Participated · Series A · Sep 2021

Astarte Medical develops NICUtrition®, an EMR-integrated clinical decision support platform that standardizes feeding, optimizes nutrition, and assesses equitable care in neonatal intensive care units. The company applies software and predictive analytics to address malnutrition, suboptimal growth, and racial disparities in NICU care during the first 1,000 days. Astarte has signed contracts and has implementations underway at its initial NICU sites. The company announced a $7.6 million Series A-1 financing to support growth. Management says the funds will be used to scale sales of NICUtrition and expand customer adoption. Wendy Slatery joined the board to provide commercial and market-entry guidance. Astarte Medical is a precision medicine company based in Yardley, Pa., that uses software and predictive analytics to improve outcomes during the first 1,000 days of life, with an initial focus on preterm infants. Its first two solutions, NICUtrition Analytics and NICUtrition Guidance, support feeding protocols, decision-making and nutrition optimization in the neonatal ICU, and include digital tools and diagnostics to standardize feeding and quantify gut health. Led by CEO and co-founder Tracy Warren, the company plans to grow its team by 300% in 2020, adding in-house sales, marketing and client support to assist early adopters. It also intends to expand its engineering and data science teams to support continued product development. Astarte will use the new financing to accelerate hiring and ramp sales and marketing for its NICUtrition products, develop a regulatory strategy in support of a 2020 MAGI trial, and build a health disparities platform. The company additionally plans to explore and isolate novel therapeutic and diagnostic candidates. Astarte Medical develops NICUtrition®, a suite of digital tools and diagnostics that support feeding protocols, decision-making and practice in the neonatal ICU. The platform is designed to standardize feeding, optimize nutrition and quantify gut health for preterm infants. Core to Astarte’s product is a proprietary dataset that integrates feeding protocols, microbial profiles and clinical information to enable predictive analytics. The company focuses on improving outcomes during the first 1,000 days of life, with an initial emphasis on premature infants. Astarte recently graduated from the Illumina Accelerator and is led by CEO and co-founder Tracy Warren. The company is based in Yardley, Pa., and will use the Series A proceeds to complete development of the NICUtrition suite. Astarte Medical develops software to support care of preterm infants by providing quantitative data about gut health to enable personalized care and nutrition. Its first product, NICUtrition Guidance, is a rules engine designed to standardize enteral feeding for preterm infants. The company plans to develop MAGI, a gut-health score intended to improve growth and development of preemies while lowering medical treatment costs. Astarte was co-founded by Tracy Warren, Tammi Jantzen, and Katherine Gregory and is based in Yardley, PA. The company has received an investment from Next Act Fund and is currently raising money to launch and support NICUtrition Guidance. The amount of the investment disclosed in the article was not provided.

Participated · Seed · Jul 2021

Pomp & Whimsy is a gin brand that sells spirits and operates an e-commerce channel. The company raised $2.6M in seed funding to accelerate growth in key markets. Management plans to expand distribution through current and new partners and to grow its e-commerce business via a partnership with Thirstie. Distribution expansion will involve partners including Breakthru Beverage Group and Allied Beverage, Republic National Distribution Company, Opici Family Distributing, and Favorite Brands. The company is led by Nicola Nice and will use the new funds to accelerate market growth and scale distribution.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2020

Funding U operates a lending platform that uses AI analytics and its proprietary SMaRT scoring software to underwrite $3,000–$10,000 'last gap' loans for high-performing, underrepresented college students without relying on co-signer FICO. The company pairs lending with credit education and career networking to support borrower outcomes. Funding U reports having originated $6.1M in loans to 690 students to date, nearly 40% of whom are first-generation college students. The firm says its model evaluates academic success, employability and earnings potential rather than parental income or credit scores. Funding U plans to scale operations and expand its services to reach more than 1,500 career-focused students at four-year U.S. colleges. The company was founded in 2016 in Georgia and has operated nationally since 2018.