• Qnovia

  Participated · Series A · Sep 2022

  Qnovia develops and commercializes proprietary inhalation device technologies centered on its RespiRx™ platform, an orientation-agnostic, portable vibrating mesh nebulizer. Its lead asset is the RespiRx™ Nicotine Inhaler (QN-01), a prescription inhaled smoking cessation therapy that has demonstrated clinical proof-of-concept in a first-in-human Phase 1 study and received FDA IND clearance. The company plans to advance QN-01 beyond Phase 1 and pursue a Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) submission to the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in 2026, aiming to accelerate commercialization in the UK. Qnovia will use recent proceeds to support clinical, regulatory, and commercial development of QN-01 and to evaluate additional therapeutic indications for its platform. Founded in 2018, the company highlights opportunities to apply its device technology to asthma, COPD, vaccine delivery, pain management, generics, and select investigational drugs. Qnovia is led by CEO Brian Quigley and was founded by Mario Danek. Qnovia develops proprietary inhalation device technologies, centering on its RespiRx platform described as the first orientation-agnostic, portable vibrating mesh nebulizer. The company’s initial clinical focus is nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) with plans to expand into other cardiopulmonary and therapeutic indications including asthma, COPD, vaccine delivery, and pain management. Qnovia sees opportunities to apply its platform to several generic and investigational drugs to improve patient outcomes. The company raised $17 million in a Series A and will use the proceeds to advance its NRT drug candidate through an IND submission and begin human clinical trials in 2023. Qnovia plans to initiate a Phase 1 study for NRT once the FDA approves its IND application. The company was founded by Mario Danek in 2018 and is based in Los Angeles.

• Persado

  Participated · Series A · Feb 2013

  Persado builds AI-powered marketing software that uses deep learning to create emotional profiles of individual users and generate personalized sales copy. The company has expanded its toolset to social media and supports channels including email, display, social advertising, landing pages, SMS and push notifications in up to 23 languages. Persado offers two product tiers: Persado Enterprise for multi-channel campaigns and Persado Professional for individual marketers. Its platform identifies which messages drove past responses and maps users into emotional buckets—pride, trust, anticipation, joy and fear—to tailor language. Co-founder Assaf Baciu has said campaigns using Persado can perform roughly 50% better than campaigns that do not use the software. Financially, Persado recently secured a new $30 million credit facility to boost its marketing reach and has earlier raised $30 million from Goldman Sachs and others. Persado's platform employs natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to generate the precise combination of words, phrases and images that motivate any audience in real time. It produces cognitive content for display ads, Facebook, email, website landing pages, SMS and mobile push notifications. Persado has deployed cognitive content in thousands of marketing campaigns and has accumulated response data from more than 40 billion impressions. The company serves more than 80 global brands, including Fortune 100 companies such as Microsoft, Verizon Wireless, Citi and Sears. Customers see a 49.5% average uplift in conversions, a 68.4% improvement in click-through rates, and Persado cites $1 billion in incremental revenues. Persado employs more than 200 people across nine global locations and plans to invest further in distribution, product development and expansion into additional digital channels and sectors beyond marketing, including pharmaceutical adherence, fitness and personal motivation, civic engagement and human resources. Persado builds a "persuasion automation" platform that automatically generates and tests variants of marketing emails and promotional messages. The automated approach lets marketers try many more message variants than traditional human-driven A/B testing, and the company says the technology avoids unintelligible or robotic output. Persado's software is designed to generate the most persuasive language for communications, removing much of the guesswork from copywriting. The company says the technology could expand beyond ads and marketing to other short, structured persuasive messages such as mobile health. A limitation is that the system requires the scale of a consumer audience, so Persado cannot use the technology in its own B2B marketing. Persado spun out of mobile marketing company Upstream and is led by co-founder and CEO Alex Vratskides. Persado provides persuasion‑marketing technology that analyzes and edits text‑based marketing (email, SMS, display, search) using algorithms trained on ad performance data to increase engagement. The platform combines data science, big‑data analytics and human oversight to generate optimized messaging and progressively automates editing as it learns. Current customers named in the article include Skype, Badoo and the mobile carrier TIM, plus several undisclosed tier‑one carriers. The company plans to establish a new headquarters in New York in addition to its London base and to invest the new proceeds in R&D and go‑to‑market efforts targeting ad agencies and brands. Persado claims its optimized messages can produce up to 100% higher click‑throughs versus control creatives. The article states that roughly $34M has been invested in Persado to date and that the business was spun out at the end of 2012.

No current team members are available.