Led · Series A · Jun 2021

GoodTime provides an AI-based interview scheduling and hiring experience solution that automates meeting coordination and measures DE&I in the interview process. The company says its platform can reduce time-to-hire by as much as 50% and save up to $500,000 per year in talent acquisition costs. GoodTime highlights customers including Box, Shopify, Zoom, Dropbox, Instacart, Slack, Pinterest, Stripe, Atlassian and Snapchat. It positions itself as the only HRtech solution that provides a way to measure and manage diversity, equity and inclusion for interview scheduling. The company plans to use new funding to accelerate innovation in hiring/candidate-experience solutions and to expand go-to-market growth across industries. GoodTime said it expects new innovations to launch in the second half of 2021. GoodTime builds an interview scheduling and management platform that uses natural language processing and the calendar as its organizing principle to link candidates with the right interviewers. The product factors in applicant and interviewer data such as gender, ethnicity, university, and prior work history to improve matching and coordination. Recruiting coordinators can manage the end-to-end interview process to reduce friction and speed hiring decisions. Customers like Airbnb and Dropbox have adopted the platform and reported applicants confirming interviews within three hours and time-to-hire reductions of about 40 percent. The company was founded by Ahryun Moon, Jasper Sone, and Peter Lee; Moon is CEO and previously worked as a recruiting coordinator at MuleSoft, Airbnb, and Dropbox. GoodTime is based in San Francisco, has 18 employees, graduated from the Alchemist Accelerator, and has reached profitability on the strength of its existing customers. GoodTime is building a calendar-centric HR tool that uses natural language processing to match job applicants with appropriate interviewers. It integrates with applicant tracking systems and extracts candidate and employee details from spreadsheets and documents to inform pairings based on prior work or university affiliations. The product also focuses on classifying calendar events to separate important meetings from reminders and other low-value items, enabling human-in-the-loop prioritization. GoodTime has early users and paying customers, including Airbnb, and has found product-market fit with Stripe, Thumbtack, and others. The team plans to hire in sales and engineering, with a particular emphasis on machine learning. The company raised a $2M seed to support product development and growth.

Led · Series A · Dec 2020

GoodTime.io announced it received $14.5 million in funding from Bullpen Management, GSV Asset Management, Array Ventures, KTB Ventures Inc., Smilegate Investment, and Atinum Investment Co., Ltd. The company closed that transaction in the fourth quarter of 2020. It also announced an additional $9.5 million in a Series A extension led by KTB Ventures Inc. The articles list the participating investors for the disclosed financings but do not describe the company’s product, customers, revenue, or users. The reports do not specify the use of proceeds or other financial metrics. No founding year or location is provided in the articles.

Participated · Series B · May 2018

MOLOCO builds machine-learning products for mobile app monetization, user acquisition and programmatic bidding via its MOLOCO Cloud DSP. The company is developing a Retail Media Platform (currently in beta) to help e-commerce sites generate sponsored ads and product recommendations. New funding will be used to expand its machine-learning engine, invest in R&D, product and engineering, hire additional staff, and grow MOLOCO Cloud into new verticals and geographic markets. MOLOCO says it has consistently grown in excess of 100% annually and has an annual net revenue run rate above $100 million. Its customers span small developers to companies with more than a billion users; notable clients include King Digital, Playrix and Netmarble, and some customers spend more than $1 million a month through MOLOCO Cloud. The company emphasizes privacy and customer data control as a differentiator versus walled gardens like Facebook and Google. Moloco provides a complete suite of proprietary cloud advertising solutions that enable mobile businesses to use data and machine learning to optimize acquisition, retention and monetization. The company has expanded its advertising reach substantially, facilitating more than 100 trillion bid requests on behalf of partners since 2018. Moloco currently serves more than 13 billion ad impressions monthly and reaches nearly 10 billion global devices monthly through 5.58 million publisher apps, including Nexon, Playrix and Netmarble. The company reports an annual revenue run rate of $400 million and is currently profitable. Moloco was founded by Ikkjin Ahn in 2013 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California, with offices in San Francisco, Seattle, London, Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo. Moloco’s core product is the Ad Cloud platform and a predictive ad performance engine powered by machine learning that enables publishers to run user acquisition and re-engagement campaigns and monetize marketing and advertising programs in-house. The platform integrates with industry exchanges including Google AdX and Twitter Mopub and supports solutions for large-scale mobile platforms, app publishers and ad networks. Moloco offers proprietary fraud tools (DoubleCheck) and reports the ability to handle more than 550,000 bid requests per second and to dynamically price and purchase ad space within 100 milliseconds. The company says DoubleCheck can isolate fraud at the ad network level, potentially saving more than 80% of marketing budgets and increasing expected real user growth by more than 24%. Moloco recently secured $11 million in a Series B financing and plans to use proceeds to advance development of Ad Cloud and related solutions and to expand sales and marketing initiatives. Headquartered in Palo Alto and founded in 2013, Moloco is privately held and led by co-founder and CEO Ikkjin Ahn with a team that includes former Google engineers and other ad‑tech veterans.

