Participated · Seed · Jun 2019

Aromyx applies biotechnology and data science to capture and digitize sensory information from human olfactory and taste receptors, creating quantitative representations of smell and taste. The company has built a proprietary platform and the largest database of human receptors, ingredients/chemicals and word descriptors to test products and ingredients against these receptors. Its products and services are used by multiple Fortune 500 companies across food & beverage, CPG, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Aromyx provides direct testing services, data analysis, and software tools to help customers design products, target demographics, forecast trends and improve sustainability and health outcomes. The company tested over 100 products in 2020 and was on track to more than triple that number in 2021 as capacity ramps up. Planned uses of the Series A proceeds include increasing capacity and automation, generating more data, improving AI algorithms, and expanding lab and software teams to meet growing demand. Aromyx applies biotechnology and data science to capture sensory data, using biological receptors from the human nose to create digital representations of smell. Its EssenceChip™ is a biosensor that scientifically records flavors and fragrances with reproducible results for real-world environments. The company's Allegory Database™ provides a basis for machine learning analysis of flavors and fragrances. Aromyx's products and services are in use at several Fortune 500 companies across pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food & beverage and consumer packaged goods. The company is led by newly appointed CEO Dr. Josh Silverman and founder/chairman Chris Hanson. Aromyx closed a $3M seed financing round and intends to use the funds to grow the scientific team and continue executing technology development projects. Aromyx develops technologies to enable scientific, reproducible measurement and digitization of taste and scent, centered on its EssenceChip disposable biosensor. The EssenceChip places human taste and olfactory receptors into a biochip for measurement and digitization. The platform is targeted at food and beverage, flavor and fragrance, consumer packaged goods, chemical and agricultural industries. The company was founded by Chris Hanson and was incubated at Stanford’s StartX accelerator and the Plug and Play Ventures Materials program. Aromyx is raising $3.6M in growth capital on Propel(x)’s platform. It is currently in advanced negotiations with some of the largest consumer packaged goods companies.

Led · Seed · Jan 2016

Insurify has built a machine learning-based virtual insurance agent that integrates with more than 100 carriers to digitize and personalize the insurance shopping experience for home, auto and life policies. The company is a fully licensed agent that handles fulfillment and servicing, earning new and renewed commissions; its embedded insurance offerings have SaaS-like monetization. Since its Series A in 2019 Q4, Insurify says new and recurring revenue has increased 6x; over the last three years it achieved a 151% CAGR and consistent 2.5x year-over-year revenue growth. The startup has expanded its home insurance marketplace, deepened carrier integrations to provide an instant purchase experience, and launched embedded products via partnerships with Toyota Insurance Management Solutions and Nationwide. Future plans include expanding API integrations for real-time direct quotes, identifying more embedded insurance opportunities, extending product functionality (including potential verticals like pet insurance), building brand awareness (including TV advertising), and growing its 125-person team. Insurify operates an online insurance marketplace that helps consumers compare and buy policies and passes pre-loaded information to carriers to speed issuance. The company began with car insurance and is expanding horizontally into life, home, rental and other verticals. Insurify operates as a licensed agent and earns revenue when consumers purchase policies through its platform. Today the startup completes roughly 65% of its new policies online and is building adjunct products, including a wallet to manage multiple policies. Insurify emphasizes automation and has an AI-driven marketing engine that evaluates the value of every click and is run like a “hedge fund.” The company plans to use new capital to accelerate go-to-market efforts and launch additional insurance verticals. Insurify offers a patent-pending virtual agent powered by artificial intelligence and natural language processing that helps drivers compare car insurance quotes, find discounts, and get coverage recommendations via messaging. The company launched the first U.S. car insurance comparison service on Facebook Messenger, where users can upload a photo of their license plate, answer questions, and compare multiple quotes in about two minutes. Insurify also provides rate alerts that monitor prices and notifies consumers of more competitive rates. The platform has integrated with a broad carrier network—fifteen of the top 20 U.S. carriers participate—and is available in all 50 states. Founded as an MIT spin-off and led by MIT alumni and veterans from TripAdvisor and KAYAK, Insurify is focused on enhancing its AI and data integrations and aims to further train its algorithms (including plans to train them to pass the insurance licensing exam). Since launching in January 2016, more than 1.5 million consumers have used the service, and the company reports more than 40% month-over-month growth in customers purchasing policies, with volume projected to double in Q1 2017. Total funding to date is $6.6 million. Insurify is an MIT spinout that built Evia (Expert Virtual Insurance Agent), an AI-driven robo-agent that provides car insurance quotes from a photo of a license plate or via a web interface. The platform scours millions of records to verify personal information and driving history, then returns policy quotes and recommendations via text message. Evia is currently in limited beta and available in 30 states; the company says it has partnered with carriers including Progressive, Allstate and AAA and claims more carrier partnerships than other online insurance sales platforms. Insurify also offers a web version that requires make, model, year and other details as an alternative for users concerned about uploading license-plate images. The article notes privacy and security concerns; Insurify says plate numbers do not contain private information and that it will not disclose vehicle owners. Financially, Insurify announced a $2 million seed round from Rationalwave Capital Partners to create Evia and launch its robo-agent platform.

Participated · Equity · Aug 2013

ShopAdvisor originally launched as a consumer app to help people remember and shop for products later. Over the last year the company shifted toward a B2B model by adding comparison-shopping capabilities for media sites, tablet apps and print publications. Its product surfaces shopping buttons over ads and content, lets users save items for later, and captures email addresses to enable follow-up marketing. ShopAdvisor sources product suggestions from 16,000 affiliated merchants and allows editorial teams to control button placement and aesthetics. Current customers include Time Inc. and Hearst titles such as Cosmopolitan and Allure. The company has raised $7M in total funding and says the new capital will be used to build out its customer base; it reports click rates on digital magazine interactions about ten times higher than banner ads and high tablet usage.