The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Feb 2020

Foxtrot reimagines the corner convenience store by pairing a digital-first commerce platform with curated retail locations offering coffee, ready-to-eat cafe meals, wine and locally sourced artisan products. The company has added private-label products that now account for about 30% of its retail assortment and nearly half of its retail and e-commerce sales, and it expects to launch roughly 200 new private-label SKUs next year. Foxtrot provides five-minute pickup, rapid on-demand delivery, and a nationwide Foxtrot Anywhere shipping tool, and it operates a Perks loyalty program that grew more than 110% in 2021. The business doubled last year, with five-minute market pickup up 250% and cafe orders up 375% in the same period. Foxtrot plans to expand its physical footprint aggressively—opening 25 new stores in 2022 and targeting 50 new retail locations over the next two years while entering new markets such as New York, Nashville and Miami in 2023. The company is also investing the new capital to scale merchandising and triple its engineering team, plus hire across logistics, store payments, inventory management, personalization and Perks. Foxtrot Market operates tech-enabled neighborhood corner stores and cafés that combine grocery staples, a full-service café, sommelier-curated wine, chef-prepared meals, and curated gift bundles with on-demand app delivery (60-minute). The company also offers a Ship Shop for nationwide gift shipping and has recently launched nationwide shipping. Led by CEO and co-founder Mike LaVitola and a senior team including Sumi Ghosh, Scott Holloway, and Caroline Barry, Foxtrot emphasizes private-label packaged goods and curated retail experiences. The business integrates in-store experience with app-based delivery and curated product offerings to serve modern urban consumers. Foxtrot plans to use new capital to expand its private-label goods and gift offerings, continue investment in nationwide shipping, and open as many as nine additional stores across Chicago and Dallas while entering new markets including Washington, D.C. The company raised growth capital in a Series B to fund these expansion and product initiatives. Foxtrot reimagines the corner convenience store by combining physical retail with app-based on-demand delivery of a broad product mix including craft beer, natural wines, national brands and Foxtrot-label prepared foods. The company works with more than 100 vendors to offer roughly 800 SKUs across its stores and online. Foxtrot’s assortment is roughly one-third proprietary Foxtrot products, one-third emerging brands and one-third staple national brands. It operates stores in Dallas and Chicago and plans to expand further in those markets and launch in D.C. The business reports 2x year-over-year revenue growth and 150% year-over-year growth in its e-commerce customer base, with revenue split about 50/50 between offline and online sales. Store staff are W2 employees while couriers are contractors employed directly by Foxtrot according to the company’s practices. Foxtrot is a Chicago-based next-generation corner store combining e-commerce with a curated in-store experience, offering craft beer, wine, spirits, food, gifts and everyday essentials. Led by co-founder and CEO Michael LaVitola, the company delivers orders to customers' homes in 60 minutes. The team prioritizes local products and integrations, and a significant portion of Foxtrot's inventory comes from local purveyors. Foxtrot secured $6m in Series A funding to support growth. The company plans to use the funds to grow the team, expand its on-demand e-commerce delivery business, open additional retail stores in Chicago later in the year and pursue national expansion in early 2019, and to partner with large owners and operators of real estate to provide a curated amenity to neighborhoods and buildings. Foxtrot is a curated delivery company that launched out of the University of Chicago's New Venture Challenge in 2013 and combines an on-demand mobile ordering app with brick-and-mortar stores. Its product offering is a limited, curated selection — including beer and wine, dinners, bath accessories, and gifts — delivered via an app and supported by physical retail locations. Earlier this year Foxtrot opened its first store in Lincoln Park; it announced a flagship 1,700 square-foot West Loop location at 1019 W. Lake St. that will host local partner events and open on November 16. The company raised $1.1M in funding alongside the West Loop store announcement, with investors including ChicagoNEXT chairman Mark Tebbe, Apex Venture Partner general partner Lon Chow, and TrunkClub CFO and co-founder Kevin Price. Foxtrot positions itself as an omni-channel retail concept that leverages scalable retail stores alongside mobile ordering to own the end-to-end delivery experience and differentiate from broader delivery apps. CEO and co-founder Michael LaVitola said the flagship brings the curated app experience to life and supports plans to grow in Chicago and beyond.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2016

