Led · Series B · Jun 2020

Steady provides a mobile platform that helps hourly and gig workers track income, receive personalized income insights, find relevant work opportunities, and access benefits such as telemedicine. The app also offers programs that pay members to improve their financial health and delivers community-based data and trends. Steady reports nearly 2 million members who have linked bank accounts to the platform and more than 2.7 million app downloads. The company emphasizes using community data to surface worker trends and inform product decisions. Steady has launched COVID-19–focused initiatives, including Steady Together, distribution of $2 million in emergency cash grants, and free telemedicine subscriptions through at least August 1. Funds from its recent raise are intended to accelerate growth and expand U.S.-based data, product, and technical operations. Steady is an income-building platform that helps BYO workers discover and apply for extra income opportunities, track earnings, and access exclusive discounts. The product delivers personalized income-building opportunities, an income tracker, and a marketplace of benefits including prescriptions, groceries, auto care, and telecom discounts. Since launching last week the company is already serving 100,000 Americans. Steady says it will later roll out initial financial products and advice and will advocate with financial institutions to expand access to key financial products for BYO workers. The service is available for free on the App Store, Google Play, and web. Steady raised $9 million in a Series A to rapidly scale and extend product features, with lead and participating investors named in the articles.

Participated · Series A · Sep 2019

ZenBusiness offers a one-stop guided platform that helps entrepreneurs form and operate small businesses through easy-to-use digital tools, fintech solutions, education, and support. The company’s product set includes an app that centralizes services and provides step-by-step guidance for tasks such as forming an LLC, creating a website, and scaling revenue. ZenBusiness is expanding embedded fintech capabilities so customers can connect bank accounts, automatically categorize expenses with AI, send invoices, collect payments, and file taxes via software or a CPA. Since March 2020 the platform has grown more than 400% and now helps over 200,000 U.S. entrepreneurs. The company plans to use new capital to invest in product development, accelerate fintech features, and drive customer growth and ongoing success. ZenBusiness is a Public Benefit Corporation, was founded in 2017, and is valued at $1.7 billion after the latest round. ZenBusiness is an Austin-based public-benefit corporation that provides an incorporation and growth platform for micro and small businesses. The platform integrates incorporation, regulatory compliance, a no-code website builder (now in its third generation), and recently added financial services under "ZenBusiness Money" after acquiring Joust Banking. The company says revenue grew 100% this year and that more than 80,000 small businesses have launched on its platform. ZenBusiness has grown its team to more than 150 remote employees and plans to add 100 or more in the next year. Future plans include expanding banking services, adding more educational materials for entrepreneurs, and continuing to develop integrated product features and customer service. The company emphasizes rapid customer support—answering calls within 60 seconds and emails within 24 hours—as a differentiator in a competitive market. ZenBusiness began as an automated registered-agent product aimed at simplifying the legal and regulatory minutiae involved in starting a company. It has expanded its offerings to recommend and provide services such as banking, lending, tax preparation, website building and other early-stage needs. The company has built some tooling itself, including a simple webpage creator, and integrates partner services such as Xero while backing offerings with accountants at ZenBusiness. ZenBusiness emphasizes self-service and automation to target the long tail of small businesses and offers a “worry-free” guarantee to help founders get operational quickly. The company plans to invest in community features that let small business owners swap tips and receive guidance from ZenBusiness community managers and experts. As of the article, ZenBusiness employed about 40 people, is predominantly based in Austin with a small office in Peru, and has transitioned to a public benefit corporation. ZenBusiness provides an automated platform that files incorporation documents for free, manages annual filings, acts as registered agent to shield owners' personal information, and offers a customer-facing dashboard. Customers pay a $10-per-month fee for the "worry free guarantee," under which ZenBusiness says it will cover fines if it misses required filings. The product is fully automated to move as fast as government processing allows and targets the small-of-the-small business market from pet sitters and gig workers to plumbers. Founder Ross Buhrdorf, formerly founding CTO of HomeAway, positions the company as an active manager of entities rather than a one-off form filer. ZenBusiness aims to scale as a cloud platform by adding additional modules over time and is monitoring blockchain for potential future use in corporate records. The company has set an explicit goal to help initiate one million new small businesses by 2023.

