Participated · Debt Financing · Aug 2017

Videology is a New York, NY–based provider of converged TV and video advertising software. Its platform enables agencies, advertisers and media companies to manage, measure and optimize digital video and TV advertising. The company was founded in 2007 by CEO Scott Ferber. Videology is backed by investors including Catalyst Investors, Comcast Ventures, NEA, Pinnacle Ventures and Valhalla Partners. It operates globally with offices in Baltimore, Austin, Toronto, London, Paris, Madrid, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo and maintains sales teams across North America. In September 2017 Videology received an $80m international credit facility. Videology operates a video platform that enables brands, agencies and media companies to plan, serve, manage and monitor video-ad campaigns with TV-style specifications alongside digital targeting, optimization and analytics. The company has evolved from an ad server and content network into a video advertising marketplace and has begun expanding into the supply side by providing publishers with video content. Since its 2007 founding, Videology has grown to operate in 12 countries and runs campaigns for about 900 brands annually, reporting a three‑year CAGR of 190 percent. The business draws revenue from multiple arms of its platform and marketplace efforts. Management says the new capital will be used to ramp international growth and invest in technology infrastructure and services. The round brings the company’s total outside investment to roughly $121 million. TidalTV, launched in 2007 and based in Baltimore, develops video ad optimization technology that helps advertisers deliver ads to target demographics. Its core product enables campaigns targeted to specific age/gender segments or audiences with demonstrated brand affinity. The technology is deployed across online video, mobile video and television. The company has raised more than $30M in a financing led by New Enterprise Associates, bringing total funding to $61M. The new funding will be used to expand TidalTV’s technology into global markets and to deploy its ad-targeting technology into new multi-screen applications. TidalTV intends to serve advertisers, media agencies and publishers with these expanded offerings.

Led · Debt Financing · Mar 2016

SOASTA builds Digital Performance Management products including its mPulse Real User Monitoring and the CloudTest platform, the company’s flagship large-scale testing solution. The company reported a record fourth quarter with its highest quarterly bookings and 63 new customers in that quarter, and 196 new customers for the fiscal year. SOASTA has more than 35,000 registered users of its performance analytics platform, has performed over 100 million tests, and measured more than 200 billion user experiences; its mPulse community grew 140% year‑over‑year. Customers include more than 500 large digital brands and 49 of the Top 100 Internet retailers, with named users such as Barnes & Noble, FreshDirect, Ancestry.com, 1‑800 Contacts and REI. SOASTA plans to use new capital to ramp growth and continue to drive leadership in the emerging multi‑billion‑dollar DPM market by expanding its performance and customer‑experience offerings. SOASTA provides cloud and mobile test automation and real-user monitoring solutions, including CloudTest, TouchTest and mPulse, that enable developers, QA and IT operations to test and monitor users at scale. Its platform streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and analyzes real user behavior in real time to deliver actionable intelligence. The company lists customers such as Avaya, American Girl, Bonobos, Backcountry.com, Chegg, Experian, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA plans to use the new funding to expand globally by adding marketing, sales and development resources to fortify its position in mobile and web testing and real-user monitoring. The company highlighted recent industry recognition, including being named a “Leader” in Gartner’s 2013 Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites and winning Best RUM at the 2013 Velocity Conference. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. SOASTA offers CloudTest, a platform that enables developers to test and monitor web and mobile application performance, available as an on-demand cloud service or as virtual and hardware appliances. CloudTest detects bugs, measures load times, and assesses stability under traffic spikes. Many retailers use the platform to test new features and ensure stability during high-traffic events. The company counts six of the top 10 retailers (including Target, Best Buy, and Gilt Groupe) among its customers and serves roughly 3,000 companies across financial services, media, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods, and technology. SOASTA raised $12 million in the current financing, bringing its total funding to $33 million. The company intends to use the new capital for international expansion and product development in mobile testing. Soasta offers a browser-based testing service called CloudTest On-Demand that lets users describe website workflows (for example, logging in or browsing) and run large-scale tests. Users log onto the service, define the processes to examine, and Soasta returns extensive results to help find and fix issues. The company says it has performed testing for clients including Best Buy, MySpace, SAP, and Zappos.com. Soasta is based in Mountain View, Calif. The company raised $10 million in a third round led by UV Partners, with participation from existing investors Canaan Partners, Formative Ventures, and The Entrepreneurs' Fund. This new round follows prior financings in which the company previously raised $8.4 million.

