Participated · Series B · Apr 2019

Masabi delivers Fare Payments-as-a-Service (FPaaS) via its cloud-based Justride platform, combining SaaS and cloud computing to modernize transit ticketing. Its platform is designed to replace legacy, monolithic automated fare collection systems with quicker, lower-capex upgrades. Masabi operates in nine countries and serves more than 140 customers, with deployments in cities including Denver, Las Vegas, Boston, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Columbus, Calgary, Birmingham, Valencia, Bilbao and Osaka. The company plans to use the recent strategic investment to accelerate product development and expand deployments across North and South America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The announcement frames Masabi as continuing to disrupt legacy ticketing by enabling transit agencies to adopt new consumer-facing innovations more rapidly and cost-effectively. Masabi was advised in the round by CKS Finance and a legal team from Smoosmiths. Masabi builds and operates Justride, a Fare Payments-as-a-Service platform that enables mobile ticketing, account-based fare collection and contactless payments for public transport. The company supports integrations with partners such as Uber, Transit, Jorudan and Kisio Digital and serves over 70 clients across 13 countries. Masabi processes more than $1 billion in annual transport ticketing sales and continues to add features such as tap-to-ride using contactless bank cards, mobile phones or smartcards. The company emphasizes replacing bespoke fare collection systems with a quickly deployable, continuously updated platform to enable Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). Masabi’s expansion plans are being supported by a newly finalised investment from Shell to accelerate global roll-out of the Justride platform. The company lists investors including Mastercard and Keolis and has offices in New York, Denver, London and Cluj. Masabi is a Software-as-a-Service ticketing and payments provider for public transport, led by CEO Brian Zanghi. Its core product, the Justride fare-collection platform, supports mobile ticketing, account-based full fare collection using contactless bank cards, mobile devices and smartcards, and a Justride SDK to enable Mobility as a Service integrations. The Justride SDK allows journey planners and micromobility providers to integrate public transit into their apps, with integrations including Uber, Transit, Jorudan and Keolis. Justride is in operation with more than 50 transport agencies across ten countries, serving customers from tier-one cities to local bus operators such as Boston MBTA, New York MTA, National Express and others. The company operates offices in New York, London, Denver and Cluj. Masabi intends to continue expanding its mobility platform and drive digital transformation for transit agencies and operators of all sizes. Masabi offers JustRide, a cloud-based, end-to-end mobile ticketing and fare collection platform that includes apps for ticket purchase, display and inspection plus back-end infrastructure for payments, ticket management, inspection, customer service, reporting and real-time analytics. The platform is designed to reduce the cost of fare collection by removing the need for costly hardware and ticket media while providing agencies with big-data analysis and visualization tools to better plan and optimize services. Masabi works with more than 22 transport operators and agencies worldwide, including Virgin Trains, Abellio, Thames Clippers, New Orleans RTA, Boston’s MBTA, Las Vegas, Transport for Athens, and New York’s MTA. The company is expanding strategic partnerships—notably with MasterCard and Keolis—to accelerate deployments and product integrations. MasterCard and Masabi are integrating the MasterPass digital wallet into JustRide, and Keolis is working to include Masabi’s ticketing in its PlanBookTicket offering. Masabi raised $12 million in growth funding to support global operations and speed to market. Masabi develops and deploys JustRide, a cloud-based end-to-end mobile ticketing and fare-collection system that includes mobile apps for ticket purchase, use, and ticket agent validation. The UK company positions its product as a lower-cost, faster-to-deploy alternative to traditional fare-collection systems and promotes an “agile” cloud approach. Its technology is already in use by more than 13 UK transit agencies and retail brands, including Virgin Trains, First Group, CrossCountry Trains and thetrainline.com, and it deployed JustRide for Boston’s MBTA in late 2012. Masabi plans to add NFC support in the future. The company recently hired Josh Robin as VP of Strategy and Business Development for North American operations as part of its U.S. expansion. It is opening a New York office to accelerate deployments with U.S. transit agencies.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2013

Applauze is an iOS mobile event app launched in March 2013 by Kiran Bellubbi and headquartered in Mountain View, California. The app uses data analytics and machine learning to aggregate listings from primary providers and secondary markets and recommend relevant concerts, theater productions, sports games and community events to users. Users can purchase tickets through the app and share them with friends. The service is available across more than 40 U.S. and Canadian cities. Financially, the company raised $7.2m in funding in 2013, with backing from noted venture investors. 955 Dreams describes itself as a publishing company that builds mobile apps and writes its own artist reviews for Band of the Day. Its core product, Band of the Day, features free full songs, artist bios, reviews, music videos and daily editorial content and was an iPhone App of the Year runner-up. The company released a tablet-optimized iPad version that leverages the larger screen while keeping the app small (about 10 MB) and refined the UI and backend for the experience. Band of the Day saw rapid adoption — hundreds of thousands of users in the first weeks and over half a million users in four months — and the company expects to reach several million users by the end of the year. The platform also powers other titles (The History of Jazz; On the Way to Woodstock), several of which were App of the Week or in the App Store Hall of Fame. 955 Dreams is experimenting with Android and preparing to make its app publishing platform available to a small number of select content partners. 955 Dreams creates immersive, multimedia iPad apps that combine pictures, videos and sound clips to deliver interactive explorations of musical subjects. Its breakout product, The History of Jazz, is a $9.99 app that Apple featured shortly after release, driving a rapid increase in sales. The app includes one-click iTunes purchase buttons and has produced strong affiliate conversion rates (reported around 14–22%). Co-founder Kiran Bellubbi emphasizes designing both shallow and deep experiences tailored to the iPad, and the team is expanding the same format across different music genres and individual-artist titles. Financially the company raised a $250,000 seed round and reported it recouped roughly half of that amount in the first month of sales; they say revenue has continued and is being reinvested into product development. 955 Dreams is prioritizing the Apple platform and is not in a rush to develop for Android.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2013

Just Sing It builds an iPhone karaoke app that turns performances into a social game where users guess what others are singing and earn virtual coins to unlock content. The founders intend to use karaoke as a hook for a broader social platform. In the first two weeks after launch the app was installed 80,000 times, reached No. 1 in the App Store’s music category, and users recorded 500,000 performances. The company said it will use new funding for further development of the app. The parent company is AnyoneGame, though the team plans to de-emphasize that name in favor of the Just Sing It brand. A notable early user mentioned in coverage is Lindsay Lohan.