Participated · Convertible Note · Dec 2018

BlockFi is a crypto financial-services firm that operates a platform holding client balances across account types. Amid a broad decline in crypto markets, BlockFi signed a term sheet for a $250 million revolving credit facility from FTX to backstop the firm and stabilize its balance sheet. CEO Zac Prince said the facility is intended to be contractually subordinated to all client balances and will bolster the firm's balance sheet and platform strength. FTX CEO Sam Bankman‑Fried said the partnership is meant to help BlockFi "navigate the market from a position of strength" and emphasized protecting customer assets. The term sheet is contingent on execution of definitive documents, which both companies expect to complete in the coming days. Company statements said operations remain normal and the funding should remove concerns about BlockFi's ability to service clients and temper worries about crypto contagion. BlockFi’s core product includes the BlockFi Interest Account (BIA), which promises high interest payouts to crypto depositors and had amassed over $15 billion in assets by March 31. The company is pursuing plans to go public, with investor materials indicating a 12-to-18-month timeline for an IPO. BlockFi is nearing a $500 million Series E that documents show is expected to close on July 27 and to leave the firm with a $4.75 billion post-money valuation. The Series E is being led by Hedosophia and Third Point LLC, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Tiger Global and Bain Capital. At the same time, state regulators in Texas, Alabama and New Jersey have alleged the BIA is an unregistered security, prompting notices and deadlines that could affect onboarding and product operations. BlockFi’s leadership says it is engaging with regulators and believes the BIA is lawful while it continues to pursue growth and public-market plans. BlockFi offers a retail and institutional-facing suite of products that let users earn yield on crypto (6% on Bitcoin, 8.6% on stablecoins), buy and sell digital assets, and obtain low-cost loans secured by crypto holdings. The company also provides lending and trade execution services to institutions participating in digital-asset markets. BlockFi has seen rapid growth in users and assets: it now has 265,000 funded retail clients, over 200 institutional clients, and has lent over $10 billion. Assets on the platform rose to $15 billion (from $1 billion the prior March), while monthly revenue increased to over $50 million (up from $1.5 million a year prior). Headcount expanded to about 530 employees and the company reports a 0% loss rate across its lending portfolio since inception. BlockFi plans to launch a Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card, expand its product suite and global retail support (Europe, APAC, LatAm), pursue strategic acquisitions, and double headcount by year’s end. BlockFi is a cryptocurrency lender and financial services company based in Jersey City, NJ. It offers USD loans backed by crypto, interest-earning accounts, trading, and released iOS and Android mobile apps. The company is expanding into new business lines including an upcoming bitcoin rewards-based credit card and support for additional assets and currencies. BlockFi services clients worldwide and in all U.S. states, and has seen particularly strong growth in Asian markets aided by strategic partnerships. It reported more than $1.5B in assets on the platform and a 0% loss rate across its lending portfolio since inception. The firm has bolstered its leadership with hires including a Chief Growth Officer, Chief Security Officer, General Counsel, and a Europe/APAC Managing Director. BlockFi offers a suite of crypto financial products that seamlessly interact with one another. Its products include crypto-based interest accounts providing up to an 8.6% annual percentage yield on Bitcoin, Ether and stablecoins, crypto-backed loans allowing liquidity up to 50% of an asset's value, and zero-fee trading. The company reports more than $650M in assets on the platform and a 0% loss rate across its entire loan portfolio since it began lending in January 2018. BlockFi grew revenue more than 20x in 2019. On the institutional side it services over 50 reputable institutional clients and plans to open a Singapore office in the first half of 2020 to better serve Asia Pacific clients. Proceeds from the raise will be used to grow the team and expand offerings to mainstream users, starting with a mobile app in the coming months.

