• ScribbleLive

  Participated · Series D · Sep 2015

  ScribbleLive offers a SaaS-based content marketing and live publishing platform that combines predictive analytics with content planning, creation, distribution, and workflow technologies. Led by CEO Vincent Mifsud, the platform uses patented linguistic and mathematical algorithms to generate insights that help marketers create original content aligned with strategy. The solution allows distribution across multiple channels and measurement of effectiveness and engagement. ScribbleLive's platform is used by over 500 enterprises, including Red Bull, Bayer, Ferrari, Oracle, Bank of America, Deutsche Telekom, and Yahoo!. The company closed a $35M Series D and intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations. ScribbleLive, founded in 2008 and based in Toronto, evolved from a live-blogging platform into a content syndication marketplace and live-content creation tool for marketers and publishers. The company helps brands create and distribute content designed to engage audiences. It serves enterprise customers—claiming over 500 enterprise clients—and after acquiring CoveritLive now powers over 1,500 total customers including the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and top U.S. news networks. ScribbleLive says it is a fast-growing, cash-flow-positive business. Management plans to use new capital to open international offices and pursue strategic acquisitions to accelerate growth. Three months before the Series C the company acquired CoveritLive from Demand Media, consolidating two large live content providers. ScribbleLive (Scribble Technologies) operates a real-time content creation and distribution platform available in 14 languages and used by major media brands including the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN and ESPN. The company has expanded beyond "live blogging" into a broader platform that powers dynamic, frequently updated content on media sites and brand properties. Scribble recently launched ScribbleMarket, a syndication marketplace that lets publishers and brands license or share full-featured real-time content (free or paid) from a single backend. Management positions the marketplace as a way to monetize reporting and enable smaller outlets to republish dynamic coverage, citing Boston.com’s syndication during the Boston Marathon bombings as an example. The company is also pushing into content marketing and offers engagement-metric insights to help brands measure and optimize real-time content. Scribble will use the new funding to accelerate ScribbleMarket, expand its platform internationally, and broaden adoption across different customer types. ScribbleLive offers a fast, collaborative way for news organizations to create branded live pages or embedded streams for events and breaking stories. Reporters can contribute via web, email, an iPhone app, a BlackBerry app, SMS, voicemail, photos, videos, and by incorporating reader comments and Twitter updates. Recent feature additions include voicemail posting, SMS input, SSL security, and the ability to push updates to multiple pages. The company plans to let publishers edit and rearrange content (drag-and-drop) so live streams can be polished into definitive news articles as stories develop. Its service is used by large organizations such as Reuters and Hearst Television. Financially, ScribbleLive has completed early fundraising and is preparing for a larger venture round.

• Scribble Technologies

  Participated · Equity · Nov 2011

  Scribble Technologies provides content engagement software solutions that support every stage of the content lifecycle, including planning, creation, distribution, interaction, measurement, and optimization. The company serves brands and media companies, with clients such as Ferrari, Red Bull, FOX, CNN, Ford, The Football League, and the NFL. Founded in 2008 and led by CEO Vincent Mifsud, Scribble is headquartered in Toronto and maintains offices in New York, Nashville, London, Dubai, Melbourne, and São Paulo. The company closed a $12M Series C in February 2014, bringing total funding to over $20M. The Series C was led by WIN (Waterloo Innovation Network) Fund and included participation from Georgian Partners, Export Development Canada, Summerhill Venture Partners, and Rogers Venture Partners. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article. Scribble Technologies offers real-time engagement management solutions, with flagship products ScribbleLive and the recently launched ScribbleMarket content-syndication platform. ScribbleMarket enables creation and distribution of real-time rich content from authoritative brands and media companies. The company leverages Applied Analytics and Big Data to deliver actionable insights that optimize and amplify online engagement. Its customer roster includes major media organizations such as CNN, Associated Press, Reuters, The Canadian Press, CBC, Rogers, Samsung and ESPN, collectively using billions of engagement minutes per month. Founded in 2008 with offices in Toronto and London, Scribble plans to accelerate enterprise-market growth, fast-track global expansion, and continue developing its flagship solutions. It raised new capital to support those priorities. Scribble Technologies is a Toronto, Canada company that provides a real-time content publishing and delivery platform. Its flagship offerings include LiveArticle™, which allows news organizations to create real-time articles summarizing ongoing events with multiple contributors, and ScribbleLive™, a service that aggregates photos, videos, audio files and social media content. The company works with top news agencies such as The Associated Press, The Press Association, Agencia EFE and Thomson Reuters, and serves customers including Mashable, the New York Daily News, CBS Sports and Sky News. Led by CEO Michael De Monte, Scribble intends to use new funds to strengthen its market position and expand sales, marketing and software development activities. It also plans to accelerate the growth of its LiveArticle service. The company raised $4M in new funding to support these efforts.

