• 51Autogo

  Participated · Series A · Aug 2016

  51Autogo operates a mobile app focused on improving customer experience at gas stations. The article identifies the company as based in China. It develops services for motorists visiting petrol stations, positioning itself around convenience and user experience. No founding year or specific product feature details were disclosed in the article. The report does not provide operating metrics such as revenue or user counts. The only financial information in the article is the recent fundraising disclosed.

• Sirin Labs

  Participated · Seed · Apr 2016

  Sirin Labs develops FINNEY, an open-source smart device (PC and smartphone) designed to run on an independent blockchain network and enable fast, fee-less peer payments. FINNEY devices include a cold storage crypto wallet compatible with common cryptocurrencies. The company says the devices use a distributed ledger consensus mechanism that avoids mining fees. Sirin Labs closed a large crowdsale to fund its plans and will use proceeds to increase production and invest in sales and marketing. The business is led by Founder & Co-CEO Moshe Hogeg and Chairman Kenges Rakishev. The company is described as Swiss-Israeli. Sirin Labs is developing a next-generation mobile phone that emphasizes privacy and global connectivity. Founded in 2012 by Moshe Hogeg and based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, the company builds technology with support from R&D teams working from a facility in Tel Aviv. It currently employs over 100 R&D experts across Sweden, Israel and the United States. Sirin plans to launch its first smartphone and open a flagship store in London in May 2016, and is using its financing to continue bringing that device to market. Tal Cohen serves as CEO and the broader leadership team includes VPs overseeing R&D, operations, finance, services and HR. Financially, the company launched with a $72 million VC round raised in November 2013.

• Poplar Homes

  Led · Series A · Mar 2016

  Poplar Homes is a technology-powered, full-stack property management company that empowers both property owners and renters throughout their real estate journey. Led by CEO Greg Toschi and based in Cupertino, CA, its platform enables renters to get approved, view available properties, and rent online, while providing tools for paying rent and requesting maintenance. For property owners, Poplar simplifies maintaining and operating rental homes. The company has completed nine acquisitions of property management firms across multiple high-growth U.S. markets, with acquired portfolios ranging from 200–1,000 doors. Today Poplar manages more than 7,500 doors and employs a global workforce of 244 people. It operates in California, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina. The company intends to use new funding to make strategic hires and pursue further acquisitions to drive growth. OneRent provides residential rental and property-management services for small to mid-size buildings. Launched in January 2016, the company manages properties for more than 500 real estate investors and property owners with buildings from 1 to 50 units. Its core offering is end-to-end property management for owners of 1–50 unit buildings. The company plans to expand into multiple new markets in 2016, including Los Angeles (Santa Monica, Hollywood, Venice, Marina del Rey), San Diego, Portland, Sacramento, Washington, DC, and Boston. OneRent also intends to use funds to hire talent with a specific focus on engineering, operations, and sales. The company recently closed a $4M Series A to support those expansion and hiring plans. OneRent is a San Jose, CA-based provider of residential rental services that aims to simplify and improve the rental experience between renters and owners. Led by co-founder and CEO Greg Toschi, the company offers a platform that manages the entire rental lifecycle, including showings, lease signings, rental payments and property maintenance. OneRent raised $1.5M in seed funding to support its growth. The company said it will use the funds to expand operations beyond the San Francisco Bay Area; the service currently serves the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle and plans further geographic expansion. Prominent backers in the round include Jeff Dean, Michael Zee, Chris Chin, Jonathan Manson and Andrea Zurek.

• FiscalNote

  Participated · Series C · Feb 2016

  FiscalNote delivers legislative and regulatory data, policy news and analysis, stakeholder management, collaboration and advocacy tools to customers worldwide. The company serves more than 4,000 clients, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Reserve Board, 3M, AstraZeneca and the American Hospital Association. Led by Founder & CEO Tim Hwang, FiscalNote operates offices in the US, Belgium, India and Korea. The product suite focuses on aggregating and analyzing regulatory and legislative information to help organizations manage policy risk and advocacy. FiscalNote intends to use recent financing to accelerate technology and service development, pursue strategic acquisitions, expand into new international markets and refinance existing debt. FiscalNote builds a platform for analyzing government risk, using proprietary code to parse millions of regulatory and legislative actions and generate actionable insights for investor, compliance, and legal professionals. Its product suite includes powerful legislative searching, tracking, and forecasting tools alongside federal and state regulatory data and analytics. The company offers a mobile application that lets users access and analyze every bill at every stage from all fifty states, D.C., and Congress. FiscalNote's customers include Southwest Airlines, Aetna, Lyft, the Democratic Governors Association, VMWare, Planned Parenthood, Allergan, the University of Virginia, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The company emphasizes design and real-time analytics and says it aims to unlock legislative and regulatory data with best-in-class analytics, insights, and predictions. Financially, the company has raised multiple rounds and recently completed a financing that increased its total funding to over $30 million. Founded in 2013 by CEO Tim Hwang, FiscalNote provides legislative searching, tracking, and forecasting products built on artificial intelligence and design. Its flagship product is Prophecy, and the company said it will introduce a regulatory product called Sonar later this year. FiscalNote's product suite is used by customers including Uber, the Democratic and Republican Governors Associations, VMWare, Planned Parenthood, United Therapeutics, Allergan, Auction.com, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In March 2015 FiscalNote raised $10M in a Series B funding round to support expansion into new markets. The company previously raised a $7M Series A in November 2014. FiscalNote provides the Prophecy platform, which applies artificial intelligence to real-time and historic legislative data and offers search and advanced notification functionality. The Prophecy platform was launched in early 2014. Customers include Planned Parenthood, New Balance, VMware, Natural Resource Defense Council, Ally Financial, Allergan, both the Republican and Democratic Governors Associations, and the University of Virginia School of Law. FiscalNote closed a $7M Series A led by Visionnaire Ventures with participation from AME Cloud Ventures, NEA, Green Visor Capital, Winklevoss Capital and angel investor Duke Chung. The company intends to use the funds to continue content expansion, increase engineering capacity to cover information domestically and globally, and grow its sales and marketing teams. FiscalNote was co-founded by CEO Tim Hwang, Jonathan Chen and Gerald Yao. FiscalNote aggregates legislative data posted to public sources to help businesses stay up-to-date with state and local legislation. It is developing the PoliticalGenome Project, which analyzes bill language and the histories of legislators to predict a bill's success. The nine-person startup uses machine learning and natural language processing and plans to boost its algorithm and expand its ML/NLP team. FiscalNote is conducting a closed beta with customers that include legal and marketing departments within Fortune 500 companies, national advocacy groups, and financial institutions. Founders include CEO Tim Hwang, CTO Jonathan C. Chen, and CFO Gerald Yao, and the advisory board includes Chris Lu, Youngsuk "Y.S." Chi, and LegalZoom CEO John Suh. The company intends to expand beyond legislation into other industries and geographies.