Led · Equity · Dec 2016

NoBroker operates a digital-first platform that lets users buy or rent homes without paying broker fees and manages related services. The company lists more than 7.5 million properties and says over 16 million people have used its services. Over time it has expanded into financial services (including rent-related products) and home services such as cleaning, furniture and movers and packers. It also runs NoBrokerhood, a community management service that lets residents connect, manage visitors and buy/sell within societies. NoBroker currently operates in major Indian cities including Bangalore, Delhi, Pune and Hyderabad and says it has grown three times year-over-year as mobility resumed. The founders plan to use fresh funds to expand to 50 cities over the next two to three years and deepen investments in resale and primary-sale verticals. NoBroker operates an online platform that connects people looking to rent or buy apartments directly with property owners, avoiding broker fees. Beyond listings, it has expanded into services including gatekeeping/society management, moving and packing, home loans, tenancy agreements, furniture and decor, and grocery partnerships. The company markets products such as NoBroker Pay, NoBroker Hood and NoBroker Home Services to deepen engagement and become a one-stop solution for tenants and owners. It has grown to serve a dozen cities after adding six in three months and reports more than 3.5 million properties registered and over 8.5 million individuals served. Its society-management service is used by over 2,000 societies housing more than 500,000 residents. NoBroker has begun monetizing new categories by taking a 10–20% cut on leads and has pursued partnerships such as with BigBasket to expand offerings. NoBroker is a Bangalore-based startup that connects renters and buyers directly to property owners to avoid real estate brokers. It operates over 2.5 million properties on its website and has served more than 6 million users to date, up from 1.5 million two years ago. The company generates revenue by limiting non-paying users to contacting nine property owners unless they pay for more contacts, and by selling services to property owners who pay for NoBroker representatives. NoBroker says it is increasingly reaching profitability. The startup will use the new capital to expand operations across India and to invest in its home store and financial services products. It faces competition from players such as NestAway and Oyo and local resistance from brokers, who have reportedly harassed employees and forced the company to delist its address from Google Maps. NoBroker is an India-based property startup that connects property owners with prospective buyers and rental tenants directly without brokers. The company operates in four cities — Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune — and says it has served 1.5 million customers to date, with 500,000 cumulative listings and 600,000 Android app downloads. It began monetizing for tenants earlier this year and has launched two initial packages for homeowners, estimating about 1,000 monthly paying homeowners after phasing out the free option for house hunters. Founders Amit Agarwal and Akhil Gupta say the business helps customers save roughly $3 million per month in broker fees. The company aims to reach breakeven within 24 months and says total capital raised now stands at over $20 million, which should provide roughly three years of runway. NoBroker plans to focus on building leadership in its current four cities before expanding into five or six more over the next 18 months and has piloted an unannounced test in Manila, though it is not prioritizing overseas expansion now. NoBroker operates a peer-to-peer rentals marketplace that connects homeowners and prospective tenants to remove brokers and agents from rental transactions. The service is live in four Indian cities, lists around 250,000 properties, and has about 650,000 registered users, facilitating roughly 500,000 connections per month. Its "click and earn" program generates roughly one-third of new listings by paying users to submit photos and details of offline properties. The company has begun monetizing through a freemium model with paid packages priced at 999 INR and 1,999 INR and provides customized legal rental documents to tenants. Management says about half of the previous round's funds remain in the bank and they expect to break even within the next 18 months. After consolidating its current cities and achieving profitability, NoBroker plans to target international expansion in Southeast Asia and Japan.

Led · Series B · Jan 2016

CARsgen Therapeutics focuses on the innovation and development of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapeutics. Its pipeline includes CT053, a fully human CAR-BCMA T-cell therapy that has received RMAT, PRIME and orphan designations in the US and EU, and CT041, a CAR‑Claudin18.2 T-cell therapy that received IND clearance and orphan drug designation from the U.S. FDA and is the first CAR‑Claudin18.2 therapy targeting solid tumors to enter clinical trials. CARsgen’s China entity received IND clearance from the NMPA for four CAR T programs, including CAR-GPC3, CAR-Claudin18.2, CAR-BCMA and CAR-CD19. The company intends to use new funding to accelerate ongoing clinical trials in China, the United States and Europe and to expand its commercial manufacturing facilities. Dr. Zonghai Li leads the company as Founder, President, CEO and CSO. Financially, CARsgen completed a USD186M Series C equity financing. CARsgen Therapeutics develops CAR-T cell therapies. The company has accumulated experience in target screening and validation, antibody screening and optimization, next-generation CAR-T technologies, and CMC process development, and has reported favorable clinical data. It signed a $60 million Pre-C financing framework agreement to support multiple CAR-T product IND filings and registration-enabling clinical advancement domestically and abroad. Management said 2018 would be a key year of accelerated development with planned filings in China and the United States. The company expects the financing and a corporate restructuring to lay a solid foundation for a future IPO. Guangliang Capital's founding partner Wang Wei publicly praised the company's technical capabilities and clinical progress. CARsgen Therapeutics is a Shanghai-based developer of CAR-T-based autologous immunotherapies focused on treating solid tumors. Its lead programs target EGFR for glioblastoma and GPC3 for hepatocellular carcinoma and lung squamous cell carcinoma. The company is enrolling patients in Phase 1 clinical studies in China for both programs, with results expected in December 2016. CARsgen plans to complete preclinical testing and file Investigational New Drug applications with the U.S. FDA for its anti-EGFR and anti-GPC3 programs by the second quarter of 2017. Led by president and CEO Zonghai Li, M.D., Ph.D., the private, venture-backed company intends to advance its CAR-T programs internationally. In January 2016 CARsgen completed a $30 million Series B to fund and advance its clinical development programs. CARsgen is a Shanghai-based immunotherapy company focused on developing chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapies for liver, lung, stomach and brain cancers. Its lead program, KJgpc3-001, is a GPC3-directed CAR-T that modifies patients' T cells to target glypican-3, a protein overexpressed in most hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tumors. In preclinical studies KJgpc3-001 eradicated HCC cells, and the company plans to initiate clinical studies in collaboration with Shanghai Cancer Institute and Shanghai Renji Hospital. CARsgen is advancing CAR-T candidates for lung and brain cancers in parallel. Led by CEO Li Zonghai, M.D., Ph.D., the company emphasizes expertise in cancer biology, cancer immunology and cellular therapy technology. CARsgen recently completed a Series A financing led by BVCF, with the amount undisclosed.