Led · Seed · Oct 2016

Pay By Group provides an embedded, white-label checkout solution that lets friends and family collaborate to split the cost of a shared purchase. Founded in 2011 by Camilo Acosta, the company operates out of San Francisco and Guadalajara, Mexico. Its product is intended for integration into partner platforms as an embedded payments option. The company has attracted venture investors and recently received a follow-on investment from Czar Ventures and other backers; the amount and terms were not disclosed. Named investors include SparkLabs Global Ventures, Great Oaks Capital, 500 Startups, John Owen, Deb Lui, Karl Jacob, Greg Kidd and Bryan Bradford. No revenue or user metrics were disclosed in the report. Pay By Group provides a white-label e-commerce conversion tool that enables friends or family to collaborate and split the cost of any purchase. The company began in the vacation rental industry by integrating with regional property-management sites as an option for small groups to organize and split the cost of rentals and has since grown to work with enterprise clients in the vacation rental vertical and beyond. Its payment solution can handle transactions in over 70 countries worldwide. Led by CEO Camilo Acosta and CRO Frank Langston, the company is based in San Francisco and Guadalajara, Mexico, and was incubated at 500 Startups and CommerceInnovated. Pay By Group raised $3.4M in seed funding and intends to use the proceeds to expand operations.

Participated · Equity · Sep 2016

Simple operates an upstream marketing platform focused on planning, budgeting, organization and analysis to improve marketing efficiency and value for money for large and global organizations. The product does not handle execution; it helps teams manage campaigns and complexity across enterprises. Simple recently launched an “intelligent market platform” built on Microsoft Azure with integrations to Microsoft Office, following a tie‑up with Microsoft unveiled at the Inspire partners’ conference. Its clients span industries including banking, retail, insurance and gambling. The company intends to scale its offering through Asia, the U.S. and Europe and will deploy local sales and marketing teams in target markets. Australia will remain Simple’s headquarters and technology center while it expands its international footprint. The company raised funds to support that global expansion. Simple is a four-year-old marketing technology firm that has developed a cloud-based platform to run and measure the success of campaigns. The platform lets marketing teams plan, produce and execute campaigns while measuring return on investment and providing analytics. The company has closed a $10 million funding round to support its platform. Investors in the round include Perle Ventures and US fund SparkLabs Global Ventures. The funding is tied directly to the platform that runs and measures campaign performance. The article did not disclose revenue, user numbers, or additional financial details.

Participated · Series A · Aug 2016

Health2Sync offers a smartphone app that connects via a Bluetooth dongle to glucose meters (it previously used a headphone‑jack cable) to collect and analyze diabetes data. The service runs analytics, gives feedback, and lets patients log food, medicine intake and exercise; the company plans integrations with blood‑pressure meters. Health2Sync works with local partners — including pharmaceutical companies, insurers and community groups — to deliver value in markets where it has on‑the‑ground presence. The company says high‑risk users who used the service for three months saw an average blood‑glucose decrease of 22 percent. It launched at TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield at CES 2014 and is described in the article as a four‑year‑old company headquartered in Taiwan. Health2Sync is hiring in Malaysia and Indonesia and plans a broader push into Japan and Southeast Asia. Health2Sync, which launched at the Hardware Battlefield at CES 2014, builds a hardware accessory and companion mobile app to simplify diabetes tracking. The core product is a cable that connects smartphones to most standard glucose meters via the headphone jack, with two cable varieties (legacy and infrared) and an Android and iOS app. The app displays numeric and graphical glucose data, enables family member sharing, and lets users send readings to physicians and diabetic educators. The company reported clinical results showing average HbA1c levels falling from 8.6% to 6.89% after 120 days of use. Health2Sync plans to use new funding to continue product development and accelerate growth in overseas markets including Japan, China and Southeast Asia.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2016

Lifesum is a healthy nutrition app that provides personalized meal plans, healthy recipes, food tracking, and nutritional insights. The product integrates with smartphones, wearables, and connected devices to tailor recommendations. The company reports 35 million users worldwide, including 2 million added in 2019. Lifesum has offices in Stockholm and Los Angeles. It has attracted more than $20 million in funding to date, including a $5 million investment from Balderton Capital's Liquidity I fund. Lifesum is a Stockholm-based health app that tracks what users eat and their exercise to deliver personalized nutrition and wellness guidance. The company reports it has 15 million users. Lifesum is positioning itself to do more than simple tracking by forging partnerships across food, fitness, healthcare, DNA and pharmaceutical sectors. An example partnership with UK juice bar Crussh used user data to identify local nutritional deficiencies and create tailor-made juices. Management says the new funding will be used to expand globally, with a particular focus on the U.S. Lifesum has been featured in Apple Keynote events, was among 40 apps to launch with Apple Watch, and is a launch partner for Google Fit, Google Now and Samsung Gear S2. The company is described as market-leading in Scandinavia, Germany, France, Italy and Russia. Lifesum is a Swedish health and fitness app that lets users track the food they eat and count calories. The app includes barcode scanning to add food, a database of 200+ exercises with associated calorie burn, and integrations with third-party fitness data such as Runkeeper and Withings. Founded in 2008, Lifesum has recorded more than 6.5 million app downloads across Europe and—prior to its name change—reported 4.8 million registered downloads and 500,000 monthly active users in Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as of December 2013. The company bootstrapped to profitability before taking on external funding. Lifesum plans to use new capital to scale internationally, develop more detailed personalized guidance based on personal data, and expand its team. The company has also recruited former Spotify executives to help drive its global expansion and brand development.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2015

WaHome operates an app-based on-demand home cleaning marketplace that replaces traditional call-center booking with mobile booking. The founders say the service addresses slow, subscription-based call-center models by standardizing training and bookings. The company reports roughly 1,200 users, with about half hiring a WaHome cleaner once a week, and about 350 cleaners on the platform. Cleanings cost about $40 per session, which WaHome is currently passing through to cleaners, who take home roughly $1,300 a month after taxes. WaHome aims to guarantee contractors at least eight sessions (about 32 hours) a week to keep them satisfied and encourage retention. After expanding to more Korean cities the startup plans to add other verticals such as home maintenance and then pursue expansion into Hong Kong and Japan. The founders also conducted legal research to train contractors without changing their independent status to avoid legal risks encountered by similar startups.