• Urban Sports Club

  Participated · Equity · Dec 2023

  Urban Sports Club operates a digital membership platform that aggregates fitness, yoga, swimming, climbing, team sports and wellness offerings into one subscription accessible through a smartphone app. The service lets members create personalized training plans from over 50 sports and check in at more than 11,000 partner venues spread across multiple European countries. The company currently focuses on both consumer and rapidly expanding B2B segments, offering employers a flexible benefit to support employee health. With its latest capital injection, Urban Sports Club intends to accelerate its B2B push in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and soon Austria, enhance the overall member experience, and enlarge its partner studio network. The platform’s European footprint and diversified activity catalog position it as a broad wellness marketplace rather than a single-discipline fitness provider. The €95 million raise provides additional resources to scale technology, marketing and partner acquisition. No specific revenue or user figures were disclosed in the article.

• HolodeckVR

  Led · Equity · May 2019

  HolodeckVR is a Munich-based spin-off from the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS that builds multi-user, location-based virtual-reality experiences. It uses proprietary technology blending radio-frequency, infrared tracking and on-device IMUs to enable positional tracking for mobile headsets, supporting groups of up to 20 people moving within an empty 10×20m space. The company targets entertainment venues and events, including fairground dodgems/bumper cars, birthday parties and corporate team-building, and says its systems can handle several thousands of guests per day. HolodeckVR operates an open content platform and is focused on expanding its network of locations. It plans to leverage strategic partnerships for distribution, live broadcasting and VR content generation, and intends to run eSports events with ProSiebenSat.1’s 7Sports unit. Financially, it has secured a €3 million investment from ProSiebenSat.1 to fund platform expansion and location growth.

• Minute Media

  Participated · Series F · May 2018

  Minute Media operates a user-generated, syndication-based publishing platform that powers multiple mostly-sports media properties. It runs a centralized open CMS that has hosted as many as 20,000 contributors and publishes under 1,000 curated pieces per day across its sites. Its holdings include 90min.com, FanSided, The Players’ Tribune, Mental Floss, 12up, DBLTAP and The Big Lead. Revenue is roughly split between advertising and licensing/syndication (around 50/50), and the company grew about 100% last year and is on track for $200 million in revenue this year. Minute Media plans to use new capital to invest in its publishing platform, invest in properties it already owns and make further acquisitions. The company describes itself as based in New York; its founding team are from Israel and it grew initially in London, where its CEO currently lives. Minute Media operates a user-generated sports content platform that aggregates articles and videos from roughly 5,000 contributors and distributes them via its own sites and partner brands. Its network of sites draws about 80–90 million monthly users, with flagship 90min alone attracting roughly 60 million monthly visitors. Video is a growing area with approximately 200 million video views per month, while licensing content to partners (Sports Illustrated, MSN, ProSieben, Yahoo Sports) accounts for about one-third of revenue. The company ingests 4,000–5,000 pieces of content daily and publishes roughly 1,000 items after curation; all contributors are paid. Minute Media is headquartered in London, traces its engineering roots to Israel, and employs about 180 people, roughly 80 of whom are engineers. The startup plans to use new capital to expand into markets such as China and to begin exploring content beyond sports; it has raised $77 million to date and completed a $17 million Series F in the current round. Minute Media is a fan-driven sports media and technology company that enables fans to create, publish, share and distribute sports content across a family of destinations including 90min and 12up. Its platform delivers over 20,000 pieces of original, socially-driven and curated editorial in 11 languages to users in more than 200 countries. The company grew monthly users from 30 million to 70 million over the last 12 months, earning prominent comScore positions in the US, UK and other top global media markets. Minute Media plans to expand into key global markets ahead of the 2018 World Cup, introduce several new sports brands and launch an esports brand, while enlarging editorial and commercial teams. The new $15 million growth round, bringing total funding to $60 million, will support development in existing and new offices including London, New York, Tel Aviv, Manila, São Paulo, Singapore and Tokyo. Founded in late 2011, the company is backed by venture firms and strategic investors such as Battery Ventures, Dawn Capital, Gemini Ventures, North Base Media, ProSieben and Qumra Capital. 90min is a contributor-driven football media platform that relies largely on unpaid, volunteer writers to produce large volumes of fan-created content. The site publishes what it says are 4-500 pieces of original content daily and attracts about 30 million unique users per month across Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The company emphasizes a technology-first approach to enable large-scale content creation in 10 languages and across rich formats and devices. 90min competes with mainstream sports publishers as well as digital-first brands like Bleacher Report and SB Nation, but differentiates itself by remaining an open platform for fan contributors and allowing publishers to auto-embed its content. The recent funding will support growth and a strategic push into new markets via a partnership with a European media owner.

