Led · Equity · Mar 2022

Tickled Media is a Singapore-based online content and community platform serving parents. The company publishes parenting content and operates community features for its audience. The article identifies Tickled Media primarily as a content and community platform for parents in Singapore. No operational metrics, revenue figures, or user counts were disclosed in the article. The piece notes a corporate filing reporting a capital injection. Beyond the filing and platform description, the article gives no additional product road map or future plans.

Led · Series B · Oct 2018

AnyMind offers a suite of products for brands and online operators, including conversational commerce AnyChat, e-commerce management AnyX, manufacturing AnyFactory and logistics AnyLogi. The company integrates with marketplaces such as Shopee, Rakuten, Lazada, Amazon and Shopify and supports more than 1,000 brands, 1,110+ publishers and 1,400+ creators. AnyMind operates 17 offices across 13 markets with over 1,000 employees and reports $174 million in revenue. It grew through aggressive acquisitions (POKKT, Moindy, Acqua Media, LYFT and ENGAWA) and has retained many acquired founders in leadership roles. Management says it plans to use the latest funding to make additional acquisitions in Japan and globally. AnyMind began as an internet advertising business (formerly AdAsia) and has expanded into HR and broader marketing services, plus a new creators network. The company is moving into outdoor advertising in Thailand via a joint venture with VGI and has acquired Thai YouTube media company Moindy. It recently launched CastingAsia Creators Network to complement its marketing and media units. AnyMind says it has been profitable since early 2017; reported 2017 revenue was $26M (up from $12.9M the prior year) and the CEO expected revenue for the current year to be more than double 2017. The business operates across 11 Asian markets, with 12 offices (including a product development center in Vietnam), about 330 staff and more than 1,000 clients across three businesses. The company also maintains a sizeable office in Bangkok as it pursues regional expansion. AnyMind Group is a Singapore-based holding group (formed this year) that applies AI across online advertising, marketing, influencer and HR products, including AdAsia, TalentMind and CastingAsia. AdAsia offers ad solutions to publishers and advertisers, TalentMind focuses on HR, and CastingAsia handles influencer marketing. The company has been profitable since early 2017 and reported $26 million in revenue for 2017, up from $12.9 million in 2016, and expected 2018 revenue to be more than double 2017. AnyMind operates in 11 Asian markets with 12 offices (including a product development center in Vietnam), roughly 330 staff and serves over 1,000 clients; Southeast Asia supplies the majority of revenue while its one-year Japan operation accounts for about 30 percent. The company plans to expand market share across Asia, pursue strategic acquisitions, enter new markets such as India and the Middle East next year, and build additional software based on its AI technology. Leadership has indicated an intention to pursue an IPO around 2020, with potential destinations including Tokyo, New York or Hong Kong.

Participated · Series E · Aug 2018

freee offers a software platform that automates accounting tasks for small businesses. The company was founded in 2012 by Daisuke Sasaki and launched its service in 2013. It has grown to over 1 million business accounts and more than 5,000 certified accountants advising clients on the platform. freee intends to use the new funding to accelerate growth and build a broader platform for small businesses. The company is based in Tokyo, Japan and has attracted multiple strategic and venture backers over time. freee offers a SaaS-based accounting platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses in Japan. The service is used by over 120,000 SMBs and was launched in March 2013. freee has expanded bank coverage to support 1,600+ local banks, added mobile apps for iOS and Android, and integrated with SMB tools such as Square and Recruit’s AirRegi. The company operates a freemium model; paid plans start at 980 JPY (~$10) per month per business. freee intends to continue product development and broaden feature integrations to strengthen its position in the Japanese SMB market. The company was founded in July 2012 by CEO Daisuke Sasaki. Freee provides online accounting software for Japanese SMBs that syncs with bank and credit card accounts to categorize income and spending and automate bookkeeping. The product supports over 1,600 local banks, offers iOS and Android apps, and integrates with SMB tools such as Square and AirRegi. Founded in July 2012 by Daisuke Sasaki and launched in March 2013, the service is used by over 70,000 SMBs in Japan. Since launch the company has expanded bank coverage and added features to improve the product. The company plans to use new funding to further product development, increase customer support capabilities, and expand marketing activities. The recent fundraise is part of the company’s efforts to scale its offering across Japanese SMBs. freee is a Japanese cloud-based accounting software startup that automates bookkeeping for small businesses. The product syncs with bank and credit card accounts and categorizes transactions using text analysis, and can generate financial statements for tax filing. Since launching in March, 6,500 Japanese SMBs have signed up for the software's free trial. Founder Daisuke Sasaki, who previously led SMB marketing at Google in Asia‑Pacific, built the product to address inefficient manual bookkeeping practices. The company cites roughly six million SMBs in Japan and less than 1% penetration for cloud-based accounting, indicating a sizable growth opportunity. freee plans to use funding to accelerate product development — increasing bank and credit card coverage, integrating with point-of-sale systems, adding collaboration and payroll features, and refining the user interface.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2018