Led · Series A · Dec 2012

Noom is a weight-loss and behavior-change app that combines calorie tracking with cognitive behavioral therapy–based coaching. The core product helps users count calories while addressing psychological triggers to support medium- and long-term weight loss. The app has 45 million downloads across 100 countries, including the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. Noom generated $400 million in revenue in 2020, up from $237 million in 2019, after a pandemic-driven surge in demand. The company plans to expand into new categories and international markets and will grow its product team to support that expansion. Founded in 2007 by Saeju Jeong and Artem Petakov, Noom pivoted to a weight-loss focus in 2017 after earlier experiments with a connected bike and calorie-counting app. Noom delivers clinically‑proven behavior-change programs that pair compassionate human coaches with mobile technology, artificial intelligence, and psychology to provide customized support and motivation. Its core product offerings focus on sustained habit change for weight loss and broader health outcomes, including a virtual diabetes prevention program recognized by the CDC. The platform is used by leading healthcare and pharmaceutical companies to improve patient treatment outcomes. Noom reports it has worked with over 50 million users and supports those users with more than 1,000 personal coaches. The company emphasizes a data‑informed, psychology‑driven approach rather than short‑term diet fads. Noom is headquartered in New York City and maintains offices in Seoul and Tokyo. Noom is best known for its direct-to-consumer weight loss app that pairs personalized programs and 1:1 coaching with algorithm-driven recommendations. It also develops enterprise products, including apps focused on diabetes and hypertension. Users receive coaching and fitness programs personalized by an algorithm based on questionnaire responses. The company differentiates itself by focusing on long-term lifestyle and behavior changes alongside calorie, nutrition and exercise tracking. Headquartered in New York City with offices in Seoul and Tokyo, Noom plans to use the new funding to expand its product-development team. Jan Koum said he invested because Noom is ahead of the competition on technology, execution and brand recognition. Noom combines human coaches with artificial intelligence to deliver mobile behavior-change programs focused on preventing and managing cardiometabolic conditions such as obesity, pre-diabetes, diabetes and hypertension. Its programs use disease-specific curricula with daily tasks assigned by trained coaches, short-form educational content, food- and exercise-logging, one-on-one coaching and group support. Noom markets both direct-to-consumer weight-loss apps and an enterprise platform sold to payers, employers, solution providers and health systems. Internationally it has expanded in Japan and partnered with South Korea’s National Health Institute of Science; it has offices in New York City, Seoul and Tokyo. The company reports its direct-to-consumer mobile applications have reached more than 45 million users worldwide and cites a peer-reviewed study showing 64% of participants who completed its Diabetes Prevention Program lost over 5% of body weight. Leadership framed the investment as a way to accelerate mobile health and chronic disease prevention at scale. Noom makes Noom Coach, a weight-loss app, and Noom Health, a platform that connects patients and their healthcare providers. The company uses artificial intelligence to deliver personalized recommendations based on users' logged food and exercise and analyzes data to develop programs aimed at preventing diabetes. Noom currently claims 32 million users in total. CEO Saeju Jeong said the company will use the new funding to focus on other chronic conditions, such as heart disease. Noom also plans to expand its coaching platform by adding features, including guidance about prescription medicine. Financially, the company has received grants from organizations including the National Institutes of Health and previously raised a $7 million Series A in February 2014.

Led · Series A · Jul 2012

Portalarium is developing Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a fantasy role‑playing game led by Richard Garriott and his design team. The project raised crowdfunding to finance development and plans to continue soliciting fan input and funds through its own store. The company announced that bestselling author Tracy Hickman joined as lead story designer and that several stretch goals—such as a serialized prequel novel, a pet system, guild houses and banks, city theaters, and castle merchants—were reached. The team says Kickstarter backers will have exclusive perks and that feedback from fans will guide additional features. The game is expected to launch in 2014. Portalarium was formed in September 2009 in Austin, Texas. Portalarium develops and publishes premium online and mobile role-playing games and virtual worlds for social networks and mobile platforms. Formed in September 2009 and based in Austin, Texas, the company focuses on social play that makes it easy for friends to find and play together across devices. Its near-term product slate includes Ultimate Collector, scheduled for release this summer on Facebook, browser and mobile platforms, and Ultimate RPG / New Britannia (working title), targeted primarily at mobile platforms. Portalarium says it will use new funding to complete development of Ultimate Collector and to launch production of the New Britannia RPG. The company recently joined Zynga’s Platform Partners publishing program, positioning its products for broader distribution on social gaming platforms. Portalarium develops mobile and social games, virtual worlds and related services intended as an open ecosystem integrated into social networks and gaming communities. The company does not yet have a product; a launch is expected in the next few months. Today's investment was undisclosed and brings Portalarium's total funding to date to $3.6 million. Portalarium was launched by veteran game developer Richard Garriott and is led by CEO Fred Schmidt. The firm's focus and roadmap center on mobile social gaming and related community services.