Participated · Series B · Jun 2018

Locus uses proprietary algorithms and deep machine learning to automate logistics tasks such as planning, vehicle allocation, driver assignment, routing and tracking. Its platform is popular with FMCG, retail, e-commerce and distribution-heavy businesses where logistics can be a large portion of cost of goods sold. The company says it has helped customers save over $150 million in logistics costs and eliminated tens of millions of kilometres of travel. Locus operates in North America, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Indian subcontinent, with the vast majority of its revenue coming from international markets, especially North America. The startup plans to use new capital to expand into additional markets and broaden its technology team. CEO Nishith Rastogi said the company already generates enough cash and termed the $50 million raise "insurance money." Locus is an Indian logistics startup that uses AI to map out and automate logistics workflows. It automates planning, organizing, transporting and tracking of inventories, including route optimization and on-the-ground decisioning. The company serves clients in FMCG, logistics and e-commerce, including Tata Group companies, Myntra, BigBasket, Lenskart and Bluedart. Locus analyzes clients' past data to identify patterns and automate decisions at scale and has built tools such as a product-measuring scanner for e-commerce. The company has a 110-person workforce, half of which is located outside India, and half of its IP and revenue comes from its non-India team. Locus is operationally profitable and plans to use new capital to develop products and expand into Southeast Asian and North American markets, having secured some anchor clients for expansion. Locus, founded in 2015 and based in Bengaluru, builds machine-learning and AI-driven software that automates complex logistics and operational decisions for enterprises. The product focuses on optimizing the operational side of logistics—moving people and goods at scale—by determining optimal routes, fleet sizing and other operational approaches rather than simply finding the fastest route. The company pivoted from an initial safety app to logistics tracking and also offers a low-cost $500 "SizeUp" scanner for measuring packages to make its tech portable and affordable. Locus says its ML models can surface non-obvious decisions (for example, recommending different return routes based on observed travel data) that can outperform human analysts. It has begun expanding into North America (U.S. and Canada) and Southeast Asia, and plans to use new capital to grow its presence in those markets. Leadership describes the CEO role as a "chief supply chain officer," and the company intends to add a dedicated technical team in Tel Aviv to complement work in India as it prepares for a larger Series B. Mara Labs Inc. provides Locus, a SaaS-based platform to manage intra-city logistics and on-field workforces. The platform features a route-planning engine, live fleet control and tracking, predictive alerts, reporting and simulations, proof of delivery with signatures, customer notifications, and a mobile app for field staff. Founded in March 2015 by Nishith Rastogi and Geet Garg, the company operates out of Jersey City, New Jersey and Bangalore, India. The company intends to use the funds to continue developing the platform and to expand its team. Financially, the company completed a $2.75M Series A round. In conjunction with the funding, Balakrishnan V of Exfinity Venture Partners will join Locus’ board.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2018

Node offers a horizontal prediction platform-as-a-service built on a patented deep learning technology the company calls "Artificial Intuition." The platform delivers predictions via a simple REST API and can be used standalone or integrated with third-party applications like Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk, and Workday. Node positions its product to help companies gain advantages in market intelligence, resource planning, customer and talent retention, customer acquisition, and contact center automation, and it also helps users interpret the predictions so they can act on them. The company says its platform enables adoption of AI for businesses that lack data science expertise or large-data infrastructure and targets a market of over 100 million companies and the Fortune 2000. Since unveiling Artificial Intuition in July 2019, usage of the Node platform has increased over fourfold. Financially, the company announced a $6 million funding raise to help expand deployment of its AI capabilities. Node is a San Francisco, CA-based artificial intuition platform provider. The company has launched a SaaS-based automated machine learning platform that uses AI to help businesses deploy and scale both customer-facing and internal applications. Applications powered by Node deliver predictions to help users make smarter connections and decisions about engaging with customers, employees, investors, and partners. Node has been working with companies including Information Builders, Yesware, Nimble CRM, ConnectAndSell and Aventri. Led by CEO Falon Fatemi, CTO Louis Monier and new CPO Michael Radovancevich, the company will use the funds to continue to expand operations and its business reach. Node has raised $16M in the current financing and $36M in total to date. Node builds an AI-powered discovery engine that surfaces the people and information most relevant to a user. Its primary use case connects users to people they should be partnering with, which the company says has generated $200 million in revenue. Node plans to expand beyond people search to surface other relevant data inside organizations and across the web via a forthcoming next-generation release. To advance that roadmap it hired Louis Monier as Chief Scientist and Jeffrey Johnson as Chief Technology Officer. The company was founded in 2014 and has raised more than $21 million to date. Node builds a patent-pending AI discovery engine that automatically delivers actionable insights about people and companies to help customers identify who to engage and why. The company’s relationship graph contains over half a billion rich profiles, and it offers a native Salesforce integration so teams can discover prospects without changing workflows. Node spent 18 months in stealth working with select enterprise customers and is now making its discovery platform broadly available. It is currently focused on improving customer discovery for sales and marketing but says the technology can extend to recruiting and consumer use cases in the future. While in stealth Node doubled revenue in the prior six months and reports customers have generated nearly $103 million in total revenue from Node recommendations and optimized more than $4 billion in revenue. Customers recoup the cost of Node in as little as eight weeks, and the company cites examples of uncovering over $1 billion in new market opportunity for individual customers. Node builds a data intelligence layer that reorganizes information on the web to surface proactive, personalized recommendations tailored to individual users and businesses. The platform distills and filters massive amounts of web data to recommend relevant people and companies without requiring a search box, with an initial focus on B2B sales and marketing. Node is in stealth mode and is working with select enterprise customers as it scales its offering. The company announced an investment totaling $7.5 million to accelerate its go-to-market timeline. Future plans include expanding beyond B2B to B2C recommendations and recommending hires and company partners. The team includes former Google, Facebook and Wildfire engineers and NLP experts and is led by founder and CEO Falon Fatemi.