Participated · Equity · Oct 2018

Assent Compliance delivers a centralized compliance platform that automates collection, validation and configurable reporting of supply-chain data for teams across manufacturing enterprises. The company focuses on product compliance, trade compliance and ESG, and positions itself as serving complex manufacturers with what it calls the industry’s largest network of supplier intelligence. Its platform aims to help customers proactively identify and manage risk, accelerate market access and protect brand reputation. Customers named in the article include GE Appliances, Polaris, Stryker and Escatec. Assent has grown rapidly since CEO Andrew Waitman joined, expanding headcount from about 20 to 820 (45% identifying as female) and expects to cross $100 million in ARR this year after ARR growth of over 50% in the past 12 months. The company plans to use new capital to expand further in Europe, eventually enter Asia, and grow headcount by roughly 40% across sales, services, engineering, customer success and marketing. Assent Compliance offers a cloud-based Assent Compliance Platform that automates supply-chain data management to help companies manage third-party market access, reputational, financial and operational risks. The platform combines proprietary software with regulatory and supplier management expertise and serves hundreds of corporate customers and hundreds of thousands of suppliers worldwide. Assent supports enterprises with product compliance, vendor management and corporate social responsibility solutions and is backed by a team of regulatory and supplier program experts. The company has grown to more than 400 employees across three continents. Management has signalled plans to use the new investment to enhance its proprietary software and expand its compliance, vendor management and CSR offerings. This funding continues a multi-round growth trajectory following a CAD$20M Series A in 2016 and a CAD$40M Series B in 2017. Assent Compliance provides a comprehensive supply chain data collection platform with applications for inspection and audits, a contact and parts database, an embedded learning management system, a campaign manager, and a supplier data exchange portal. The company also offers training and educational materials via its integrated learning management system to help clients meet evolving regulatory requirements. Assent works with over 40 percent of S&P 500 product companies and a network of more than 300,000 supplier companies globally. Founded in 2005 and based in Ottawa, the company currently has 225 employees and plans to add roughly 100 new hires over the next 12–18 months. The business focuses on helping clients incorporate best practices into compliance programs and on automating supply chain data collection, risk analysis, education, and compliance workflows. Recent plans include continued investment in R&D and product management funded by new growth capital.

Participated · Series C · Sep 2018

Q4 is the first IR Ops Platform combining a large proprietary investor dataset with tools to help public companies attract, manage, and understand investors. Its AI-enabled platform includes an IR website management system, events software, a robust analytics engine, a streamlined investor CRM, and shareholder intelligence with enhanced metrics. The company serves more than 2,600 public companies globally. Leadership says the company is entering its next phase of growth as an AI-driven IR Ops Platform following a new strategic sponsor. The recent strategic investment by Sumeru Equity Partners is supported by credit facilities from CIBC Innovation Banking to help Q4 deliver greater value to clients. Q4 is headquartered in Toronto and maintains offices in New York and London. Q4 is a Toronto-based provider of cloud-based investor relations and capital markets solutions, offering a full suite across websites, virtual events, corporate access, data & analytics, CRM and capital markets intelligence. The company serves roughly 2,200 clients across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. Q4 says it will use the new financing to continue scaling its team, deepen its technology platform, and pursue inorganic growth opportunities. The company completed a $35 million USD growth equity raise in 2018 and has since pursued strategic transactions with Business Wire and S&P Global Market Intelligence. Q4 lists offices in New York, Toronto, Hamilton, Copenhagen, and London. It is backed by Napier Park Financial Partners, First Ascent Ventures, Information Venture Partners and other venture and angel investors. Q4 provides a purpose-built investor relations CRM and analytics platform that combines quantitative and real-time shareholder analytics, AI targeting, pipeline management, roadshow planning, website and event analytics, webcasting and professional services. The company recently released Studio, its next-generation investor website platform, and positions itself as the industry’s only full-suite IR provider. Q4 serves over 1,200 of the world’s top global brands and provides IR solutions to 25% of the S&P 500. The business sells cloud-based IR and capital markets tools and emphasizes technology-first product development and customer support. Proceeds from the recent financing are earmarked to accelerate the product roadmap, expand global sales and marketing, and pursue strategic acquisitions. Q4 has offices in New York, Chicago, Toronto, Copenhagen, and London. Q4 provides a SaaS-based investor-relations communication and intelligence platform that includes investor websites, earnings webcasting, market intelligence and an investor CRM suite. The company applies artificial intelligence methods such as machine learning and natural language processing to deliver real-time insights on institutional trading, market sentiment, volatility and investor activism. Led by CEO Darrell Heaps, Q4 has over 150 employees across offices in Toronto, Chicago and New York. The company closed a $22M Series B and has raised $30M to date. Q4 intends to use the new capital to expand its engineering, sales and marketing teams. Q4 Web Systems is a Toronto-based provider of SaaS-based investor relations solutions. Its core offerings include web and mobile products, and the company has expanded its platform to provide webcasting and market intelligence solutions. Q4 has experienced triple-digit growth and counts customers including nearly 20% of the S&P 500. The company added 46 new hires in North America in the past year and recently doubled its office space to an 8,000 square foot open-concept layout. Q4 plans to use the new funding to expand its product, engineering, and sales teams and to scale product design and engineering. Founder and CEO Darrell Heaps said the team’s talent has enabled the company to design and launch a series of successful web and mobile products.

