Participated · Equity · Mar 2026

Volotea is a low-cost airline operating across European routes and carried 11.2 million passengers in 2025. The carrier reported strong operational metrics in 2025, with a 79% on-time performance rate and a 99.7% flight completion rate. Financially, Volotea completed a capital raise that brought in €71 million in March 2026 after an investment process that began in September 2024. Investors in the transaction include Aegean Airlines, which increased its stake, PAR Capital, and Alaeo representing management. The airline plans to use the new capital to expand its network, enhance operational efficiency, grow its fleet, and invest in greener technologies and sustainable aviation fuel options. These measures are intended to support Volotea’s sustainable growth and competitive position in the European low-cost travel market.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2022

Deal Engine provides an AI-enabled platform that automates airline ticket refunds and changes for travel companies. Integrations with Global Distribution Systems and settlement systems such as Saber, Amadeus, Travelport, BSPLink and ARC allow the company to automatically execute refunds and changes daily. Utilizing proprietary AI and APIs, its algorithms bring automation to travel companies in over 30 countries. Led by CEO Alex Jara, Deal Engine aims to save time and money for customers by automating routine refund and change operations. The company raised $5.3M in Seed funding and plans to use the proceeds to expand globally and accelerate engineering, product, and sales. Investors in the round include F-Prime Capital, Thayer Ventures, PAR Capital Management and Plug and Play.

Participated · Series B · Jun 2022

Journera operates a secure, real-time data exchange platform across the travel industry. Its platform creates a complete, real-time view of a traveler’s journey, enabling airlines, hotels and other travel companies to build more seamless experiences that drive loyalty and direct engagement. The company lists commercial partners including United Airlines, American Airlines, Hilton, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International, Hyatt and many others. Led by CEO Jeffrey Katz and based in Chicago, Journera raised $10m in a Series B-1 round. The company intends to use the funds to expand operations, broaden its business reach and accelerate product development. Journera is a Chicago-based real-time data exchange travel platform that aggregates data from across the travel journey to enable coordinated customer experiences. The platform enables use cases such as automatically rebooking rental car reservations when flights are cancelled, preparing hotel rooms early, delivering bags to hotel rooms, and dispatching rideshares or room keys for contactless check-in. Journera emphasizes secure, private data sharing and works with commercial partners including Hilton, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, United Airlines, and American Airlines. The company was co-founded by The Boston Consulting Group and CEO Jeffrey G. Katz, the former founding chairman, president and CEO of Orbitz Worldwide and former president of SABRE’s Travel Information Network and CEO of Swissair. In October 2020 Journera raised $11.6M in a Series B funding round and intends to use the funds to commercialize the platform across the travel industry, launch a Recovery Analytics offering, and invest in software development and sales and marketing. Journera provides a software platform that enables travel-related companies to create end-to-end, secure and private travel journeys by bringing together data from across the trip. The platform's core is the GXR (Global Experience Record), which creates a real-time view of the travel journey across airlines, hotels, ground transportation and other services. Companies access Journera via publish-and-subscribe APIs to implement innovations and operational integrations, such as automatic rental-car rebooking after flight cancellations, early hotel room readiness, and bag delivery to hotel rooms. The platform also enables travel companies to implement existing partnerships in an efficient, real-time manner. Co-founded by The Boston Consulting Group and Jeffrey G. Katz, Journera launched in 2016 and attracted initial investors including major airlines and hotel groups. The company plans to use the Series A proceeds to grow its technology and business development teams and accelerate scaling of the platform.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2022

Wheelhouse spun out of Lyric to commercialize a pricing and revenue-management product originally built for Lyric’s hospitality operations. The company offers Wheelhouse Pro, a professional-grade pricing engine and suite of tools aimed at large portfolios, hosts and enterprise operators in the flex-rental market. Wheelhouse positions itself as a fintech platform for the $500 billion-plus flexible rental space and provides pricing, financing and underwriting capabilities. The team says its technology has been deployed for years and will be expanded via a planned rollout called “Wheelhouse Everywhere,” scaling from 42 countries to worldwide. Wheelhouse reported 100% overall growth over the prior nine months, 45% growth in the first quarter, and 500–600% growth in its B2B business over the same nine-month period; B2B is now the majority of its business. The company plans to use new capital to finalize inherited core technology, price mid-length stays, build underwriting, and invest in data-science to improve its ML pricing engine. PriceMethod develops predictive analytics and pricing software for vacation and short-term rentals on Airbnb, VRBO and HomeAway. Its software collects over 500 million data points and uses proprietary algorithms to recommend the best nightly price for each property. Hosts can connect their Airbnb, VRBO or HomeAway accounts to see ideal prices and push updates to their listings. The company offers optimized, automated and guaranteed pricing to help accommodations marketplaces and property owners operate more efficiently. Led by CEO Andrew Kitchell and COO Joe Fraiman, PriceMethod plans to use new funding to expand nationwide coverage. The article states the funding amount was not disclosed.

Participated · Series C · Jan 2019

Uplift provides point-of-sale financing for travel by partnering with airlines, travel sites and vacation-package sellers to let consumers pay for trips in monthly installments. The company works with partners including United Airlines, Southwest, American Airlines, Allegiant Travel Company and Kayak, and uses a bank partner to underwrite loans. Uplift says it can make booking easier and reduce upfront cost for consumers, giving an example of a $2,000 Disneyland trip financed as roughly $189 per month over a year. Launched less than two years ago, the company is on track to originate nearly $1 billion in loans in 2019 and for some partners represents about 20% of their business. Uplift positions itself as the only lending company focused entirely on travel, distinguishing the product and technology from general retail BNPL players. The company plans to use new funding to add partners, roll out new services and grow the business while continuing to reach consumers through its travel partners rather than building a consumer marketplace. UpLift provides a travel-industry-focused financing solution under the UpLift Pay Monthly product, enabling consumers to pay for travel in monthly installments integrated into the booking process. The solution is designed to increase suppliers' booking values, extend booking windows and boost ancillary sales. UpLift Pay Monthly is available on the vacation sites of American Airlines Vacations, United Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines, and is coming soon to Vacation Express and Lufthansa German Airlines. The company is led by Founder and CEO Brian Barth and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. Financially, the company closed financings totaling $90M, which supports its product deployment and partner integrations. UpLift's core product is a Payment Marketing Platform that gives large online merchants real-time payment analytics to show cardholder attributes, expose revenue opportunities, increase conversion rates, and support performance monitoring. The platform is positioned to promote preferred payment types, boost usage of merchant co-branded cards, build brand loyalty, and propel channel shift across travel, e-commerce and nonprofit verticals. UpLift is easy to implement and compatible with all payment processors and works with merchants and third-party service providers. The company plans to use the new financing to expand platform applications for merchants and third-party providers, introduce UpLift into new verticals, and integrate additional data sources. Financially, UpLift completed an $8.2 million Series A financing led by IDG Ventures. The company was founded by Brian Barth and Stu Kelly, the co-founders of SideStep.