Led · Debt Financing · Jan 2016

SoundCloud is a creator-led music streaming platform often described as the “YouTube of audio,” hosting over 200 million tracks from roughly 25 million creators with listeners in 190 countries. The company emphasizes tools and features that deepen connections between creators and listeners to fuel discovery and career growth. It maintains an ad partnership with Pandora (owned by SiriusXM), which resells SoundCloud’s inventory on its programmatic platform. SoundCloud reached a forward revenue run-rate of $200 million in Q4 2019 and had previously raised $404 million before this round. The new funding is intended for product development and launching new services to accelerate its roadmap. Founded in Berlin in 2007, SoundCloud has undergone restructurings and leadership changes but continues to expand its creator and listener base. SoundCloud operates a streaming service built around user-uploaded tracks, remixes, and DJ sets, with a catalog the company says exceeds 170 million tracks. The company is positioning itself as an "anti-Spotify," emphasizing a $5 tier of ad-free access to independent music, legally grey remixes and DJ sets, and new commerce tools to help artists earn beyond royalties. After laying off 40% of its staff and securing $169 million in emergency funding, SoundCloud has runway to execute product and positioning changes. Its first product push is a home-screen redesign that prioritizes curated and personalized discovery over a social feed. The refreshed home highlights featured playlists (e.g., Hip Hop Supreme, In The Mix), a Discover-Weekly-style personalized list called The Upload, algorithmic recommendations like More Of What You Like and Artists You Should Know, plus charts and editorial collections such as New & Hot, Top 50, Fresh Pressed, SoundCloud Next Wave, and Playback. CEO Kerry Trainor frames the change as a way to "elevate and celebrate the incredible talent" on the platform and make SoundCloud more accessible to new users while improving discovery for longtime listeners. Soundcloud is a platform where creators post and share music and other audio, hosting around 150 million tracks and reaching approximately 175 million listeners across free and paid tiers. The company is unprofitable; its February report covering fiscal 2015 showed losses of €51.22 million on revenues of €21.1 million. A filing and company statements project revenue rising to €52.75 million this year, and Soundcloud said it expects 2.5x year-over-year growth in 2017. The annual report noted theoretical runway until December 2017 but warned that risks could cause the company to run out of cash earlier. The company plans to use new financing to build more technology, hire personnel and build a financially sustainable platform. Soundcloud was founded by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss out of Berlin, has offices in New York, and its business is registered in the UK. SoundCloud is an audio streaming platform used by many emerging artists to self-promote. Its core product includes on-demand audio streaming and a recently launched $9.99 monthly subscription, SoundCloud Go, which the company is rolling out globally. The company has been signing licensing deals with music labels to support the subscription offering and to drum up interest. Despite its popularity, SoundCloud has struggled to convert that attention into sustainable revenue and earlier said it needed a cash infusion to stay alive. Twitter’s venture arm made a $70 million investment in SoundCloud at a $700 million valuation, reuniting the two firms roughly two years after a botched buyout attempt. SoundCloud said the investment will enable it to remain focused on building value for creators and listeners and to continue the global rollout of company initiatives. SoundCloud is a music streaming platform and community known for remixes and yet-unheard artists. The company has roughly 150 million registered users and a growing younger audience, according to Bloomberg and comScore. In November it launched a dedicated app for creators and has recently debuted an ad-free subscription service to pursue monetization. SoundCloud has not disclosed revenue since 2013, when it reported $14M in revenue and a $29M loss. To support its growth, the company secured a flexible credit line with Tennenbaum Capital Partners early in 2015. Competition from Apple, Google, Amazon, Pandora and Spotify is intense, but SoundCloud positions itself as a differentiated product in the streaming ecosystem.

