• SocialChorus

  Participated · Series C · Dec 2016

  SocialChorus provides an internal-communications platform that applies marketing techniques—campaign-style messaging, targeting segmentation and telemetry—to help leaders and managers understand how communications land with their workforce. The product gives organizations campaign tools and analytics to track engagement and outcomes across employees. SocialChorus serves large customers including Ford, Archer Daniels Midland and Boeing, and reports about 120 large customers worldwide. The business has been growing at roughly 50% year over year and operates with about 120 employees. CEO Gary Nakamura says the company aims to maintain growth with financial discipline and careful hiring. The recent investment from Sumeru is intended to further capitalize the business for future growth. SocialChorus builds an internal communications platform that lets organizations publish messages to employees, contractors, franchises and other audiences and syndicate content to other tools via API or RSS, including SharePoint, Slack and Workplace by Facebook. The product targets HR, IT, marketing and corporate communicators who need to create and distribute top-down corporate communications across multiple channels. The company is using new funding to expand internationally, specifically opening an EMEA office in London. SocialChorus reports recurring revenues up 120% year‑to‑date, serves more than 100 of the world’s largest companies (including USAA, Phillips 66, Cargill, Lloyds Bank and PG&E), and is not yet profitable. Management and investors position the platform as enterprise‑level and mission‑critical, distinguishing it from general collaboration tools like Slack, Workplace and Microsoft Teams. According to PitchBook figures cited in the article, the company has raised roughly $37 million to date. SocialChorus is a San Francisco-based employee communications platform serving complex, distributed workforces. Led by founder and chief executive officer Gregory Shove, the platform helps HR and communication leaders deliver training videos, surveys, business and HR updates, employee-submitted content and third-party content. The company announced it raised $10m in funding. Kohlberg Ventures made the investment, and SocialChorus is also backed by Western Technology Investment and Windforce Ventures. The company is using the funds to release enhancements to its platform. SocialChorus offers an all-in-one web and mobile Advocate Marketing platform that trains advocates, manages content relevance, integrates with internal systems, runs on any device, and tracks the business impact of content and social engagement. The platform is aimed at helping brands distribute branded content for social selling, social recruiting, content marketing, and employee engagement. Since its Series A in August 2013, the company has added nearly 100 category-leading brands, including large counts of Fortune 50, Most Admired Companies, and major retailers, CPG and telecom firms. SocialChorus announced a $7.5M Series B and total funding of $15.5M to further develop the platform for Global Fortune 1000 customers. The company is opening its first international office in Vancouver, Canada, and hired Lee Diaz as Solutions Director to design employee advocacy programs. The announcement positions SocialChorus to scale its Advocate Marketing offering across large enterprises. SocialChorus offers a cloud-based advocate-marketing platform that helps marketers identify the best potential brand advocates and distribute promotions to them. The platform includes a dashboard that tracks user engagement and sentiment and ingests data from Google Analytics and Omniture. Recent product additions include mobile optimization, LinkedIn integration and automated social engagement detection. The service has been used in more than 200 advocate marketing campaigns for customers such as AT&T, Kia Motors, Peet’s, Toyota, Outback Steakhouse and Windows Phone. The company reported more than 350% growth in new customers over the last year and recently hired Brad Klaus as Chief Revenue Officer. To date the company has raised $8 million, including the new Series A.

• Kisi Security

  Participated · Equity · May 2015

  Kisi provides a cloud-managed keyless access control system that allows companies to manage access to buildings and for employees to use mobile credentials. Its offering includes a globally scalable access control platform, a mobile push-to-entry app for iPhone, Android and Windows, cloud-based access management, and real-time monitoring. The product supports integration with existing and new hardware technologies to enable enterprise deployments. Founded in 2012 by Bernhard Mehl and based in New York, Kisi counts clients such as Cushman & Wakefield, TechStars, Oscar Insurance and Harrys. The company raised $1.5M in funding and intends to use the proceeds to build out advanced features and grow the team’s infrastructure.

• Freak'n Genius

  Led · Equity · Jan 2014

  Freak’n Genius builds an animation platform and achieved early success with its YAKiT app, attracting large media companies as customers. The company plans to relocate operations to Las Vegas and rebuild a new team there. Founder and CEO Kyle Kesterson is moving to Las Vegas and joining Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project community. Freak’n Genius was founded in November 2011 and was an inaugural member of the 2012 Kinect Accelerator program. The company currently employs two people and has raised $1.25 million to date. Management says the platform will power "instant cartoon and UGC creators" tied to popular shows and characters in the near future. Freak’n Genius develops YAKiT, a mobile app that lets users manipulate the mouths of people, pets and other objects to create humorous videos. The company rolled out YAKiT 3.0, which adds an in-app feed with channels of user-created videos, new animated stickers, and social features such as commenting and reaction mechanisms. The refreshed app also includes messaging and social sharing capabilities beyond its original JibJab-like functionality. The team represented Seattle at CES and has produced viral Seahawks videos. Freak’n Genius was founded in November 2011 and was an inaugural member of the 2012 Kinect Accelerator program. The company’s total funding stands at $775,000 following the latest raise. Freak'n Genius builds Kinect-powered animation software that lets people inhabit virtual animated characters and produce short comedic videos shareable on the web. The company graduated from Microsoft’s Kinect Accelerator and operates out of the SURF Incubator in downtown Seattle. The founding team includes CEO Kyle Kesterson (co-founder of Giant Thinkwell), sketch comedian Clayton Weller, and technologist Dwayne Mercredi; they recently hired their first engineer and plan to add two more. Freak'n Genius has been developing politically themed animated shorts with a group of comedians and will release new content on its YouTube channel. The startup has leveraged accelerator connections to engage with partners and was invited to Nike’s Apparel Innovation Hackathon. Financially, the company turned down an acquisition and a corporate investment before completing a new angel raise.

No current team members are available.