• Zoove

  Led · Equity · Oct 2011

  Zoove operates the StarStar platform and StarStarMe, which let brands and individuals use unique vanity mobile numbers to drive offline-to-online engagement. The company has secured relationships with all four major U.S. carriers and says StarStar drives millions of calls annually for customers including AT&T, CBS Radio, Dunkin' Donuts, Ford, Hyatt, the NFL and Viacom. Zoove offers solutions for enterprise marketers and consumers, including individual vanity numbers such as CHLOE or MOVIEGUY through major carriers. The company plans to expand the StarStar platform across product, business development and marketing channels, and to roll out enhancements to the StarStar Me mobile app and experience. Zoove serves clients across media, entertainment, retail, travel, financial services and non-profits from offices in Chicago, New York and San Francisco. The company recently secured a $15 million strategic investment to accelerate national growth and demand-generation initiatives. Zoove operates the National StarStar Registry and is the exclusive provider of StarStar numbers for the four largest U.S. mobile operators, reaching over 250 million consumers. Its service lets consumers dial a company using short, memorable codes (for example, FLOWERS) and typically triggers a follow-up text or voicemail prompting opt-in to view websites, download apps, or receive coupons. Participating brands pay Zoove an annual fee for their number, with pricing that varies by length and scarcity. StarStar numbers have been used in promotions from the NFL, X-Factor, and EA’s Madden game, demonstrating marketing integrations with major brands. The company says the new capital will be used to further accelerate its U.S. operations. Current financials include a total of $20 million in funding after the most recent investment. Zoove runs the StarStar Numbers registry, leasing memorable vanity phone numbers (e.g., WEATHER, SUZUKI) that route consumers to a brand’s mobile app, website, coupon, video or other content. The company exclusively provides StarStar Numbers for the largest U.S. wireless operators and powers the National StarStar Registry in cooperation with the four major mobile operators. Through those operator partnerships Zoove reaches more than 250 million people. Consumers are not charged extra to call a StarStar Number; after the initial call they typically receive a text message or voicemail prompting further engagement. Brands pay Zoove an annual fee to lease StarStar Numbers, with pricing that varies based on the length and “scarcity” of the number. The product is positioned as an alternative to QR codes and unbranded short codes by enabling name-based dialing (for example, dialing ESPN). Zoove is a Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of an abbreviated dialing mobile direct response marketing service. The company offers a patented mobile direct response marketing platform that enables marketers to engage consumers in interactive campaigns via a mobile phone by dialing a ## or ** code. Zoove closed a $13 million Series C funding round. Investors in the round include Highland Capital Partners, Worldview Technology Partners and Cardinal Capital Partners. Co-founder and CEO Tim Jemison said the funds will be used to roll out the abbreviated dialing platform across the major US carriers. The company is focused on deploying its carrier-level interactive dialing technology. Zoove is a Palo Alto startup focused on connecting mobile phone users with advertisers. Its core product lets users dial "**" followed by a short keyword (for example, "CAR") when they see an advertisement. The system is designed to bypass the multiple steps required to text short codes, which the company's executives argue are too complex. Keywords are effectively exclusive to advertisers — for example, only one car company could use the word "CAR" — so available keywords will vary. The company was reported to have $6.8 million in funding. VentureWire covered the company and Zoove's website contains additional details about how the service works.

