• Lit Communities

  Participated · Equity · May 2023

  Lit Communities builds and operates last-mile fiber networks, leveraging public-private partnerships with local governments and municipalities. Founded in 2019 and led by CEO Brian Snider, the Birmingham, Alabama-based company deploys fiber infrastructure for unserved and underserved communities. Its networks support internet plus ancillary services including voice, telehealth, home security, home automation, small cell, DAS, wireless backhaul, and public safety applications. The company has networks in place, under construction or in planning in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Lit will use the capital to accelerate construction of its fiber-based network across the United States. Existing shareholders — Stephens Capital Partners, The Pritzker Organization and the Lit management team — remain in place and plan to continue supporting the business.

• Falkbuilt

  Led · Series A · Apr 2022

  Falkbuilt manufactures interior construction components in factory settings and provides digital end-to-end, offsite prefabricated solutions from design through installation using its proprietary Echo technology. The company focuses on next-generation manufacturing and factory-delivered interior systems. It intends to expand manufacturing capacity and its global network of Falkbuilt Factory Direct Branches while further investing in Echo. Falkbuilt closed a CAD35M equity financing to support those plans. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, the company employs over 400 people. It operates 90+ Falkbuilt Factory Direct Branches across North America, the Middle East, and India. Falkbuilt manufactures prefabricated digital components and a software platform, Echo, to accelerate and improve interior construction for healthcare, education, and commercial spaces. Echo collects and manages project information and uses big data and AI to feed appropriate data to industry-standard software. The company produces quick, cost-effective interior solutions such as doors, window frames, walls, and rapid-response headwalls with built-in electrical drops and medical brackets used during the COVID-19 pandemic. Founded in 2019, Falkbuilt has established a distribution network of more than 70 independently owned branches across North America, India, and the Middle East, which it says have completed hundreds of installations. The company recently closed a $14 million CAD Series A (with potential for an additional $6 million CAD based on milestones) and will use the capital to continue growing market share following a year of global expansion. Falkbuilt says the combination of its prefabricated components and Echo delivers significant efficiencies and value to stakeholders across architecture, design, and construction.

• DiffusionData

  Participated · Series A · Apr 2020

  Led by CEO Grethe Brown, DiffusionData offers the Diffusion Intelligent Data Platform, a real-time data streaming and messaging solution designed to reduce network bandwidth requirements and enable customer growth. The platform consumes raw data of any size, format, or velocity, enriches data in-flight, and distributes it reliably and at scale with secure, fine-grained role-based access control. It is purpose-built to simplify and accelerate data-driven, real-time application development, reduce operational costs, and deliver hyper-personalized data at Internet scale. Diffusion is available on-premise, in-the-cloud, or in hybrid configurations to meet specific business, regulatory, and infrastructure needs. Leading brands across financial services, transportation, energy, retail, healthcare, eGaming, and IoT use the platform to drive engagement, fuel revenue growth, and streamline operations. The company raised £1M from The North East Development Capital Fund and intends to use the proceeds for product development. Push Technology is a provider of real-time data streaming and messaging solutions with offices in Los Gatos, California, and Belfast, Northern Ireland. Led by CEO Sean Bowen, the company offers Diffusion, a real-time API management platform that delivers centralized data management, optimization, and integration to simplify application development and reduce infrastructure requirements. Diffusion supports on-premise, cloud, and hybrid deployments and is used by customers across financial services, transportation, energy, retail, healthcare, eGaming, and IoT industries. The company positions its platform for mission-critical business applications worldwide to speed time-to-market, accelerate revenue growth, and improve customer engagement and operations. Push intends to use the new funding to expand sales and marketing and to broaden and accelerate product development. Push Technology builds the Diffusion platform to optimize delivery of real-time data to web and mobile clients across varied networks and devices. The company recently launched Diffusion 5.0, which adds a unified API, enhanced performance, high availability and easier integration with enterprise assets. Push serves sectors including e-gaming, financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, media and transportation, with customers such as Betfair, Lloyds Bank and William Hill. A third of Push Technology’s new business has come from its New York City office this year, and the company is expanding its U.S. presence with a new West Coast office and U.S. headquarters in San Jose. The expansion will be supported by new staff amid a 30% global workforce increase and aims to grow Push’s North American customer base and product integrations with strategic U.S. partners, including IBM. Push positions Diffusion to address demand from IoT, M2M, OTT services and wearable-device use cases requiring always-on connectivity.

