Participated · Series C · Aug 2020

Lambda School runs live, cohort-based nine- and 18-month courses in data science and full-stack web development with a $30,000 tuition charged on a sliding scale and paid only after students land jobs earning at least $50,000. Currently about 3,000 students are enrolled and the company employs roughly 150 staff, including teachers and team leads, all working remotely. The startup received approval from California’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education after prior regulatory difficulties, but that approval temporarily precludes offering Income Share Agreements (ISAs) in the state. Lambda does not offer accredited degrees, only certificates, and has no current plan to pursue accreditation. The company has faced criticism of its ISA model and operational challenges — about 15% of students drop out in the first month — but demand reportedly exceeds current capacity. CEO Austen Allred says the company intends to use the new funding to expand course offerings and potentially adjust its business model while aiming for profitability. Lambda School operates an online coding school offering programs in coding, data science and web design and is expanding its curriculum into cybersecurity and medicine (including short-term nursing programs). The company funds student tuition through income-share agreements under which graduates pay 17% of income for two years after earning at least $50,000 annually, with payments capped at $30,000; an upfront tuition option of $20,000 is also available and roughly 98% of students choose the ISA. Lambda reports that 83% of its graduates are hired within six months with a median salary of $70,000, and it partners with Leif to design and manage ISA programs while owning the ISAs itself. Because ISAs require capital up front, Lambda has raised equity to fund operations and student attendance before ISA returns are received. With the latest round it plans to build out its hiring network (expanding sales to bring in employer partners), pursue international expansion, and explore buying and reworking a nursing school to deliver regulated health programs online. The company was launched in 2016 and has raised nearly $49 million to date, including a $30 million Series B that values the business at $150 million. Lambda School is an online computer science academy that trains software engineers and data scientists through an income-driven tuition model that invests in students rather than charging upfront fees. The school covers tuition costs and requires repayment only after graduates find high-paying employment. Lambda offers full-stack engineering and data science courses and recently launched iOS, Android, and UX design tracks. It currently has about 700 students enrolled and has seen more than 75 graduates hired, with 83% of early cohorts employed and an average salary increase of over $47,000 per hired graduate. Leadership says the curriculum is being adapted to meet employer needs, and the school is building a more advanced hiring network to increase placements. The model and outcomes have attracted investor interest and enabled plans to expand course offerings and scale operations. Lambda School offers free, live and interactive computer science instruction that students can attend from anywhere, with sessions recorded for later review. Its model combines schooling with an investment-like approach to find and train untapped or underutilized talent for high-demand careers. The program emphasizes employer connection through over 50 hiring partners, including IBM, PayPal and multiple Y Combinator companies, and hosts Demo Nights for partners to meet graduates. Lambda School does not charge hiring partners recruiting fees for direct sourcing; instead it asks partners to apply any recruiting fees toward a student’s tuition. The recent seed funding is intended to cover the cost of education for thousands of individuals seeking new opportunities. Instruction is attendance‑required for live sessions and includes group work and archives for review.

Participated · Series A · Jun 2020

BoomTV operates a platform that enables organizers—especially smaller community groups, youth sports organizations, school clubs, and influencers—to create, manage and broadcast esports events with automated production tools. The company launched its platform on the strength of the Code Red pro-amateur series and runs a biweekly Code Red event that reaches millions of monthly users. Over the past year Code Red has averaged 2.7 million unique viewers and BoomTV has more than 4 million fans across social platforms; players have earned over $3.9 million across 11,000 events since fall 2018. More than 75,000 content creators and 1,600 college programs use Boom.tv. BoomTV monetizes primarily through sponsorships for its biggest events and has 24 employees. The company plans to invest further in the Code Red ProAm series by increasing prize pools, deepen relationships with top influencers, and develop original esports programming. Boom.tv constructs a 3D experience from a player's game stream in real time, enabling fans to view eSports gameplay from any perspective on PC or mobile devices. Its first application lets streamers engage with fans, provides instant replays and multiple viewing angles, and enables one-click highlight montages for social sharing. The app is available in beta and currently supports CS:GO and LOL. The company will soon release an update allowing streamers to broadcast in virtual reality so viewers can experience the game stream in full VR using the headset of their choice. Led by CEO Sumit Gupta and based in Redwood City, California, Boom.tv plans to use the funding to support the top ten eSports titles and expand to the larger gamer and eSports communities. The company raised $3.5M in seed funding to support these product and expansion plans.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2019

Coral is developing a consumer device that automates nail painting: users insert a finger, the machine paints and dries the nail, and the company says the process takes roughly 10 minutes to finish all fingers. The device paints one finger at a time, uses an onboard camera and proprietary computer-vision algorithms to aim accurately, and requires Coral’s proprietary polish delivered in pods. Coral says the system requires no base coat or clear coat and eliminates manual nail cleanup after use. The team is small (eight people) and mainly mechanical, chemical and software engineers; both co-founders have hardware backgrounds. The company has a functional prototype but is focused on turning it into a consumer-ready product and will run a small beta program in the coming months. Coral expects the device to be positioned as a premium product, though final pricing has not been set. The company has raised $4.3 million to date from investors and is part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 class.

