Participated · Seed · Apr 2024

Rally UXR offers a SaaS User Research CRM that automates participant selection, screening, outreach, scheduling, and incentives, embedding research operations into a single secure and compliant platform. Its product is designed for enterprises and product teams to streamline research workflows and accelerate product development by centering customer voices. Rally is trusted by companies including Adobe, Sonos, SurveyMonkey, HelloFresh, GitLab, MongoDB, and Monzo, and has helped manage research with more than 10 million users. Since founding in 2021, Rally has experienced 3x year-over-year revenue growth and was backed by Y Combinator through its Winter 2022 cohort. The leadership team includes ex-HubSpot product and engineering talent and emphasizes building secure, scalable enterprise platforms. With the new funding, Rally plans to accelerate adoption of its research CRM across product-driven organizations. Rally is a user research CRM co-founded by Oren Friedman and Alec Robins that gives teams access to their user base to run and manage end-to-end research. The product is aimed at UX researchers, product managers, and designers to reduce manual work around participant recruitment and free teams to focus on research. Rally integrates with existing data warehouses and CRMs to maintain current user data for streamlined research workflows. The company emphasizes data protection and complies with industry-standard regulations including SOC II and HIPAA. Financially, Rally completed an $8.8M seed funding round and intends to use the proceeds to bring its product to a wider audience.

Led · Equity · Jun 2023

Ovation offers a hospitality-focused software platform that begins with a two-question guest survey and expands into tools for managing feedback, online reviews, and day-to-day store operations. The Salt Lake City company positions itself as a partner rather than a traditional SaaS vendor, emphasizing human connection to drive higher customer satisfaction and revenue. Its technology is used by more than 1,000 restaurant brands, including Dave's Hot Chicken, Swig, The Great Greek, and Mooyah, reaching thousands of individual restaurant locations. Operators use Ovation to surface actionable insights and resolve issues before they lead to lost business, enabling timely guest recovery. Investors who also use the product praise its ability to deliver real-time, store-level insights. Ovation has raised $12 million in total funding to date, indicating prior capital of about $9 million before the latest round. The new funds will support continued product development and expansion across additional restaurant groups, furthering its mission to strengthen guest relationships in multi-unit dining.

Participated · Series A · Jun 2023

Founded in 2021, Steelhead Technologies offers an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software platform tailored to finishers and fabricators. The cloud solution digitizes the shop floor and unifies quoting, inventory, production, quality, and accounting into a single system. A configurable workflow engine allows customers to model specific processes such as stamping, plating, anodizing, heat treating, welding, bending, assembling, powder coating, and painting. More than 1.6 billion parts have been processed through the platform, and customer revenue trends suggest a 17% annual growth rate. Led by CEO Jeff Halonen, the company plans to use new capital to broaden its platform’s capabilities and roll out additional AI-driven tools aimed at boosting efficiency and profitability for its users. Headquartered in Calumet, Michigan, Steelhead focuses exclusively on the manufacturing and metal finishing sectors.

Led · Seed · Dec 2022

SION is a SaaS platform that manages commission payments for travel advisors and agencies, providing a centralized online dashboard to enter, invoice, and track payments. Its platform automates payment status tracking, commission splits, supplier invoicing, and offers interactive real-time reporting to reduce administrative time and chase fewer unpaid commissions. Founded in 2019 and based in the New York City metro (Oceanport, N.J.), the company has more than 1,500 agents subscribed and manages approximately $2.2 billion in booking revenue. Since introducing its send-invoice feature, SION has been responsible for collecting over 85% of delinquent invoices—a key industry pain point where the article notes more than 40% of commissions contain discrepancies or go unpaid. With $3.2 million in new seed funding, SION plans to accelerate product development, add automated commission-chasing capabilities, ramp up integrations, and debut a payment processing system that enables real-time payouts. The company graduated from the Virtuoso Travel Incubator program and partners with industry players including Sabre, Amadeus and IATA, positioning it as a back-office tool to boost advisor efficiency and profitability.

Participated · Series A · Apr 2022

RentRedi is an all-inclusive landlord-tenant platform and mobile-first app that enables landlords to automate rent collection, market rentals, receive and manage maintenance requests, and handle tenant applications and payments. For tenants, the platform simplifies applying for properties, paying rent and reporting issues. Co-founded by father-and-son Ryan Barone (CEO and CTO) and Ed Barone (CMO), the company focuses on helping landlords manage rentals from anywhere. Since 2020 the platform has added more than 10,000 actively subscribed landlords who manage over 85,000 properties. RentRedi has raised $17m in total funding to date and will use the new proceeds to expand operations, extend business reach and scale its mobile-first technology. The company intends to streamline the renting process for both landlords and tenants with this funding.