Led · Debt Financing · Sep 2015

InMobi is an Indian adtech company serving tens of thousands of app developers across more than 50 countries and counts brands such as Mastercard, Samsung, Vodafone, and Coca‑Cola among its customers. The profitable firm develops mobile advertising and monetization technologies and has spent the past two years exploring AI to enhance ad interactivity, including techniques for seamlessly integrating native advertisements into content. It owns Glance, an Android lock‑screen platform that is separately reported to be in talks to raise more than $200 million. InMobi expects to generate annual revenue exceeding $700 million by the end of March. To significantly deepen its AI initiatives and fund potential AI acquisitions ahead of a planned IPO next year, the company secured new financing. The firm is reportedly targeting an IPO valuation of approximately $10 billion. InMobi develops mobile advertising products and recently launched Miip, which uses high-end analytics to understand user interests and serve customized, animated ads. The company is shifting toward commerce-led models of mobile advertising and positions Miip to improve user trust and engagement, according to CEO and cofounder Naveen Tewari. InMobi does not publicly disclose revenues, but company insiders and investors peg annual revenue at about $400–$500 million. Financially, the firm has relied on multiple debt facilities in recent years from lenders including Hercules Technology Growth Capital (HTGC), Silicon Valley Bank and Triple Point Capital. Most recently it secured $100 million in new debt led by a consortium headed by Tennenbaum Capital Partners; the company has received nearly $60 million of that, using roughly $40 million to repay prior HTGC debt. Some investors and industry sources are skeptical of InMobi’s valuation thesis and see a mismatch between the company’s view of its value and market reality. InMobi bills itself as the world’s largest independent mobile ad network, delivering mobile advertising at scale. Its platform reaches 340 million consumers in more than 165 countries and serves roughly 47 billion mobile ad impressions per month. The company recently acquired HTML5 ad builder Sprout to bolster its creative/product capabilities. Management says the new capital will support substantially increased product innovation, deeper market penetration, and acquisitions across the mobile ad value chain. Financially, InMobi had previously raised $15.6 million before closing the new investment round. The company has attracted prominent investors and is using the funding to accelerate growth and expand its global footprint. InMobi operates a scalable mobile advertising platform and analytics engine (AdROIt) that serves advertisers, developers, and publishers. The company delivered roughly 16.9 billion monthly impressions and reached 179 million consumers across 108 countries. It reported estimated revenue of about $35M in 2009 and was projected to hit $75M in 2010. InMobi plans to expand its U.S. presence following a full U.S. launch, and to launch in Japan while growing operations in Europe, Asia Pacific, and Africa. Product priorities include doubling engineering headcount and enhancing its mobile customer discovery technology and real-time analytics to improve ROI and ad targeting. mKhoj operates a mobile advertising platform that lets companies target consumers on mobile phones and enables publishers to monetize traffic via contextual ads. The service began in November 2006 as a local search product for nearby shopping deals before the founders pivoted to a mobile advertising marketplace. The company is based in Mumbai, India, and was founded by Naveen Tewari, a Harvard graduate and former McKinsey consultant who previously worked with Charles River Ventures. mKhoj’s platform focuses on targeted mobile outreach and publisher monetization; the article does not disclose revenues or user metrics. The startup has attracted outside capital, including early backing from the Mumbai Angels and a larger institutional Series A. Mumbai Angels invested $500,000 early and are noted in the article as active “mentor capitalists.”

Participated · Series B · Feb 2015

NEXTracker designs and manufactures single-axis PV trackers that maximize energy output while reducing installation and operating costs for utility-scale solar projects. Its trackers lower foundation and steel requirements, align modules with the axis of rotation to reduce drive stress, and simplify AC wiring, installation and maintenance. The company has delivered trackers for dozens of projects exceeding 80MW across three continents and reports the ability to deliver over 200 MW/month. NEXTracker has expanded its team with experienced solar project personnel across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia to support global deployments. Headquartered in California with offices in Asia, Europe and South America, the company positions its product as a cost-effective solution to maximize project returns. The $25M financing is intended to further scale production and support broader deployment of its tracking systems.