Participated · Series B · Sep 2019

Bellwether builds tech-enabled, zero-emission commercial coffee roasters and a connected online marketplace that lets retailers roast beans on-site. Its hardware and software target cafes, grocery stores, college campuses and other retail locations. Roasters are sold for $75,000 or leased for $1,000 per month, and purchase includes access to the company’s online bean marketplace. The company has roughly 140 customers and reported 6x revenue growth in 2019. Bellwether aims to remove wholesale middlemen by enabling shops to roast their own beans and create a connected farm-to-cup experience. With the new funding it plans to expand manufacturing capabilities, grow its customer-facing team, and pursue launches in Southeast Asia and Europe next year. Bellwether builds a ventless, electric, zero-emissions commercial coffee roaster that it leases to cafés, grocers and other businesses. Customers lease the roaster for about $1,000 per month and receive access to Bellwether’s online bean marketplace. The marketplace curates roughly 20 farms and lets retailers order beans filtered by attributes such as organic certification or woman-owned, and enables consumers and retailers to tip farmers directly. Bellwether positions itself at the intersection of hardware and software, combining in‑store roasting equipment with an e-commerce platform for supply transparency. The company emphasizes traceability and sustainability to give retailers and consumers more visibility into bean origin and farmer compensation. Bellwether has begun commercial roll‑outs to cafés and grocers while continuing to expand its marketplace relationships.

Participated · Series B · Aug 2019

ParkourSC (formerly Cloudleaf) offers a real-time supply chain operations platform powered by hyper-scale graph modeling, AI/ML, and massive real-time data ingestion from IoT and contextual signals. The platform provides continuous visibility into variance from plan, predictive risk mitigation, quality and compliance controls, and aims to eliminate waste and improve resiliency without requiring costly changes to existing infrastructure. ParkourSC has notable traction in temperature-controlled pharmaceutical and life sciences supply chains, claims deployments delivering millions of dollars in ROI, and has established partnerships with cold-chain packaging players such as CSafe Global and Cold Chain Technologies. The company reports continued 300% year-over-year growth in both bookings and ARR for the last two years and has expanded its carrier ecosystem to over 800 carriers and integrations with TMS platforms like MercuryGate and BlueYonder. ParkourSC also maintains an extensible IoT and sensor partner footprint including Qualcomm, Zebra, Sensitech, Tive, Roambee, Wiliot and others. The new funding will support continued revenue growth, leadership hires, engineering expansion in the U.S., India and other regions, and extension of the go-to-market footprint into EMEA. Cloudleaf builds a Supply Chain Digital Visibility Platform that combines IoT, AI/ML and advanced analytics to create a digital twin of the supply chain and process billions of events per second. The platform delivers diagnostic and predictive insights for location, environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, shock), utilization and anomaly detection. Customers reportedly achieve up to 5x improvements in visibility, first-year ROI as high as 70x, and annualized value in the tens of millions of dollars. Cloudleaf serves enterprise customers across pharmaceuticals & life sciences, food & beverage, advanced manufacturing and other industries. The company plans to use new capital to expand its addressable markets, geographic footprint and enterprise customer base. Financially, the company has raised $26 million in the announced Series B, bringing total institutional funding to $39 million. Cloudleaf offers Sensor Fabric™, a mesh of intelligent IoT sensors, endpoints, gateways and cloud technologies that generate a unique digital fingerprint for assets with location and contextual metadata such as temperature, shock and vibration. A patented location engine, middleware and cloud applications transform that metadata into actionable insights, with dashboards for alerts, metrics, trends, analytics and KPIs. The company provides an extensive library of APIs, SDKs and pre-built connectors for integration with ERP, MRP, MES and analytics systems. Initial vertical focus is manufacturing, distribution and pharmaceutical, and Cloudleaf says it is rapidly building solutions applicable to other industry verticals. Key customers named in the article include ArcelorMittal, Dickten Masch Plastics, Magna and Shire. The company announced a $13 million Series A to support commercialization and further product innovation.