Catalog is a Boston startup founded in 2016 by MIT scientists, including CEO Hyunjun Park, building a synthetic DNA-powered data storage and computing platform. Its proprietary data-encoding scheme minimizes de novo DNA synthesis to enable practical DNA-based information storage and computation. Catalog’s custom DNA writer, Shannon, is designed to write over 10MB/sec and can store up to 1.63TB of compressed data in a single run. The platform enables data management, computation, and automation, and Catalog plans to invest in computation functions over the next two to three years. The company expects to commercialize the platform around 2025 and will continue supporting collaborators and partners in the DNA ecosystem. Catalog is a member of the DNA Storage Alliance, works with about a dozen co-development partners in the U.S. and Europe, and recently opened an office in Seoul for Asia expansion. Expected applications include fraud detection, image processing for defect discovery in manufacturing, and digital signal processing such as seismic processing. Catalog develops a DNA-based platform for large-scale digital data storage and computation. Its core product is a custom-developed DNA writer and storage system called Shannon that writes at over 10 Mb/sec, generates over a trillion identifiers in a single run, and can store up to 1.63 Tb of compressed data per run. The company converts binary data into combinations of pre-synthesized DNA molecules using technology similar to inkjet printers, developed in collaboration with Cambridge Consultants. Catalog says its approach can hold a million times more data in the same volume as magnetic and solid-state media. Founded in 2016 by MIT scientists and led by CEO and co-founder Hyunjun Park and newly appointed CTO Dave Turek, the company plans to use new funding for early product trials and continued research and development. Catalog has raised $21M to date, including the $10M Series A announced in this round. Catalog is developing commercially viable DNA data storage technology and is based in Boston, MA, operating out of the Harvard Life Lab. The company’s first-generation commercial product will provide an online interface through which customers submit data; Catalog will write that data into DNA using the company’s machine. Once written into DNA, the material can be stored by Catalog or at the customer’s own facility (for example in a commercial refrigerator). Catalog is focusing its initial commercial pilots on organizations in government (including intelligence and space), IT, entertainment, and other sectors. Founders include MIT scientists Hyunjun Park (CEO) and Nathaniel Roquet, and Devin Leake serves as Chief Science Officer. While developing the technology the team consulted with Eric Shaqfeh (Stanford) and David Weitz (Harvard). The company has raised $9M in funding.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2018

Fauna offers a web-native GraphQL API (FaunaDB) that can be accessed directly from browsers, mobile clients, or serverless functions. Its serverless query language (FQL) enables queries that encapsulate custom business logic across relational, document, and graph data. Developers can connect using numerous JavaScript frameworks (React, Vue, Next, Angular, Nuxt) and languages (Python, Go, Ruby, Java, Scala). FaunaDB integrates with developer tools such as Microsoft VS Code and serverless platforms including AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functions, Netlify, Vercel, and Cloudflare Workers. The company reports a user community of over 25,000 developers. Recent executive hires — Eric Berg as CEO and Bob Muglia as Executive Chair — and a new board appointment signal a push to scale product and go-to-market execution. Fauna builds FaunaDB, a transactional NoSQL database designed to deliver high-performance distributed transactions while remaining operationally simple, globally scalable and policy-secure. FaunaDB is infrastructure-agnostic and available on-premises as well as a managed cloud service. The database targets mission-critical, ACID-compliant workloads across industries from financial services to video games and is in active use at global leaders such as NVIDIA and by hundreds of teams using FaunaDB Cloud. Fauna was launched in 2012 and the founding team includes engineers who previously scaled Twitter. Financially, the company has raised $29.5 million to date, including a $25 million Series A announced in this round. Management says it will use the new resources to scale the company to match the size of the opportunity and to continue building the database and the company to last. Fauna develops FaunaDB, an adaptive operational database designed to address modern application requirements by combining global distribution with a multi-tenant architecture that allocates resource consumption by business priority. The company says FaunaDB lets digital businesses maintain agility while meeting operational needs. FaunaDB is currently in managed beta. Early customers include NVIDIA and other industry leaders across data-rich sectors such as social, mobile, SaaS, IoT, and gaming. Fauna was founded in 2012 by CEO Evan Weaver and CTO Matt Freels and is based in San Francisco, CA. The company recently closed a $4.5M seed financing.