platform designed to enable precision surgical solutions that conserve healthy tissue and support personalized treatment plans for lung cancer. The company targets earlier interventions for patients and says the system can be applied across a range of conditions including lung cancer. Prana is also exploring use of the technology in other soft tissues and investigating integration with ablation and robotic systems. Its team includes surgeons, engineers, and entrepreneurs and is led by CEO and co-founder Joanna Nathan. Financially, the company has raised $9 million to date—an initial $3M, a $3M non-dilutive grant, and a $3M Series A extension that was oversubscribed by 30%. The new funding will be used to accelerate product development and advance clinical and regulatory plans. Prana Thoracic is developing the ThoraCore System, a minimally invasive, lung-sparing tool designed to target hard-to-reach pulmonary nodules and enable definitive diagnosis earlier in the lung cancer care pathway. The company’s technology was developed on the Texas Medical Center campus in collaboration with Precision Thoracic Corporation and inventor Edward M. Boyle, MD. Prana is led by CEO and co-founder Joanna Nathan. The company announced the closing of a $3.0 million founding Series A financing and previously received a $3.0 million award from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas. Proceeds from the Series A and the CPRIT award will be used for product development and to support first-in-human clinical studies. Prana positions the ThoraCore System to improve diagnostic access for patients with challenging lung nodules and accelerate earlier intervention. Prana Thoracic is developing a minimally invasive, tissue-sparing lung tissue excision tool intended to provide definitive diagnosis of suspicious pulmonary nodules earlier in the patient journey. The company says the device targets nodules that are challenging to sample, filling a gap between needle biopsy and open chest procedures. Prana Thoracic aims to commercialize the technology through first-in-human studies supported by the award. The company notes that lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. and that screening rates are low despite large eligible populations. Prana Thoracic partnered with the Johnson & Johnson MedTech Center for Device Innovation for design and early testing. Joanna Nathan is CEO and founder, and Dr. Edward Boyle is a founder and one of the inventors of the technology.

Participated · Series B · May 2024

Materna Medical develops technologies addressing unmet needs in women's pelvic health, with a mission to transform the standard of care in OBGYN. Its first product, Milli, is a vaginal dilator originally launched as a wellness trainer in 2019 and cleared by the FDA in 2023 for over-the-counter sale. Milli outcomes have been studied in a post-market prospective virtual study called POMPOM. Materna's second product, Ellora, is an investigational device intended to reduce pelvic floor muscle injury during vaginal delivery and is being evaluated in the randomized EASE trial across 20 U.S. hospitals. The company recently raised $5 million in a B3 financing to support completion of the EASE trial readout, expand Milli channel access, and prepare Ellora's commercialization and manufacturing. Materna is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Participated · Equity · Feb 2020

Your Fare provides an online ordering management solution that integrates multiple third-party delivery services into a single platform for restaurants. Built for restaurant operators by restaurant operators, the company works directly with restaurants to create customized strategies for using online ordering platforms. The Restaurant Portal tracks order details, accounting data and customer information, while the Tablet Application and POS integration allow staff to receive orders directly in the kitchen. The system is designed to increase operational efficiencies and profit margins for restaurant operators. Led by CEO and co-founder Chris Monk, the company plans to use new funding to expand the team, drive growth and invest in its software. Financially, the company completed a $2.4M equity raise to support those initiatives.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2019

