Participated · Series A · Sep 2021

Thankful AI offers an application layer on top of help desks that handles large volumes of customer queries across written channels. Its platform has processed and learned from over 30 million customer service tickets and it serves more than 50 brands, including UntuckIt, FabFitFun and MeUndies. The product suite includes an agent assist (boosting human agent efficiency by up to 40%), an AI agent (resolving up to 50% of queries and reducing time to first response) and an early-stage analytics product to surface customer insights. The company partners with help-desk vendors such as Zendesk, Kustomer and Gladly and charges customers based on ticket volume and product choice, often demonstrating the software by listening to a prospect’s help desk for a trial period. Thankful has grown ~400% year over year over the past four years. Management plans to use new funding to hire more engineering talent, expand its product line and enter verticals like finance, insurance and healthcare.

Participated · Series B · Aug 2021

Brilliant NextGen develops an all‑in‑one smart home control platform delivered through a portfolio of devices including in‑wall touchscreen control panels, smart dimmers, plugs and supporting accessories. The company’s products provide integrators, builders and homeowners a unified way to manage lighting, climate, security and music. Brilliant is focused on design, simplicity and performance, and works with Custom Integrators, Distributors, residential developers and homebuilders to deploy its solutions. The company announced a $9.7 million funding round to support product expansion, strategic partnerships, and deeper customer engagement across North America. With this financing Brilliant plans to launch a second‑generation Power over Ethernet (PoE) product and invest in development of AI‑driven features to advance the smart home experience. Tony Smalls has joined the company’s Board, and Lisa Petrucci serves as CEO. Brilliant designs and manufactures touchscreen control panels, smart dimmer switches, and smart plugs that integrate lighting, thermostats, cameras, locks, music, garage openers and more into a single smart home experience. Its panels install where standard light switches are located and the system works with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, Resideo, Ring, Sonos, Nest, Philips Hue, and other popular smart-home products. The company sells through homebuilder, multifamily, property manager, and professional integrator channels and is trusted by hundreds of builders, developers, and property managers across the U.S. and Canada. Brilliant says it has grown over 400% since February 2020 and its Smart Home Control is the highest-rated smart home system on Amazon.com and HomeDepot.com. Product launches include a $69.99 Smart Dimmer Switch (shipping summer 2020) and a $29.99 Smart Plug (shipping 2021). The company plans to use new capital to expand product offerings and double down on its sales strategy in its key channels. Brilliant develops the Brilliant Control, a touch-and-voice control panel that integrates with smart-home devices to manage lighting, music, climate and more. The product includes Amazon Alexa built in, a video intercom and mobile app control. CEO and co-founder Aaron Emigh leads the company. Brilliant Controls are priced starting at $199 and were slated to be available for sale in early 2018. The company plans to use new funding to expand retail channels and partnerships and to continue investing in research and product development. No operating metrics or revenue figures are provided in the article.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2019

Embrace provides a Mobile Experience Engineering solution that empowers engineers to manage the complexity of mobile application development and performance. Its platform supplies detailed behavioral and technical context so teams can identify and prioritize the impact of issues and resolve them quickly. The company plans to use the new funds to accelerate product innovation. Embrace is led by CEO Eric Futoran and is based in Culver City, CA. The business has grown its customer base 130% year-over-year. Its customers include Discover, Marriott, The New York Times, Yum Brands (Taco Bell), Yahoo!, and mobile-native companies such as Cameo, GOAT, Hatch, Ibotta, and Wildlife Games. Embrace is a mobile-first observability and data company that launched a Data Intelligence product to make mobile data accessible and actionable for business intelligence and data science teams. Its Data Intelligence product complements existing Observability and Resolution products to proactively discover, prioritize and resolve regressions and enable cross-functional use by engineering, product and marketing. Embrace operates a SaaS pricing model with free and pro/enterprise tiers and works with more than 100 organizations, including Hyatt, GOAT, Apprentice, Cameo, Glo, TextNow, Dave and ChowNow. The company has grown headcount to 45 employees (nearly 400% since its last funding round in 2019) and expects to exceed 100 employees within 12 months. Annual recurring revenue increased three times over the past year, and CEO Eric Futoran said the new funding will be used to round out leadership, expand go-to-market for enterprise customers and continue product development. Embrace aims to verticalize mobile data for industries from apps and games to IoT point-of-sale systems and is pushing into AI/ML-driven, real-time decision-making. Embrace is a Los Angeles-based performance monitoring and analytics platform built for mobile apps. Led by co-founder and CEO Eric Futoran, the company provides a single comprehensive platform that works directly with mobile teams to proactively identify issues affecting end users, QA and executives. The platform measures any KPI (not just crashes) so teams can find every error and address the issues that cause customer churn and reduce user lifetime value (LTV). Embrace works with apps including Wish, OKCupid, Home Depot and AllTrails. The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations and its business reach. Embrace provides a mobile-first application performance management platform that helps teams understand how apps perform on users’ devices beyond traditional crash reporting. The product surfaces issues such as memory pressure and OS-initiated shutdowns that users perceive as crashes. Current customers include Home Depot, Headspace, OkCupid, Boxed, Thrive Market and TuneIn. CEO and co-founder Eric Futoran emphasizes that many user-impacting issues are not captured by conventional crash-focused tools. The company plans to use the new funding to expand go-to-market capabilities and grow its team to build out its technology. The round brings Embrace’s total funding to $7 million. Embrace.io offers a unified tool that lets developers track all logged events, timing, and performance data so they can examine individual user sessions and find technical reasons for user churn. The product targets developers rather than marketers and surfaces issues that traditional crash reporters miss, since users can have poor experiences without an app crash. CEO Eric Futoran says the company’s goal is to “fix crash reporting” and pursue a broader vision of continuous performance optimization. Embrace.io was available to a few select customers and is launching more broadly today. The company announced it raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from The Chernin Group, Techstars Ventures, BoxGroup and others. Angel backers include Scopely co-founder and CEO Walter Driver, Scribd and Parse co-founder Tikhon Bernstam, and the founders of Burstly/Testflight.