• Cashboard

  Participated · Series A · Nov 2016

  Cashboard operates an online platform that identifies and combines products from multiple providers into a single account, positioning itself as a curated marketplace for retail investment. Unlike typical robo-advisors that focus on passive ETFs, Cashboard offers access to a broader spectrum of asset classes, including call money, stocks, and crowd lending, and invests on users' behalf. Users set savings goals and risk levels; the service suggests a selection of asset classes and providers and manages portfolio diversification. The company charges a 10% performance fee on net profits each year. Cashboard says it will use its Series A proceeds to grow its team and internationalize the service. CEO and co-founder Robert Henker frames the product as making curated, multi-provider investment options understandable and accessible for retail investors. CASHBOARD operates a digital investment platform that lets private and institutional investors open individual accounts and depots online and invest from €100. The service uses fully automated algorithms for portfolio management, risk mitigation and tax optimisation. Investors can allocate to traditional assets (funds, shares, real estate, overnight deposits) and innovative assets (P2P lending, crowdfunding and social trading). The platform is free to users and operates on a success-oriented, profit-sharing basis. CASHBOARD partners with the European Bank for Financial Services (ebase) for financial security while a comdirect subsidiary manages invested funds. Account opening is completed online via video verification and electronic signatures. The company had won €4 million in media time at the SevenVentures Pitch Day and planned a ProSiebenSat.1 ad campaign for Autumn 2015. CASHBOARD recently raised new funding to support further growth.

• Jaunt

  Participated · Series C · Sep 2015

  Jaunt provides an end-to-end solution for creating and distributing premium live-action cinematic virtual reality, including professional-grade camera hardware, software, and production tools. The company recently announced its 5th generation patent-pending camera system, Jaunt ONE, and operates a studio arm, Jaunt Studios, focused on live-action VR. Jaunt plans to scale up VR production and expand delivery across mobile devices and VR hardware while significantly growing teams in its Palo Alto headquarters and new Los Angeles studio. The company works with brands and creative partners such as The North Face, Rebecca Minkoff, Condé Nast and ABC News to produce branded and original VR content. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Palo Alto with a presence in Los Angeles, Jaunt positions itself as a leading, well-capitalized player in cinematic VR. Jaunt builds a full-stack hardware and software platform for cinematic virtual reality, using proprietary algorithms and computational photography to produce seamless omnidirectional 3D experiences. The company develops hardware, software, tools, and applications that integrate with existing production workflows to enable immersive cinematic VR. Since launching earlier this year, Jaunt is in production on a wide range of cinematic VR experiences for creators across Hollywood, travel, sports, and live events. The company plans to use new funding to scale its technology and meet growing demand from content creators and deliver VR experiences to mass audiences. Jaunt announced a $27.8 million Series B and has raised more than $34 million in total to date. The company is supported by advisors from Amazon, IMAX, film and academia and is based in Palo Alto, Calif. Jaunt develops hardware and software tools around computational photography to enable filmmakers to produce cinematic experiences for VR headsets. The company built a special spherical camera with 32 lenses and complementary post-production, editing and rendering software to recompose multi-lens video for headsets like the Oculus Rift. Jaunt positions itself as a studio offering end-to-end VR production solutions and says it has no immediate plans to sell its hardware or software. The team previously sold Ellerdale to Flipboard and has assembled advisers including Peter Gotcher, Stuart Murphy, Babak Parviz and Brad Wechsler. Jaunt is Palo Alto–based and has raised $6.8 million in funding from investors including Redpoint Ventures, Peter Gotcher, Blake Krikorian, SV Angel and British Sky Broadcasting. The company is targeting filmmakers and Hollywood creatives to produce immersive, film-like VR content as consumer VR platforms gain attention. Jaunt is an early-stage Palo Alto startup that captures and displays 360-degree video and immersive content. Its technology, per the company LinkedIn, combines computational photography, statistical algorithms, massively parallel processing, cutting-edge hardware and virtual reality. The company’s placeholder site currently offers only a "stayed tune" message while it builds out its engineering team. Jaunt’s leadership includes CEO Jens Christensen, CTO Arthur van Hoff and VP of engineering Tom Annau, all with notable prior roles at Flipboard and Google. The startup has secured strategic industry interest as part of a partnership with BSkyB, which the broadcaster says will give it additional insight into developments in the field. No revenue or user metrics are disclosed in the article.

No current team members are available.