Participated · Equity · Oct 2021

GoCheck builds GoCheck Kids, a digital vision screening platform used by pediatric teams to prevent vision impairment and blindness in children. The platform is FDA-registered and CE-certified. GoCheck serves 6,500 pediatric teams at hospitals, private practices, schools, and screening organizations across three continents. Led by CEO Kevon Saber, the company focuses on supporting pediatric teams in early detection of vision problems. GoCheck intends to use new funding to grow its team, expand the platform, and deepen customer partnerships. GoCheck Kids offers an iPhone photoscreening app that captures images of children’s eyes and uses proprietary algorithms to detect amblyopia risk factors, delivering immediate results to clinicians. The app is FDA-registered and CE-certified and is used by over 4,500 pediatricians. GoCheck Kids says it reduces screening costs by over 60% versus traditional hardware and bills insurers under CPT codes 99177 and 99174; pricing starts at $149 per month per phone. The company highlights endorsements from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, and the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Co-founder David Huang, MD, PhD, who co-invented OCT, leads innovation for the product. Future plans include adding AI capabilities using Apple’s CoreML and ARKit and accelerating electronic health record integrations. Gobiquity develops mobile vision screening applications, with its flagship GoCheck Kids combining photoscreening and digital visual acuity in a single app. GoCheck Kids, launched in 2015, is used by more than 2,000 U.S. pediatricians to identify amblyopia risk factors. The company has surpassed 100,000 screenings and now averages over 3,000 children screened per week, representing over 300% annual growth. Gobiquity recently released a new iPhone app for health care providers and plans to extend the product to caregivers and into adult primary care. Management says it is committed to evolving a validated, portable, and affordable mobile screening portfolio to address both children and adults. The company positions its tools as enabling early detection and prevention of vision impairment.

Participated · Series D · Nov 2019

Sera Prognostics develops blood-based biomarker tests focused on maternal and neonatal health. Its first commercial product, the PreTRM® Test, is a clinically validated, commercially available blood-based biomarker test to accurately predict the risk of preterm birth. The company is led by Chairman and CEO Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D., M.S. Sera is building a pipeline of additional blood-based biomarker tests to predict other major pregnancy-related conditions beyond preterm birth. With the new financing the company plans to commercialize PreTRM® more broadly and accelerate development of its pipeline. It also intends to develop testing capacity to serve over 3 million annual U.S. pregnancies that are candidates for the PreTRM® Test. Sera Prognostics develops diagnostics to improve prenatal care by predicting individualized risk of preterm birth and other pregnancy complications. Its core product, the PreTRM test, is the only clinically-validated, commercially available biomarker blood test that assesses a woman’s individualized risk of premature delivery as early as 19 weeks' gestation. PreTRM measures proteins in the blood that are highly predictive of spontaneous preterm birth and is intended to enable earlier, more proactive clinical decisions designed to prolong gestation, improve neonatal health, and lower healthcare costs. The company plans to increase commercialization of PreTRM and to measure real-world clinical improvements and economic savings in collaboration with top health plans and providers. Sera is presented as a leading authority in biomarker preterm birth risk prediction, citing a key scientific publication in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Sera Prognostics is located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sera Prognostics, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, develops women's health diagnostics aimed at improving outcomes for pregnant women and newborns. Its lead product, the PreTRM test, uses a routine second‑trimester blood sample to provide an early, individualized assessment of a woman's risk of preterm birth. The company planned to launch PreTRM in 2015; upon U.S. launch commercial testing will be performed at its CLIA laboratory with results returned to referring physicians. Sera received a $10M debt facility from Square 1 Bank and intends to use the proceeds to increase commercialization efforts. The PreTRM test is intended to enable physicians to better understand individualized preterm birth risk earlier in pregnancy and personalize care. Sera Prognostics develops tests to diagnose preterm birth and other pregnancy complications. The company is based in Salt Lake City, UT. Its lead product is a preterm birth diagnostic test that the company is preparing for commercial launch. The company plans to use newly raised funds for clinical trials and the commercial launch of that test. Sera raised $19.3M in a Series A financing to support these plans. As part of the financing, representatives from lead investors will join the company's board and the company appointed Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D. as CEO.