Participated · Equity · May 2017

eRelevance Corporation is an Austin, Texas-based provider of customer marketing automation for small- and medium-size businesses, combining a proprietary technology platform with in-house marketing experts. The platform delivers targeted campaigns across email, text, mobile conversations, Facebook, Instagram and the web. Led by co-founder and CEO Bob Fabbio, the company pairs technology with expert-managed campaigns to reach existing customers. The company will use the new funding to expand sales and marketing efforts and further develop the platform. Financially, eRelevance completed a $5.1m financing and has raised $13.7m since inception. eRelevance provides marketing automation software and services that help small to medium-sized businesses outsource internal marketing and focus on core operations. The company works with users to define goals, create and execute integrated multi-channel campaigns across email, text, web, targeted social and conversational channels, and provides real-time visibility into results. Founded in July 2013 by CEO Bob Fabbio and based in Austin, Texas, eRelevance sells technology-enabled marketing automation services to SMBs. The company closed a $4.5M Series A and has $8.6M in total funding to date. eRelevance intends to use the Series A proceeds to increase sales and marketing efforts and add resources to support company growth. In conjunction with the funding, Tom Peterson, venture partner at Rally Ventures, joined eRelevance's board of directors. eRelevance provides SMBs with an outsourced lead-generation and marketing service that lets clients focus on their core business. The company leverages technology to market to an organization’s internal contact database rather than relying solely on external lists. Its platform uses multiple communication channels, including email, text, web, social, and automated conversations, to generate leads. eRelevance is led by co-founder and CEO Bob Fabbio. The company is based in Austin, Texas and was founded in mid-2013. Since inception it has raised over $3.5M and has recently closed an additional seed funding round. eRelevance offers a managed service that targets and engages existing and prospective patients in automated, personalized synthetic conversations for healthcare practices and hospital systems. The platform leverages HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based technology to educate patients, assess health, discover needs, cultivate interests, offer promotions, and learn about the patient’s life. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Bob Fabbio. eRelevance intends to use recent funding to accelerate sales growth and continue development of advanced patient engagement technology. The service is positioned as a tool to both educate and engage patients across clinical and marketing touchpoints. The company is based in Austin, Texas. eRelevance provides a HIPAA-compliant service that helps healthcare providers (including Dentists, Dermatologists, OB/GYNs, Optometrists and Plastic Surgeons) segment patient populations, activate targeted patients and engage them in progressive two-way personalized simulated conversations. Those conversations gather information, educate patients and discover candidates for new or follow-up care while placing no burden on the provider or their staff. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Bob Fabbio. eRelevance closed an additional round of seed funding and has now raised more than $1.3M in total. The company intends to use the new capital to support its go-to-market strategy.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2017

Me.me operates a meme search engine and an API designed to make memes searchable and shareable. The platform is led by CEO Shane Walker alongside Fariz Chowdhury and Jim Hefner. In Q4 2016 the platform grew 225% and served over 700 million memes. The company raised $1.5M and said it will use the funds to expand operations. Backers named in the reporting include Arjun Sethi of The Social+Capital Partnership, Peter Rojas of Betaworks Ventures, Danhua Capital, Mirarmar Ventures and others.