Participated · Seed · Jun 2024

Connect Money provides a BaaS platform that allows trade and other businesses to issue white-label debit and credit cards and embed payments, credit and loyalty features for their customers. The platform handles card issuance, KYC, customer support and mobile banking app development, letting clients avoid building infrastructure or securing regulatory licenses. The company charges clients a subscription fee per card per month and positions itself as a back-end manager for traditional and digital businesses. Connect Money highlights use cases across sectors such as agriculture, where supply-chain companies can issue cards to farmers to improve payments and stickiness. Launched early this year, the startup is planning expansion beyond Egypt into markets including Morocco and Kenya. The founding team includes CEO Ayman Essawy, CTO Wadi Jalil and COO Abdelaziz Sarhan. The company raised an $8 million seed round to support growth.

Led · Equity · Mar 2024

Zilliant provides cloud-native pricing optimization, pricing management and revenue intelligence software to help businesses manage the entire pricing lifecycle. In FY2023 the company delivered two consecutive quarters of 60%+ year-over-year bookings growth. In December 2023 Zilliant acquired In Mind Cloud, adding next-generation CPQ that complements its pricing offerings. Its financial sponsor, Madison Dearborn Partners, increased its investment by $35 million to accelerate product enhancements and other growth initiatives. Zilliant strengthened its executive team in 2023 with hires from Salesforce, SAP and other enterprise software firms to support product, technology, revenue and partnerships. The company is positioned for continued record growth in 2024 and will showcase new product innovations at its MindShare 2024 conference in May in Austin, Texas. Zilliant is an Austin, Texas-based AI-driven SaaS company that provides tools to maximize B2B customer relationships. Its Zilliant IQ platform integrates with field sales workflows, CRM applications and e-commerce channels to inform pricing and sales decisions and increase the value of every B2B customer interaction. Led by president and CEO Greg Peters, the company targets growth and profit expansion for B2B enterprises across multiple sectors. In May 2017 Zilliant raised $30M in financing from Goldman Sachs' Private Capital Investing Group. The funds will allow the company to grow globally in the B2B enterprise industry across multiple sectors. Goldman Sachs' Private Capital Investing Group is described as a platform providing junior capital to growth and middle-market companies and is co-headed by Hillel Moerman. Zilliant provides price optimization and margin management solutions for B2B manufacturers, distributors and industrial service companies. Its product suite includes Margin Maximizer, Margin Insight and Margin Manager, which use existing transactional data to improve decisions across price analysis, price setting and execution. The company says customers have experienced significant improvement in their financial performance using its solutions. Zilliant completed $13M in financing from existing partners SMH Private Equity Group, ABS Ventures, Austin Ventures and Trellis Partners. The new capital will be used to accelerate global expansion to meet customer demand. The company is based in Austin, Texas.

Participated · Equity · Mar 2015

Quickplay operates an end-to-end managed video platform that powers premium video and TV to any device for service providers and content providers. The company distributes 700 live channels, manages 2 million VOD assets, maintains content connections to 250 premium content providers and serves an addressable market of over 700 million subscribers. Quickplay counts major service providers such as AT&T, Bell and TELUS among its customers and has received more than $150 million of total investment since its 2003 inception. The company will use recent financing to scale its managed video platform, reduce content-delivery inefficiencies, and further monetize live and on-demand premium video using cloud economics. Quickplay accelerated its LTE Broadcast strategy with the March 4, 2015 acquisition of Roundbox Inc. to enable multicast and unicast delivery across mobile networks. It operates facilities in Toronto, San Diego, Singapore, Chennai and Frankfurt and plans continued investment to support Next Generation TV capabilities such as Android TV and LTE Broadcast. QuickPlay Media is a Toronto, ON-based provider of cloud-based infrastructure and managed service solutions for distributing premium video to IP-connected devices. Led by CEO and founder Wayne Purboo, the company serves large communications and media customers including AT&T U-verse, Bell, Research In Motion (RIM), Rogers Communications, Samsung, SIRIUS XM Radio, Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) and Verizon. In June 2011 QuickPlay acquired the network operations center assets of FLO TV from Qualcomm as part of its U.S. expansion, broadening its abilities to manage on-demand content and live TV coverage of major sporting and news events. The company received an approximately $100m equity investment from funds affiliated with Madison Dearborn Partners. Following the close, Madison Dearborn and QuickPlay’s employees own the majority of the company, with a limited number of minority shareholders including Toronto-based Difference Capital Inc. QuickPlay intends to use the proceeds from the investment to continue to expand. QuickPlay Media provides mobile video services and powers Sirius' smartphone service. Its offering includes several dozen TV shows and is currently available only on BlackBerry devices. The company has obvious expansion plans, and the article suggests an iPhone play may be likely. QuickPlay announced a $12 million financing led by GMP Securities with participation from existing investors. Industry heavyweights such as Qualcomm and Cisco are increasing efforts to push mobile video, particularly as an advertising medium. The company is positioned to benefit as smartphones become powerful enough to play more video. QuickPlay Media operates the OpenVideo platform, which powers mobile video services for 10 major mobile operators in Canada and the United States. The platform delivers both live and on-demand content from more than 120 different media companies. Key features of the OpenVideo service delivery platform include a content management system, open APIs for partner integration, and advanced service delivery capabilities. The company provides its technology to carriers to enable mobile TV and video services. Financially, QuickPlay announced it has raised $15 million in a third round of capital. QuickPlay Media is described in the articles as a leading provider of mobile video and rich-media services. The company announced the completion of a $12 million Series B during the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment Conference. The announcement is datelined Toronto & Los Angeles. The articles repeat QuickPlay's positioning around mobile video and rich media but do not provide details on product roadmap or specific future plans. No operating metrics, investors, or uses of proceeds were disclosed in the provided text.