Led · Equity · Jul 2019

NewsCred provides an enterprise content marketing platform (CMP) that combines technology, content, and services to help marketing teams ideate, plan, create, govern, and measure integrated campaigns. The company recently launched the Integrated Marketing Edition of its CMP, adding campaign planning and project management functionality to unify global marketing organizations. NewsCred says it is the leader in its category and has been positioned highest and furthest to the right in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Content Marketing Platforms for two consecutive years. It serves hundreds of enterprise customers, including Twitter, Fidelity, and Cisco, and claims to be the largest in its category in terms of revenue. Future plans include increasing R&D investment in integrated marketing and work management capabilities, broadening integrations with the marketing tech ecosystem, and expanding field operations across the US, EMEA, and APAC. The company intends to bolster support for its growing enterprise customer base as it scales globally. NewsCred, founded in 2008, offers a “SaaS platform plus marketplace” that lets brands plan and manage content-marketing campaigns and source content from licensed publications and freelance writers. Customers include Barclays, Cisco, NASDAQ, Pepsi, Toyota and Visa. CEO Shafqat Islam says the company’s software has been a major driver of growth and that the platform and marketplace complement each other. The company reports its annualized revenue run rate has tripled in the past year, and pieces of content created on the platform have increased by 182 percent. NewsCred plans to continue expanding the software so it can serve as the planning and orchestration tool for a brand’s entire marketing efforts, including planning for channels such as TV advertising (though not buying TV ads). The company argues its background in content gives it an edge because every marketing channel requires content as fuel. NewsCred operates an end-to-end content marketing platform that combines a content-licensing business with a freelancer network called The NewsRoom and workflow/analytics tooling. Its content-licensing partners include publishers such as The New York Times, Reuters, and Getty Images, which NewsCred says remain the foundation of its services. The NewsRoom supplies custom-written pieces from freelancers paid at premium rates (about $500 for a blog post and $1,000 for a researched article). The company counts clients including Procter & Gamble, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Sprint, Xerox, Visa, Bank of America, AIG, The Hearst Corporation, and Time Inc. NewsCred employs more than 120 people and plans to more than double the size of its sales team; management intends to use new funding for sales hiring, marketing, and positioning against larger competitors. CEO and co-founder Shafqat Islam emphasizes building a full "content marketing stack" spanning planning, approvals, and analytics. NewsCred licenses articles, images, and videos from publishers including The New York Times and The Economist and packages them for brand marketing campaigns. Its platform combines technology and an editorial team to select and distribute content via web, email, and social networks for clients such as Pepsi, Toyota, and Johnson & Johnson. The company works with more than 2,500 news sources and reports that 60% of its customers are Fortune 500 companies. Revenue has grown 11-fold over the past year, and NewsCred reports a 540% increase in customers. Founded in 2008, the company has shifted product focus over time and acquired publishing startup Daylife as it moved toward content licensing for brands. Next steps include international expansion and partnering with smaller publications to broaden its content supply. NewsCred has repositioned itself as a B2B newswire, licensing content from more than 700 premium media brands and offering access through a paid news API. Its in-house editorial team filters and curates thousands of articles for each client, and the company uses proprietary semantic and natural language processing technology to organize 215K full-text articles from 700+ sources across 50 countries, in eight languages, into 20 categories and 47K topics. The platform is delivery- and platform-agnostic, providing content, images, and multimedia in XML, RSS, or JSON for web, mobile, tablet, and social integrations. Revenue is generated via monthly API licensing fees based on story volume and licensed sources, and all revenue is shared with content providers; the company is already paying some sources six-figure amounts. Target customers are publishers and brands seeking fully licensed full-text articles, photos, video, targeted editorial sections, and related advertising opportunities. The company pivoted twice previously and is positioning this model as a reinvention of the traditional newswire service.

Participated · Series F · May 2019

Aryaka provides a fully managed SD‑WAN platform that bundles a purpose‑built secure private network, global connectivity, WAN optimization, orchestration, edge devices and security in a single managed service. The company has built out global points‑of‑presence (POPs), Network Operations Centers (NOCs) and 24x7 support to deliver services at scale. Aryaka cites partnerships with major public cloud providers including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google and Oracle, and with security vendors such as Palo Alto Networks, Symantec and Zscaler to extend its multi‑cloud and edge security capabilities. In the last twelve months the company has added thousands of globally managed sites and reported significantly larger annual recurring revenue streams. Aryaka serves more than 800 global customers and says it is seeing larger deal sizes and continued global customer expansion. The company plans to use new funding to scale business operations, grow revenues and hire additional talent to accelerate its market momentum. Aryaka provides a global SD-WAN platform delivered as a service that combines a purpose-built private network, SD-WAN, optimization and acceleration techniques, connectivity to cloud platforms, and network visibility. The company is led by President and CEO Shawn Farshchi and recently added CFO Aidan Cullen. It is based in Milpitas, California. Aryaka now serves more than 500 global enterprise customers with sites in 63 countries. In January 2017 it completed a $45M Series D financing led by Third Point Ventures with participation from new investor Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners and existing investors. The company intends to use the funds to expand its global reach. Aryaka offers Aryaka ONE, an integrated platform that addresses WAN needs including optimized connectivity for geographically dispersed offices, application delivery, and cloud networks. The company delivers WAN Optimization-as-a-Service that creates an optimized, fully meshed network for accessing on‑premises applications and cloud services. Its platform enables globally distributed employees, customers, partners, and mobile users to reach centralized enterprise applications and public web resources from anywhere. Customers include Fortune 100 companies as well as small- and medium-sized businesses with global operations. Led by founder and CEO Ajit Gupta, Aryaka is based in Milpitas, California. The company raised funding to scale its global sales infrastructure. Aryaka, led by founder and CEO Ajit Gupta and based in Milpitas, CA, delivers an application and network performance platform for globally distributed enterprises. Its product suite includes WAN Optimization-as-a-Service, Network-as-a-Service (including Network-OnDemand), Cloud Network-as-a-Service and Application Delivery-as-a-Service, all designed to optimize connectivity and application access. All services provide end-to-end visibility and 24×7 support. The company serves hundreds of customers across more than 3,000 customer sites in 280 cities and 48 countries, across industries such as technology, manufacturing, logistics, media, financial services, architecture and government. Aryaka intends to use new funding to accelerate global expansion and move toward profitability. Aryaka is a Milpitas, Calif.-based provider of a cloud-based WAN optimization as-a-Service platform that aims to solve application and network performance issues faced by distributed enterprises. Its platform eliminates the need for expensive and complex WAN optimization appliances and long-haul connectivity, and enhances collaboration across corporate locations, data centers and cloud services. The company serves customers across six continents. It intends to use the $25M Series C funding to improve market penetration and expand its global reach. Ajit Gupta is founder, president and CEO. The company positions its service as an alternative to on-premises WAN appliances for distributed enterprise networks.

