• Mazen Animal Health

  Participated · Series A · May 2022

  Mazen Animal Health is an Iowa-based startup developing oral alternatives to injectable vaccines for pigs and poultry using plants—particularly corn—as molecular farms to produce vaccine proteins. Administering vaccines in feed reduces worker exposure and labor compared with injecting animals. The company says its plant-based production is cheaper than precision fermentation in bioreactors and traditional vaccine methods. Mazen has made progress on a lead oral vaccine for Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDV) and is conducting USDA-required efficacy studies. The Series A financing will be used to scale commercial manufacturing capacity and to advance a pipeline of other vaccines, including one for coccidiosis in poultry.

• DMscore

  Participated · Equity · Oct 2016

  DMscore is a marketplace for buyers and sellers of digital marketing services anchored around a numeric DMscore. Its patent-pending artificial intelligence measures and ranks hundreds of online marketing factors to provide a single score that measures marketing success by industry sector at a hyper-local level. The company has beta launched a legal service that assigns law firms numerical scores comparing their online marketing performance against local competition and provides advice and resources to improve that marketing. The platform will roll out to other professions in the upcoming months. Led by newly hired CEO Rand Schulman, DMscore intends to use the $2.5M in initial funding to continue developing its service. Backers named in the round include Jack O'Connell, Mike Tate, Techspring Partners and SLO Seeds.

• Edufii

  Participated · Series A · Sep 2014

  Edufii provides a cloud platform and free mobile apps that let coaches and athletes capture key moments during coaching sessions using mobile phones or tablets. Its interface enables video, voice notes, photos and files to be sent to the cloud to create a social-media-style timeline. Athletes can invite parents, other coaches or additional members into their networks to support collaboration and accountability. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Spencer Dennis. In September 2014 Edufii raised $1.4M in a Series A financing. The round was led by DFJ Frontier and the Pasadena Angels, with participation from Gideon Hixon Fund, Tech Coast Angels, SLO Seed Ventures and Rudy Duran. In conjunction with the financing, Frank Foster of DFJ Frontier joined Edufii’s Board of Directors.

• Senior Reports

  Participated · Seed · Jan 2013

  Silver Living aims to be a “consumer reports for senior living,” combining in-depth research with high-quality, honest photography to evaluate assisted living communities. The product uses mystery shoppers, paid photographers (some reviews include 300–400 photos), Freedom of Information requests for inspection and complaint reports, and resident interviews to produce multi-factor scores. Communities are not given editorial control over text or images; the company currently selects which facilities it reviews and focuses on operators with at least 100 beds. Silver Living currently covers New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and plans West Coast expansion beginning with Los Angeles in 2013. Its primary revenue comes from placement agreements: the startup is paid an annual fee in the thousands when someone moves into a community and has agreements with three of the four largest assisted living chains. The team has said it will pursue a Series A in the coming months.

No current team members are available.