Participated · Series D · Feb 2024

ProducePay offers a combination of supply-chain monitoring tools and financing products to help fresh produce growers and distributors manage volatility and reduce waste. The company supplies working capital for operating expenses, tech upgrades and land acquisitions, and extends post-harvest liquidity to improve growers' cash positions. ProducePay also bundles financial products with supply-chain visibility and agronomy support through “predictable commerce programs” that lock in pricing and volume before the growing season. Its platform connects growers and buyers across a network of roughly 1,000 clients and covers more than 60 commodities across 20 countries. Financial traction includes having funded more than $4.5 billion in harvests, revenue growth of 76% year over year (compared to 2022), trade volume up nearly 3x and transaction volume on track to reach $2 billion by late 2023. The company employs about 300 full-time staff and plans to expand into Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. ProducePay provides a product suite for the fresh produce industry that includes grower financing, market pricing data and analytics, and a marketplace connecting growers, distributors, and suppliers. Its financing products cover every stage of the harvest cycle with flexible payment terms, funding in two weeks or less, and no obligation to pay until produce ships. The company’s Insights and InsightsPro platforms are used by more than 10,000 growers and distributors for real-time pricing data and analytics, and its marketplace includes over 700 vetted growers and distributors. ProducePay has financed $3 billion of produce across 12 countries in North and South America. Founded in 2014 by CEO Pablo Borquez Schwarzbeck and based in Los Angeles, the company plans to use new capital to invest in technology development and infrastructure, grow its direct sales team, and expand further throughout Latin America. ProducePay offers farmers cash advances throughout the growing season and buys produce ahead of delivery, positioning itself as an intermediary between distributors, growers and grocers. The company operates a centralized marketplace that launched in October and bundles pricing and payment certainty for growers with better pricing for supplies and services such as seed, equipment and logistics. Since its 2015 launch the marketplace has seen $1.5 billion worth of produce flow across it, with $750 million of those transactions occurring in the last year. The marketplace has already seen $100 million in purchases since its October debut. ProducePay is based in Los Angeles and is led by founder and CEO Pablo Borquez Schwarzbeck. The company plans to use new financing to expand its purchasing model and marketplace to empower more farmers and distributors. ProducePay supplies fresh-produce farmers and distributors with short-term financing, online trading tools and market data to increase cash flow and transparency in the supply chain. The company created a way to securitize perishable produce as a financial asset using technology. It provides immediate access to financing for growers and distributors in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Honduras and Chile. ProducePay financed $400M of produce in 2017 (up from $17M in 2015) and has financed over $850M of produce in under four years, providing liquidity to more than 600 growers and distributors across six countries. The company has launched online trading and data-insight tools to streamline sales, discovery and real-time pricing. ProducePay was founded in 2015 and is based in Los Angeles. The Series B will be used to scale its financing business and to develop its software platform. ProducePay is a Los Angeles-based fintech that helps farmers better manage cash flow. It offers next-day advances on produce when shipments go to suppliers, provides pre-season advances, and operates its own market for distributors. The company’s product suite centers on cash-flow advances tied to produce shipments and a marketplace for distributors. ProducePay raised $77M in funding split between $7M in equity and $70M in debt. The funding was led by CoVenture with participation from Menlo Ventures, Arena Ventures, Red Bear Angels, Social Leverage, and Moonshots Capital. ProducePay is led by Pablo Borquez Schwarzbeck; the source of the debt funding was not announced.

Participated · Seed · May 2023

AvantGuard is developing Avantamine™, a patented antimicrobial platform that enhances biocompatible chemistry to provide broad-spectrum, long-lasting protection against bacteria, fungi, and viruses without contributing to antimicrobial resistance. The company’s product portfolio includes AvantSept, AvantGel, and Avant24, targeting indications from ringworm to MRSA and applications across skin, mucosa, wounds, and surfaces. Target markets include infection prevention, wound care, dermatology, and healthcare environments, as well as defense and transportation. AvantGuard has been supported by more than $9 million in NIH, NSF, and federal grant funding and states its platform can be incorporated into products representing over $60 billion in annual sales. The company is moving from scientific validation toward manufacturing readiness by establishing cGMP manufacturing capabilities for its monomer and polymer components. AvantGuard is a Cornell University spin-off and IndieBio alum founded in Ithaca, New York.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2021

Cylera provides a centralized cybersecurity and intelligence platform purpose-built for healthcare IoT (HIoT), delivering asset management, risk analysis and threat detection across connected medical devices, operational technology and other IoT devices. The platform combines comprehensive contextual awareness with a deep understanding of operational workflows to simplify response playbooks, decrease time to remediation and enable informed decision making. Cylera’s solution is used by large healthcare organizations and hospitals globally and the company is positioned as a market leader in the HIoT sector. With the Series A close, Cylera has $17 million in total funding, including a $10 million Series A. The company plans to expand its footprint into new global markets through strategic channel partners and extend the technology into new critical verticals. Cylera also intends to double headcount across research and development, channel support, customer success, sales and marketing over the next six months.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2017

GrokStyle develops computer-vision visual search that lets users point their camera at furniture and immediately find similar or identical items for purchase. The team, led by Sean Bell and Kavita Bala, spun the company out of computer‑vision work at Cornell University. Its core product is integrated into IKEA’s Place AR app, and the company is rolling out pilots and APIs for retailers. GrokStyle is also building recommendation systems and business‑intelligence tools to monetise search data. Financially, the company attracted $2 million in funding last year and has secured competitive grants from the U.S. government to support development. Management says the immediate plan is to execute on the IKEA deployment and use that proof point to win additional retail customers. GrokStyle builds computer-vision and machine-learning systems that identify furniture and home decor from photos and return close matches from a library of millions. Users can upload or take pictures from almost any angle and the service finds the same item or visually similar alternatives, with hooks into individual stores’ inventories and filters like price range. The company offers its technology as an API for retail apps and web interfaces and plans to push hard in the furniture space while exploring other visual markets. GrokStyle spun out of Cornell research—co-founder Kavita Bala led the lab where the work began and co-founder/CEO Sean Bell was a grad student—and presented foundational work at SIGGRAPH in 2015. The team is focused on improving algorithm accuracy and flexibility and is hiring engineers while working to establish partnerships with retailers. Financially, the company has secured early funding including a $225,000 NSF grant and additional investor financing.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2016

Eversound develops wireless headphone technology designed to help older adults hear again and to help senior living communities address communication and hearing challenges. The company’s core product is a new type of smart wireless headphone system for older residents. Led by co-founder and CEO Jake Reisch, Eversound focuses on audio solutions for communal senior-living settings. In August 2016 the company raised $3m in funding to support its growth. Eversound intends to use the funds to expand across the country. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article.