• Aspiration

  Led · Series A · Oct 2015

  Aspiration is a platform that delivers automated sustainable-impact financial products and services to consumers and companies, positioning itself as a leader in "Sustainability as a Service." The company says it has earned the trust of more than 5 million members by integrating ESG-driven spending, saving, shopping, and investing features. Recent strategic partnerships include Hanwha Life and Hanwha Solutions to expand into South Korea, a strategic agreement with Qatar Free Zones Authority and Doha Venture Capital to set up operations in Qatar Free Zones and expand across the Middle East and North Africa, and a multi-year partnership with Athletes Unlimited to enable a carbon-neutral sports league. Aspiration is pursuing a business combination with InterPrivate III (a publicly traded SPAC) and expects the transaction to close in Q1 2022, subject to shareholder approval and closing conditions. Financially, Aspiration secured $315 million of incremental equity financing and now expects cumulative net proceeds exceeding $700 million inclusive of these financings and an earlier $200 million common-stock PIPE, assuming no redemptions from InterPrivate’s trust account. The company is a certified B Corp and is positioning its brand and technology to scale growth in the intersection of fintech and sustainability. Aspiration is an LA-based fintech that markets sustainable banking and investment products aimed at conscious consumers. It launched with an investment management service that lets customers choose their own fees and guarantees portfolios that exclude fossil-fuel companies. The company offers an Impact Measurement Score to show the social impact of spending, a tree-planting matching feature for rounded-up debit purchases, and a premium subscription tier with recycled-ocean-plastic debit cards that provide higher cash back, higher interest, and carbon-offset features. Aspiration has partnerships with socially conscious brands like Toms and Warby Parker to deliver extra cash-back rewards. Per the article, the company has 1.5 million U.S. users and has processed $4 billion in transactions, and the recent $135 million cash infusion brings total capital raised to $200 million. Investors say the funding will fuel Aspiration’s durable growth and lasting impact as it expands its sustainability-focused offerings. Aspiration’s core product is the Summit personal banking account, a checking account that pays 1% interest, is fossil-fuel free, and lets customers track a sustainability score tied to where they spend. The company also offers investment and retirement services and uses a pay-what-you-want fee model rather than traditional bank penalty fees. Customers’ accounts total about $350 million in savings, and roughly $2 billion per year is transacted across the Aspiration platform. Aspiration donates 10% of its earnings to charitable micro-loans and mentorship programs for low-income Americans. The founder and CEO, Andrei Cherny, frames the business as an inversion of the typical bank model, aiming to align consumer spending with corporate ethics. The company says it will use the new capital to develop a suite of credit and lending products to expand its banking services. Aspiration is a two-year-old, L.A.-based investment and banking startup led by CEO Andrei Cherny that markets itself as a "Merrill Lynch with a conscience." Its core products include a low-risk mutual fund (managed by Emerald Asset Management) with a $500 minimum, free checking with no ATM fees, and a forthcoming sustainable-investments product. Customers can optionally pay management fees up to 2% of assets under management or up to $6 per month for checking; the company reports 90% of its customers are paying for services. Aspiration pays 1% interest on checking accounts and donates 10% of its revenue to Accion, a nonprofit microloan provider. The company partners with Radius Bank to operate its checking product and relies on traditional banking spreads from loans funded by customer deposits. At the time of the article the 16-person company had just passed $5 million in assets under management and reported rapid user growth from 700 customers two months after its April launch, doubling the user base every six to eight weeks. Aspiration Partners LLC, founded by Andrei Cherny, intends to give everyday investors access to investment products historically limited to the wealthy, including strategies similar to those used by hedge funds and private equity. Cherny says the firm aims to level out volatility and replicate arcane strategies for retail investors. He began building the business two years earlier and worked with the SEC for the past year as the company prepared for a November launch. Over that period Cherny quietly raised $4.5 million in capital from undisclosed angel investors. Joseph N. Sanberg has joined as an advisor, and the company has recruited high‑profile advisors including Alexis Maybank and Jeff Skoll. The team includes former executives from Blackstone, Ryan Seacrest Enterprises, Nest Labs, Merlin Securities, and Cantor Fitzgerald.

No current team members are available.