Led · Equity · Feb 2018

Upchain offers a cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) platform that integrates disparate data sources from clients and suppliers to give all parties real-time access to rapidly changing product and engineering data. The platform is designed to replace spreadsheets, emails and FTP sites, and the company says it can get organizations up and running in minutes with a scalable solution. According to Upchain, clients can bring products to market faster and with better quality, reducing time to market by 20 to 50 percent. The company will use the new funding to expand its solution and support business development into the US and Europe. Upchain is a portfolio company of Ottawa-based SaaS accelerator L-SPARK. The company recently raised $7.4 million to support these plans and continued product development.

Led · Series A · Mar 2017

Sensibill offers a cloud-based digital receipt management platform and SKU-level data that help financial institutions provide customers tools for budgeting, returns, warranties and taxes while unlocking transactional insights. The company’s solution is integrated into banks’ and credit unions’ channels to improve customer financial management and digital engagement. Sensibill works with approximately 75 financial institutions across North America and the U.K. and has positioned itself to expand strategic growth and market share. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Toronto, Sensibill plans to use new financing to support strategic growth and pursue broader global adoption. The company emphasizes enabling institutions to better know and serve their customers through detailed purchase-level data. Sensibill, founded in 2013 and led by CEO Corey Gross, provides digital banking solutions that enable relationships between financial institutions and their customers. Its core product is an AI-powered spend-management platform that helps customers make sense of purchase behavior and cash flow while delivering revenue-driving insights for banks. The company has secured over 30 major bank partnerships across its target markets in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, including Bank of Nova Scotia, Royal Bank of Scotland Group and FIS. Since its previous funding round Sensibill’s employee count has more than doubled and it has opened an office in the U.K. Financially, Sensibill has raised a total of $46.5M to date. The company intends to use the new capital to continue expanding operations and its business reach. Sensibill is a Toronto-based provider of a white-label Software-as-a-Service platform that enables personal and business banking customers to manage line-item receipts directly from desktop and mobile banking applications. Customers can capture and store paper and electronic receipts for returns, exchanges, expenses, taxes and accounting. Led by CEO Corey Gross, the company supplies its smart receipt management service through partnerships such as launches last year with Scotiabank and TD Canada Trust’s UGO Wallet. Sensibill raised $17.3M in a Series A funding round. The company plans to use the funds to continue developing its suite of solutions and to expand its customer base in the United States, U.K., and Australia. Board seats will be added for Tony van Marken of OTEAF and David Unsworth of Information Venture Partners as part of the round. Toronto-based Sensibill offers a receipt-management platform that lets banks provide customers access to digitized receipts via desktop and mobile banking apps. The company translates unstructured receipt data into a standards-based data set to create customer value-adds, new revenue streams, and streamlined customer support. Sensibill positions the service as both a customer-facing benefit and a tool to boost banks’ ROI. It is a Ryerson Futures alumnus and has onboarded early partners that the company describes as large Canadian financial institutions (unnamed). Sensibill raised $2 million in seed funding and plans to use the proceeds to build out its team and scale operations. Impression Ventures’ involvement also brings board experience via Bryan Kerdman joining the board.

Led · Series D · Sep 2015

ScribbleLive offers a SaaS-based content marketing and live publishing platform that combines predictive analytics with content planning, creation, distribution, and workflow technologies. Led by CEO Vincent Mifsud, the platform uses patented linguistic and mathematical algorithms to generate insights that help marketers create original content aligned with strategy. The solution allows distribution across multiple channels and measurement of effectiveness and engagement. ScribbleLive's platform is used by over 500 enterprises, including Red Bull, Bayer, Ferrari, Oracle, Bank of America, Deutsche Telekom, and Yahoo!. The company closed a $35M Series D and intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations. ScribbleLive, founded in 2008 and based in Toronto, evolved from a live-blogging platform into a content syndication marketplace and live-content creation tool for marketers and publishers. The company helps brands create and distribute content designed to engage audiences. It serves enterprise customers—claiming over 500 enterprise clients—and after acquiring CoveritLive now powers over 1,500 total customers including the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and top U.S. news networks. ScribbleLive says it is a fast-growing, cash-flow-positive business. Management plans to use new capital to open international offices and pursue strategic acquisitions to accelerate growth. Three months before the Series C the company acquired CoveritLive from Demand Media, consolidating two large live content providers. ScribbleLive (Scribble Technologies) operates a real-time content creation and distribution platform available in 14 languages and used by major media brands including the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN and ESPN. The company has expanded beyond "live blogging" into a broader platform that powers dynamic, frequently updated content on media sites and brand properties. Scribble recently launched ScribbleMarket, a syndication marketplace that lets publishers and brands license or share full-featured real-time content (free or paid) from a single backend. Management positions the marketplace as a way to monetize reporting and enable smaller outlets to republish dynamic coverage, citing Boston.com’s syndication during the Boston Marathon bombings as an example. The company is also pushing into content marketing and offers engagement-metric insights to help brands measure and optimize real-time content. Scribble will use the new funding to accelerate ScribbleMarket, expand its platform internationally, and broaden adoption across different customer types. ScribbleLive offers a fast, collaborative way for news organizations to create branded live pages or embedded streams for events and breaking stories. Reporters can contribute via web, email, an iPhone app, a BlackBerry app, SMS, voicemail, photos, videos, and by incorporating reader comments and Twitter updates. Recent feature additions include voicemail posting, SMS input, SSL security, and the ability to push updates to multiple pages. The company plans to let publishers edit and rearrange content (drag-and-drop) so live streams can be polished into definitive news articles as stories develop. Its service is used by large organizations such as Reuters and Hearst Television. Financially, ScribbleLive has completed early fundraising and is preparing for a larger venture round.