• Roadie

  Participated · Series B · Jun 2016

  Roadie operates an on-the-way delivery platform that taps unused capacity in passenger vehicles to connect people and businesses with drivers already headed the right way. The company provides scheduled, same-day and urgent delivery and has established partnerships with Delta Air Lines, The Home Depot, and Walmart. Roadie's footprint reaches 89 percent of U.S. households and it serves 224 metro areas, with deliveries to more than 11,000 cities and towns and a community of over 120,000 drivers. Since its 2015 launch, Roadie has raised $62 million in total funding to date, including an oversubscribed $37 million Series C. With this funding the company plans to continue innovating its dynamic routing and pricing models and expand use of machine learning to predict capacity and match deliveries in real time. Roadie positions itself to help large retailers bring same-day delivery to customers in both major cities and small towns that are otherwise hard to reach. Roadie operates an "on-the-way" shipping platform that matches preexisting travel routes and drivers to point-to-point delivery jobs, allowing users to ship items without traditional packaging. It targets both urban same-city deliveries and longer-distance projects that don't fit conventional boxed shipping, and the article highlights a 1,300-mile mannequin transport as an example. The company reports roughly 22,000 drivers and about 300,000 app downloads. Roadie offers features such as Homeward Bound, which aligns long-distance transportation jobs with users' planned trips, plus a driver verification system with badges, insurance collection, and ratings. Shipments include $500 standard insurance with an additional $10,000 available through UPS. The team plans to build partnerships with larger brands to increase volume and expects to double the company size over the next six months. Roadie operates a mobile app that matches shippers with nonprofessional drivers willing to carry packages for a fee. The platform has been live for only weeks and has seen over 7,500 downloads and about 50 gigs completed to date. Fees on the service range roughly from $12 to $200 depending on item size and distance, and shipments have varied from short 7-mile hops to trips of 300+ miles. The company has partnered with Waffle House to create branded "Roadie Roadhouses" across the chain’s 1,750 locations in 25 states, with drivers receiving perks like free waffles and beverages. Roadie’s service is currently available for initiating gigs in 10 U.S. Southeastern states, drivers already travel nationwide, and a national expansion is rolling out soon. The startup was founded by Marc Gorlin, previously a co-founder of Kabbage.

• Choose Energy

  Participated · Series B · Nov 2013

  Choose Energy is a free online marketplace enabling residents and businesses to compare and switch energy suppliers in their area. The platform is currently available in Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, Ohio, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey. The company intends to use the new funds to expand into all 19 deregulated electricity states and 22 natural gas states in 2014 and to improve the platform. In September the company acquired Power2Switch. Leadership includes newly appointed CEO Kerry Cooper and founder Jerry Dyess, who will become chief commercial officer. Financially, Choose Energy raised $7.5M in a Series B and had previously raised $4M in a March 2013 Series A from KPCB and Stephens Capital Partners. Choose Energy operates an online marketplace that educates consumers about residential electricity supply and provides an interface to compare retail electricity plans, filter by term, price and type, select a plan, and enroll online. The company is also building tools to help retail energy providers compete more effectively, leveraging lessons from telecommunications, travel, media and other web-enabled industries. It is currently active in Texas, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois and plans to enter all 19 deregulated energy states and 22 deregulated natural gas states. Founded in 2008 and led by CEO Jerry Dyess, the company is based in Plano, TX. Choose Energy raised $4M in Series A financing to accelerate growth, expand technology development and marketing, augment services for retail suppliers, and strengthen its market position. The company intends to use the capital to support those initiatives.

No current team members are available.