Spruce is an Austin, TX–based provider of lifestyle services to the multifamily industry offering Housekeeping, Chores, Pet Care, and Laundry through an app that lets residents book certified, insured, background-checked professionals. The company serves residents at more than 2,300 select apartment communities nationwide and operates with a fully distributed workforce. Over the past year Spruce announced three major new partnerships, expanded into the Twin Cities and Jacksonville, FL, and launched a full-service short-term rental turnover vertical that includes customized turnovers, inventory management, and linen management. It initially entered the short-term rental market through a national partnership with RealPage and has since expanded that offering. Spruce plans to use the new capital to nearly double headcount with hiring focused on product, engineering, and sales, and will expand its Austin headquarters to accommodate staff. Leadership changes include newly appointed CEO Steven Pho and founder Ben Johnson moving to President; Manish Narula of SoftBank will join the board as an observer. Spruce provides housekeeping, chores, pet care, laundry and dry cleaning services to the multifamily industry through a resident-facing app. Residents can book services from certified, insured and background-checked professionals. The company currently serves more than 750 apartment communities across the US and has more than 40 employees. Led by founder and CEO Ben Johnson, Spruce connects property residents with on-demand service providers. The company plans to use new funding to expand its offerings to more residents and properties and to continue its national roll-out. Spruce provides hotel-inspired services to the multifamily industry, offering daily chores, housekeeping, pet care, laundry and dry cleaning. Led by founder and CEO Ben Johnson and based in Houston, Texas, it serves more than 200 select communities owned and/or managed by 13 of the 15 largest Texas apartment companies. The company manages logistics and operations of local service provider partners and requires background checks, insurance, comprehensive training, scheduling processes, quality-control standards, and Spruce-branded uniforms. Spruce also operates a dedicated national customer service team that provides full-time support via text, email and phone directly to residents. The company continues development of its software platform to support operations. It plans to use new funds to expand market presence outside Texas, beginning with Denver, and to scale sales and marketing capabilities.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2018

Liongard is a software-as-a-service automation platform that extracts and normalizes IT system data to provide unified, actionable intelligence for MSPs. Its product delivers visibility across each element of the IT stack to reduce time spent researching customer issues and improve response times. The company says nearly 2,000 MSP partners use its platform in support of more than 60,000 end customers. Liongard positions its platform as an operational advantage that drives higher profits and better customer experience for MSPs. The company has won workplace and industry awards and emphasizes continual product and partner-focus improvements. The recent funding is intended to expand growth and advance the company toward profitability. Liongard offers Roar, a SaaS platform that creates a single dashboard across data systems and enables automation for MSPs to perform auditing and security. The company says Roar has seen rapid adoption within the MSP ecosystem and will be the focus of the new funding. Liongard reported customers in 20 countries, triple-digit customer growth and a doubling of staff over the past 18 months. CEO Joe Alapat co-founded the company with COO Vincent Tran in 2015 and leads product and go-to-market efforts. The new capital is intended to further advance the solution's capabilities and improve customer service. Total funding now sits at over $20 million following this round. Liongard provides MSPs with the Roar platform to automate IT documentation and increase visibility into end-customer environments beyond endpoints into on-premise applications, network devices, and cloud services. The company says MSPs using its platform report faster client onboarding, improved time-to-resolution for issues, and increased client retention. Founded by Joe Alapat and Vincent Tran, Liongard focuses on expanding capabilities for onboarding and account management to better support MSP partners. The company intends to use the new funding to accelerate development of the Roar platform and broaden its feature set for MSP workflows. Liongard recently secured a $4.5M Series A to fund that product and go-to-market expansion. Liongard provides IT service providers with Roar, a platform that delivers accurate, up-to-date documentation of IT asset details and metrics across cloud services, network devices and on-premise targets. Roar captures users, privileges, rules, expirations and system-specific settings and integrates with existing documentation platforms (CMDBs) to automatically update configuration details typically maintained manually. The platform enables system discovery, documentation, change notification and actionable alerting of misconfigurations. Founded in 2015 and based in Houston, Texas, the company is led by CEO Joe Alapat and COO Vincent Tran. Liongard closed a $1.25M seed round and intends to use the funds to expand market reach and bring automation to IT operations teams managing technology at scale. Backers include Richard Yoo, Jared Slosberg, Station Houston Ventures, Gestalt Cybersecurity, and members of the Houston Angel Network, TiE Houston and the UH Cougar Venture Fund.