The Venture Codex

Participated · Series A · Jan 2025

Teal is an AI-powered career platform offering tools including an AI Resume Builder, Job Tracker, Job Search Board, and a Chrome extension. The company recently launched an AI Interview Coach and AI-powered Offer Evaluation and Negotiation Support tools to help candidates prepare for interviews and assess offers. The new product launches accompany plans to expand Teal’s platform and advanced AI capabilities and to scale globally. Teal raised a $7.5M Series A in this round, bringing total capital raised to $19M. The company reports more than two million members, over 7 million saved jobs, nearly 400,000 interviews landed, and a 97% reduction in application preparation time for users. Teal appointed Sumit Gupta as CTO to build its tech stack and AI capabilities and is headquartered in Miami, Florida.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2022

Roleshare is a London provider of a matching and management platform for sharing a job that matches professionals to co-apply and share full-time roles. Co-founded by Sophie Smallwood and David Smallwood, the company focuses on enabling enterprises to retain and redeploy women and employees from diverse backgrounds seeking greater flexibility. Its system matches complementary skills to share mid- to senior-level jobs and also offers a fractional talent community to share roles. Roleshare has pilot programs with clients including JP Morgan, BP, and Alphabet's X Moonshot Factory. The company raised $1.2M in Seed funding and intends to use the proceeds to accelerate its technology platform and product development. It also plans to expand its sales and marketing efforts into new markets. Roleshare runs a talent marketplace that pairs professionals so they can co-apply and share one full-time role, making senior and strategic positions more "part-time-able." The platform lets individuals post their existing jobs for free while companies can list roles for a fee, providing talent liquidity for enterprises. The startup says it will build a global rolesharing marketplace and is committed to launching with large multi-sector organizations. Roleshare cites a U.K. study it says shows job-sharing employees are 30% more productive and argues the model improves diversity, skills and business continuity. Founders highlight a team with backgrounds at PayPal, Facebook and eBay and position the product as a way for companies to retain top talent while bringing in new hires. The company has attracted backing from European and U.K.-based angel investors as it scales the product.

Participated · Series C · Oct 2016

Tout is a next-generation streaming video network delivering hundreds of channels of news, sports and entertainment video from major media brands across thousands of publisher sites. Led by founder and CEO Michael Downing, the company is a technology spin-out of SRI International and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Tout powers video programming across more than 2,800 websites that collectively receive over one billion visits monthly. Its network reaches more than 57 million unique video viewers who consume over 350 million videos per month. Tout aggregates content from partners including Fox Sports, WSJ, CNN, CBS, Scripps, Conde Nast and Bloomberg. The company plans to use new funding to expand business-development and sales operations, grow its U.S. publisher base, launch audience-targeting capabilities for media partners, and expand into international markets. Tout is a video-messaging service that lets users post 15-second video messages and allows followers to reply with their own 15-second videos. The company has gained traction with high-profile users and media partners, including Shaquille O'Neal, Jeff Probst, Ryan Seacrest, Erin Andrews, Dr. Oz, CBS, National Geographic Channel, CNBC's Fast Money, C-SPAN, ESPN and Mitt Romney. Tout reports more than 23 million total visitors to its web and mobile applications since launch (a cumulative figure). CEO Michael Downing has said the company does not aim to be a destination social network but to enable video messaging broadly. Tout has been testing an API and teasing "major partners" in the works, indicating a focus on integrations and distribution. The company previously raised a $2 million Series A in December 2010 and has now closed a $13.4 million Series B.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2015

Cuseum develops a mobile platform that powers social, proximity-aware (beacon-enabled) apps for museums, galleries and cultural venues, offering curated experiences and advanced data analytics. Its core product surfaces shareable content for visitors while providing venues with visitor insights and new revenue opportunities. The company says its technology is already used at several museums and galleries in Boston and New York City. Cuseum will use the $1.2M seed funding to expand its sales, design and development teams. Leadership, led by founder & CEO Brendan Ciecko, plans to broaden deployment of beacon support and to build the infrastructure and mobile passport connecting art venues and users. The company was formerly known as Spotzer.

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.