Participated · Equity · Jan 2019

Gynesonics develops minimally invasive, incision-free, uterus-preserving transcervical technologies for diagnostic and therapeutic applications, with a focus on treating symptomatic uterine fibroids. Its flagship product, the FDA-cleared Sonata System®, provides diagnostic intrauterine imaging and transcervical fibroid treatment and is CE-marked and approved for sale in the EU, UK, Switzerland, and the US. Sonata enables fibroid removal in roughly a 45-minute outpatient procedure, with most patients resuming regular activity the next day. The company is led by President and CEO Skip Baldino. Gynesonics intends to use the new funds to expand operations and broaden its business reach. Financially, the company has raised a total of $67.2M to date following the latest financing activity. Gynesonics develops minimally invasive, incision‑free, uterus‑preserving transcervical technologies; its flagship product is the Sonata System for diagnostic intrauterine imaging and transcervical treatment of symptomatic uterine fibroids. The Sonata System is FDA cleared, CE marked, and approved for sale in the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. The company positions Sonata as a minimally invasive, incisionless alternative with proven clinical outcomes while noting common side effects and potential treatment risks. In early March Gynesonics appointed industry veteran Skip Baldino as President and CEO; he will also serve on the board, succeeding Christopher Owens. Gynesonics closed a $25M financing to help drive growth, accelerate adoption, and expand worldwide commercialization of the Sonata System. The company says its prior pivotal clinical trial, regulatory clearances, and initial product launch established a foundation of adoption and revenue growth to build on. Gynesonics develops minimally invasive, incision-free, uterus-preserving transcervical technologies for diagnostic and therapeutic applications in women’s health. Its core product, the Sonata System, combines real-time intrauterine ultrasound guidance with targeted radiofrequency ablation (RFA) to offer an incision-free, outpatient procedure for treating multiple uterine fibroid types. The company has secured FDA clearance for the Sonata System. The Sonata System is also CE marked and approved for sale in the European Union and the United States. Gynesonics is led by President and CEO Chris Owens. Financially, the company received a $50M senior secured term loan from Runway Growth Capital. Gynesonics develops minimally invasive, transcervical, uterus-preserving technologies, principally the Sonata System. The Sonata System combines the first intrauterine ultrasound with a proprietary radiofrequency ablation device to provide a transcervical, incision-free treatment for symptomatic uterine fibroids. Sonata enables targeting and optimizing ablations via the SMART Guide and is designed to access a wide range of fibroid types many current hysteroscopy methods cannot treat. The system has CE Mark approval for the European Union and received U.S. FDA 510(k) clearance in August. Gynesonics will use financing proceeds to launch global commercialization, further develop the Sonata technology platform, and fund additional clinical research to support reimbursement and market development. The company is headquartered in Redwood City, California and projects a $3 billion–$4 billion global market opportunity for Sonata, including more than $1 billion in the U.S. Gynesonics develops the Sonata™ System, a minimally invasive, incision‑free device that uses radiofrequency energy under intrauterine sonography guidance to ablate uterine fibroids. The Sonata system includes the SMART Targeting Guide and provides transcervical, uterus‑preserving access designed to avoid the peritoneal cavity. Sonata is CE marked and approved for sale in the European Union but is not available for sale in the United States; the company announced FDA approval of the SONATA IDE pivotal trial in October 2014. Gynesonics is privately held and headquartered in Redwood City, California. The company will use the financing to fund its strategic clinical plan, including current and future U.S. and global trials, as well as programs in operations, R&D, market adoption, and global regulatory and reimbursement efforts. The announcement cites the large, underserved market for symptomatic fibroids and the potential to reduce invasive procedures such as hysterectomy.