Participated · Equity · Jun 2023

Ovation offers a hospitality-focused software platform that begins with a two-question guest survey and expands into tools for managing feedback, online reviews, and day-to-day store operations. The Salt Lake City company positions itself as a partner rather than a traditional SaaS vendor, emphasizing human connection to drive higher customer satisfaction and revenue. Its technology is used by more than 1,000 restaurant brands, including Dave's Hot Chicken, Swig, The Great Greek, and Mooyah, reaching thousands of individual restaurant locations. Operators use Ovation to surface actionable insights and resolve issues before they lead to lost business, enabling timely guest recovery. Investors who also use the product praise its ability to deliver real-time, store-level insights. Ovation has raised $12 million in total funding to date, indicating prior capital of about $9 million before the latest round. The new funds will support continued product development and expansion across additional restaurant groups, furthering its mission to strengthen guest relationships in multi-unit dining.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2022

TuMeke provides a computer vision platform that automatically assesses workplace musculoskeletal injury risk for manufacturing facilities. The software is packaged as a smartphone app that allows safety staff to take a video and reduce the identified risk of a job in minutes, without purchasing equipment, cameras, or exoskeletons. The company is led by Zach Noland, Riley Noland, and Diwakar Ganesan and serves customers including AF Group, Chemtrade Logistics, and Sentry Insurance. TuMeke raised a $10M Series A led by Intel Capital. It intends to use the funds to expand and scale its team of engineers, ergonomists, and academics and to launch new features to enhance EHS teams' capabilities and workplace safety. The company's stated mission is to eliminate workplace musculoskeletal injuries through its ergonomic risk assessment platform. TuMeke Ergonomics offers a computer-vision platform that records tasks and automatically identifies noteworthy postures, movement frequency, and duration to assess injury risk. The system delivers automatic recommendations on which parts of a job to prioritize and what adjustments to consider, including estimates of risk-reduction impact. Its software is already extensively used by many manufacturers and workers’ compensation insurance firms. The company is led by Zach Noland, Dr. Alan Hedge, Riley Noland and Diwakar Ganesan. TuMeke intends to use new funding to enhance its models to account for more variables in injury-risk identification and to expand the sophistication of its recommendations. The company is based in San Mateo, California.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2022

HourWork is a Boston, MA-based SaaS recruitment and retention platform that helps quick-service restaurant (QSR) franchise owners manage applicant flow and improve employee retention. The platform is used by more than 5,000 QSR franchisees and the company added 4,000 franchise locations in 2021, bringing its footprint to over 6,000 locations. Customers include franchisees of major multi-unit operators across McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Domino’s, Wendy’s, and others; HourWork has also begun expanding beyond QSR with wins like Sodexo. The company was founded by CEO Rahkeem Morris and COO Rob Snyder. HourWork plans to use the new funding to scale its customer success, sales, and marketing teams. Carla Harris joined HourWork’s board as an observer. HourWork is a Boston, MA-based provider of a SaaS recruitment and retention platform focused on hiring and retaining hourly workers. The platform is used by more than 5,000 quick-service restaurant franchises across the United States. Franchisee customers include large multi-unit operators across brands such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Domino's, Wendy’s and White Castle. Founded by CEO Rahkeem Morris and COO Rob Snyder, the company targets understaffed hourly labor markets with recruitment and retention solutions. HourWork plans to scale customer success, sales, and marketing teams and execute planned product development initiatives. The company raised new capital to fund that growth and product roadmap.

Participated · Seed · Mar 2022

Bloom provides a product photo performance engine that uses generative AI to tailor on-site images based on shopper behavior. Its technology tracks clicks, zooms, swipes and bounces, compiling that behavioral data to deliver personalized images intended to drive more sales. The company is available as an integration on Shopify, giving it access to the platform’s more than two million eCommerce merchants. Bloom was founded by Aarlo Stone Fish, a Yale alumnus and AI expert with 20 years of software engineering experience, and Sam Dundas, a lifelong entrepreneur and product builder. The company raised $1.1M in seed funding and intends to use the proceeds to bring its solutions to more merchants and continue expanding its capabilities.

Participated · Seed · Mar 2022

Bloom uses generative AI and real-time behavioral tracking (clicks, zooms, swipes, bounces) to serve each visitor the product photos most likely to prompt a purchase. Merchants integrating Bloom have reported conversion-rate lifts of 5–14% without additional manual effort. Founded by AI expert Aarlo Stone Fish and serial entrepreneur Sam Dundas, the New York-based startup positions itself as a core layer in the e-commerce tech stack and is already available to Shopify’s two-million-plus merchants. The company originally launched a model-generation tool but pivoted toward performance analytics after feedback from 200 beta users highlighted the need for measurable ROI. Bloom’s long-term vision is to merge its performance engine with generative AI in real time, powering billions of fully personalized shopping sessions. The recently secured seed capital will fund expansion to more merchants and continued product development.