Participated · Equity · Jul 2021

UpLyft develops the UpLyft ST-120, a ‘zero‑lifting’ patient transfer system designed to restore independence for people with mobility limitations and reduce caregiver injuries in institutional settings. Demand accelerated this year: initial inventory sold out, subsequent sales created a wait list, and the company completed manufacture and shipment of all initial pre‑sold systems to distribution partners and pre‑order customers across 12 states. UpLyft is directing new financing toward a leasing program for consumers at home and healthcare facilities, and anticipates lease demand primarily from hospitals, nursing homes and complex rehabilitation clinics. The company plans to expand manufacturing capabilities in 2023 to meet rising demand. The leasing program is intended to support fulfillment of 2,000 leased units to consumers, healthcare facilities and distributors nationwide. Financially, UpLyft completed an initial closing of a $5 million Preferred Stock round in July 2022 and is offering additional Preferred Stock to accredited investors via its Redcrow investment portal. UpLyft designs a self-transfer system that moves people between bed or gurney and wheelchair without physical force from a caregiver. The device is rated to handle users weighing up to 600 lbs and is aimed at both consumer/home and hospital-grade use. UpLyft has oversubscribed pre-orders and plans to commence initial manufacturing of pre-order sales demonstration units locally in San Diego. The company targets a $19 billion total available market spanning home care, hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living, and serves populations including Parkinson’s, ALS, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, spinal-cord injury paralysis, and seniors. The consumer configuration is expected to be priced similar to home stairlifts; the hospital-grade product is designed for obesity accommodation and integration with healthcare IT, with both products expected to generate gross margins in line with the ~70% medical device industry average. UpLyft has raised $900,000 since inception, including over $100,000 from investors at the San Diego Angel Conference III, and lists participation from Tech Coast Angels, U.S. Angels and a Qualcomm wearables executive. The company is protected by 14 issued patents and seven pending patents.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2012

NGDATA's core product is Lily, a next-generation customer data platform that combines data, generates insights and steers actions to deliver individualized customer experiences. Lily was updated to add Attribution and out-of-the-box Next Best Experience capabilities to help marketers engage customers more effectively and optimize marketing spend. The company serves data-rich industries including financial services, telecom, utilities, hospitality and media, and cites customers such as Belfius Bank, Innogy and Telenet. NGDATA reported record business, customer and product revenue growth following a January 2017 $9.4M funding round. In May 2017 NGDATA acquired Eccella to add data management expertise and expand its footprint across North America, Europe and Asia. The company says it will use new funding to accelerate global growth and further build out its vision for digital transformation and customer centricity. NGDATA is headquartered in Gent, Belgium and maintains offices in the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific. NGDATA provides Lily Enterprise, a customer experience operating system that captures data across channels, builds Customer DNA, and automates omni-channel interactions to deliver personalized messaging and offers. The platform is aimed at financial services, media/publishing, and telecommunications companies. The company says Lily continuously learns from behavior to enable timely, relevant customer interactions. NGDATA plans to use new funding to accelerate sales and marketing, drive product innovation, and pursue acquisitions. The company has added Dominique Illien to its board to support growth and strategy. NGDATA is headquartered in Gent, Belgium and maintains offices in the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific. NGDATA develops Lily Enterprise, a customer experience management solution that transforms how companies perform data analytics and interact with customers. Lily Enterprise empowers organizations to take action based on timely, contextual alerts to create personalized offers and experiences across all channels. The company focuses on data-driven sectors including financial services, media/publishing, and telecommunications to improve customer satisfaction, reduce attrition, and enhance retention. NGDATA serves customers such as AXA, Orange, De Persgroep and Telenet and is headquartered in Gent, Belgium with offices in New York City and San Francisco. The company closed a $10.2 million Series B to scale growth and continue development of Lily Enterprise. Management says the capital will be used to broaden adoption of the solution and expand in its key verticals. NGDATA's flagship product, Lily, is a real-time customer intelligence and offer-generation platform that aggregates structured and unstructured data and applies machine learning to personalize offers across online and mobile channels. Lily ingests data from CRM and subscriber databases, POS and transactional systems, mobile and web logs, social media, contextual signals (weather, geo-location) and third-party socio-demographic data. The product is built on Apache Hadoop and HBase, integrates with existing IT and marketing platforms via APIs, and produces individual preference scores used to target timely, relevant offers. NGDATA says Lily can recommend context-aware promotions (for example, location-based coupons or weather-triggered offers) and has developed indexing capabilities for Cloudera Search. The company reports significant traction in financial services, telecom and media/publishing and names customers including De Persgroep, France Telecom, KBC, Orange and Telenet, while not breaking out exact customer counts. Financially, NGDATA raised $3.3M in the latest round and has now raised $5.8M in total; it will use the new funding to continue product development on Lily and bolster its U.S. expansion and business momentum. NGDATA’s core product, lily, is a consumer intelligence solution that combines internal and external structured and unstructured data into a single platform to make consumer insights actionable. Lily ingests data from POS systems, enterprise applications, social media and other sources and uses machine‑learning to generate precise snapshots of consumer preferences and behaviors for real‑time segmentation and personalized targeting. The platform sits on existing IT infrastructure, integrates Apache Hadoop and Apache HBase, and exposes high-level data modeling, APIs and installation tools to simplify deployment. NGDATA says lily is already in use by financial services, news/media and retail companies worldwide and helps drive more personalized campaigns to increase sales and customer loyalty. The company is headquartered in Gent, Belgium and has established offices in San Francisco and just outside New York City to serve a growing roster of U.S.-based customers. Management plans to use new funding to invest in product development and innovation, drive new business opportunities worldwide, expand further into the U.S., and may supplement this funding round in the near future.