ExplORer Surgical offers a platform that combines video, role-specific digital procedural playbooks, and time-stamped intraoperative data capture to support virtual proctoring, case support, clinical trials data collection, and product launches. The company originated from a research laboratory in the University of Chicago Medical Center Department of Surgery and integrates remote, HIPAA-compliant two-way video connectivity so offsite team members can join procedures. Its Remote Case Support feature, launched in early 2020, drove a 6X increase in sales over the last year. ExplORer has built more than 1,000 unique procedures on its platform and onboarded over 10 new medical device customers in under three months, including large global MedTech companies and startups. The company plans to use the new funding to grow headcount from about 30 to roughly 50, expand technology, marketing, and customer success teams, and deliver additional platform updates; it also expects to raise another round later this year. ExplORer Surgical offers a software-as-a-service platform for intraoperative surgical and interventional procedure workflow management and analytics. The platform lets hospital and device company teams guide, track and analyze activity in the operating room, during training events and throughout stages of clinical use. Each team member sees their own content on any connected device, and the system collects live procedural data. Led by CEO and co-founder Jennifer Fried, the company is based in Chicago, IL. ExplORer intends to use the recently raised funds to accelerate growth of its surgical software platform. The article does not disclose revenue or user metrics. ExplORer Surgical offers a software-as-a-service interactive digital playbook to manage, track and analyze intra-operative activity and information for operating rooms and interventional suites. The platform supports team coordination during procedures and delivers granular analytics on procedure activity. Customers include hospitals and medical device manufacturers that use the tool to improve intraoperative workflow and data capture. The company was founded out of a research laboratory at the University of Chicago Medical Center and is led by CEO Jennifer Fried. ExplORer intends to use the new financing to accelerate commercialization of its workflow management platform. The company is based in Chicago, Illinois. ExplORer Surgical builds an interactive surgical playbook as a software-as-a-service intraoperative workflow management tool. The platform aims to optimize operating room teamwork by preventing delays and disruptions caused by missing or incorrect instruments. It also seeks to reduce instances of opened-but-unused disposable items and to capture granular intraoperative data in real time. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Jennifer Fried, with Dr. Alex Langerman as Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Marko Rojnica, Eugene Fine as CTO, and Tom Knight as COO. ExplORer says it will use the funding to scale operations.

Participated · Equity · May 2016

Regroup provides remote, clinical‑level mental health care by supplying clinician capacity, workflows, and the technology to deliver telepsychiatry services. The company’s platform partners with clinicians to connect patients across its current 19‑state footprint; over 50% of partnered clinicians work exclusively for Regroup. Founded in 2011, Regroup has pursued outside funding to scale operations and product capabilities. The company recently raised $5.5 million to expand clinician capacity and improve efficiency through automation and product enhancements aimed at reducing clinician administrative burden. Regroup plans to strengthen its sales and account management teams and to develop targeted products addressing specific epidemics and substance‑use challenges. Its prior financing included a $6.1 million Series A raised last year from investors including Further Fund and Hyde Park Angels. Regroup Therapy provides virtual staffing of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to hospitals, outpatient facilities, correctional facilities and Native American reservations. The company is led by CEO and Founder David Cohn. It delivers about 4,000 sessions per month through its existing network of providers. Regroup will use new funding to expand its network of psychiatrists, advanced psychiatric nurses, therapists and other mental health professionals. The company also plans to design and develop new functionality to improve its provider platform and to explore integrating additional data streams into its data platform. Regroup Therapy operates a telebehavioral-health platform that enables hospitals, health systems and primary care clinics to connect patients with remote psychiatrists, social workers and mental-health professionals via video visits. The company positions itself as a staffing solution for health entities, supplying clinicians along with technology, workflows and EMR-integrated documentation so remote providers function as part of local care teams. After launching in early 2015, Regroup has secured contracts with Sinai Health System, Oak Street Health, OSF HealthCare and MetroFamily Services. CEO David Cohn said the company expects no less than half a million dollars in revenue this year. Regroup is experimenting with facial-recognition signals as a proxy for outcomes and building out data analytics to identify population needs and track post-visit results. The team aims to reduce the national shortage of mental-health providers and to automate parts of the therapeutic process and patient self-management, particularly for value-based care systems.