• Prove

  Participated · Equity · Apr 2011

  Prove Identity builds mobile-first identity verification technology that links a phone’s SIM data with handset functionality (for example, facial recognition) to authenticate users and trigger actions like pre-filled forms, verification flows and password-free authentication. The company says the mobile handset remains central to its proposition and markets its tools as delivering faster onboarding, lower abandonment and reduced fraud (it cites 79% faster onboarding, 35% reduction in abandonment and a 75% reduction in fraud). Prove serves roughly 1,000 business customers, including major banks, retailers, insurers and firms such as FanDuel, Experian, Visa, Starbucks, BlueCross BlueShield and DocuSign. It reported 40% international growth in the last year and says it is cash-flow positive. Historically, the company (originally Payfone) reported processing 20 billion authentications in 2019 and was founded around 2008. Prove plans to use the new funding to build out more tools for digital payments and commerce and to expand its fraud-detection capabilities. Payfone provides a B2B2C platform that creates trust scores and tokens from telecoms and mobile-phone signals to identify and verify users without storing personal data. Its technology is used by carriers, banks, healthcare and insurance companies to authenticate transactions and logins, operating invisibly as a complement or alternative to other authentication methods. The company plans to build more machine learning into its algorithms, expand into 35 additional geographies, and pursue strategic acquisitions to broaden its technology stack. Payfone has discussed forming a consortium or clearing-house approach to share identity signals securely. It processed 20 billion authentications in 2019 and reported roughly 70% year-over-year growth, with a stated aim to reach 100 billion authentications in coming years. Payfone says it is already profitable and has raised $175 million to date. Payfone provides Trust Platform™ and Trust Score™ to enable businesses to instantly verify customers and thwart fraud and cyberattacks in real time. The company operates within a privacy-first, zero-knowledge framework that prevents consumer information from being passed, stored, or aggregated. In March it announced the next phase of its Zero-Knowledge architecture to enable identity verification partners, such as mobile network operators, to verify identities without sharing consumer information. Payfone serves six of the top ten US financial institutions and customers in healthcare, insurance, technology and retail. In 2018 the company authenticated 20 billion transactions for Fortune 500 companies and said it expected to double that number in 2019. The company is led by CEO Rodger Desai. Payfone operates a patented digital identity authentication platform that dynamically analyzes millions of signals to generate a proprietary Trust Score for each digital identity. Its product suite includes Fonebook, Instant Authentication for Mobile, Instant Authentication for Voice, Trust Score, and Identity Pre-Fill, all intended to accelerate revenue, improve conversions, and reduce fraud and operating expense. Payfone positions its technology to replace one-time SMS passcodes and knowledge-based authentication, thwart SIM-swap and porting fraud, and improve call-center authentication. The company says it is trusted by the world’s largest banks, insurers, brokerages and technology companies and targets sectors including retail, financial services, insurance, healthcare and technology. Payfone emphasizes delivering strong cybersecurity without sacrificing customer experience and aims to expand these benefits to more companies and customers. The company’s latest funding round totals $23 million; terms of the round were not disclosed. Payfone is a New York–based provider of mobile identity authentication for digital channels. It develops a patented mobile authentication technology that businesses use to protect customers from identity theft and social engineering attacks. The company's solution is positioned to limit fraud losses and reduce authentication-related expenses while driving customer engagement. Payfone is led by CEO Rodger Desai. In May 2017 the company raised $23.5m in a Series E financing. The round also included board additions tied to the financing.

No current team members are available.