Led · Series B · Sep 2019

Booksy operates a consumer-facing mobile marketplace and a mobile-first SaaS product (Booksy Biz) that helps beauty, wellness and health providers manage appointments, staff, payments and customer acquisition. The platform powers hundreds of millions of appointments each year and serves over 130,000 providers and 38+ million consumers worldwide. Booksy’s Marketplace lets consumers find, schedule and manage bookings with stylists, barbers, nail artists, salons and other service providers. The company said it will use the new financing to accelerate new customer acquisition, expand its marketplace and enhance the platform. Booksy was founded in Poland in 2014 and now has operations in Poland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain and France. The company previously raised more than $100M in Series C funding and is backed by investors including Innovia, Kaya and Verdane. Booksy operates a consumer-facing booking app and a companion Booksy Biz app that lets salons, nail bars and barbershops manage bookings, payments and customer relationships. The platform also offers Booksy E-Commerce, a marketplace enabling salons to sell products and helping customers discover local stylists and technicians. The company says 38% of customers book after-hours and that appointment frequency increases by 20% for users; it claims roughly 13 million consumers on the app. Booksy was launched in 2014 by Stefan Batory (CEO) and Konrad Howard and now operates in the US (its largest market), UK, Poland, Spain, Brazil and South Africa. The startup has used M&A to expand, acquiring Lavito in 2018 and merging with Versum in December 2020 to enter Mexico. The company plans to use new funding to expand across North America, enter new verticals and acquire complementary businesses. Booksy is a mobile-first marketplace and SaaS platform that enables appointment-driven beauty service providers to manage bookings, POS, client databases, and basic marketing automation. The consumer-facing marketplace is available online and via an app to help users discover and book local stylists, nail technicians, barbers and artists, showing reviews, services, pricing and availability. Founded in 2013 by CEO Stefan Batory and based in San Francisco, the company targets beauty professionals and consumers seeking local services. Booksy raised $28.5m in a Series B2 and has $48.7m in total funding to date. The company intends to use the proceeds to scale the business, grow engineering, sales and marketing teams, and expand into new U.S. markets. Investors in the round include returning backers Piton Capital and Enern, new investors Industry Ventures and XG Ventures, and participation from several industry executives and angels. Booksy provides an online booking platform for beauty and personal-care merchants, enabling customers to schedule appointments with stylists and other service providers. Founded in 2014 by Stefan Batory and Konrad Howard, the company says it launched in the U.S. in 2017 and has rapidly expanded its footprint. Booksy is currently processing about 2.5 million bookings per month, a key operating metric cited by the company. Management plans to use new funding to drive global growth, recruit high-profile talent, and develop proprietary technologies. Product development priorities include a one-click booking feature that leverages machine learning and AI to predict user buying patterns and suggest optimal dates with preferred stylists. Booksy provides a mobile-first Software-as-a-Service for appointment-based businesses, enabling online bookings, scheduling, CRM, marketing automation, inventory management, point-of-sale, reporting, and employee commission management. The company charges monthly subscription tiers rather than taking a cut per booking, positioning itself against marketplace competitors. Booksy says adoption improves customer loyalty and booking frequency, noting up to 60% of appointments are made outside businesses' working hours. The product aims to move bookings off phones and in-person systems onto the app and web interface to increase convenience and engagement. Booksy plans to add in-app payments, features to help larger merchants manage personnel, and enhanced reporting systems. The company raised a $4.2M Series A to fund these product and functionality investments.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2018

Qwick operates a marketplace that connects hospitality professionals with food-and-beverage shifts in real time, using a matching algorithm that considers distance, VIP availability and supply. Workers complete a profile, a five-minute virtual orientation and a one-to-one interview before gaining access to the app; Qwick also employs a two-way, five-star rating system. The platform serves thousands of employers — including stadiums, senior living facilities and corporate catering — and is active with over 7,000 businesses across 23 metro areas. Qwick says its app has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of professionals and has facilitated over 500,000 shifts to date. The company reports workers earn, on average, $9 above minimum wage in the cities where they work. After pandemic layoffs that cut the team by 70%, revenue has since grown 10,000% over the past three years and the company employs just over 270 people, with plans to expand to about 300 by year end. Qwick is a Phoenix, AZ-based on-demand staffing platform that connects service industry professionals with hospitality shifts in real time. Workers provide their work experience and availability while businesses post shifts that need filling; Qwick texts workers shifts that match their skills and schedules. The company is led by co-founders Jamie Baxter (co-founder and CEO), Blaine Light (co-founder and COO) and Chris Loeffler (co-founder). Qwick raised $1.3M in funding from a group of investors including Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, UA Venture Capital, Moving Capital, Desert Angels and XG Ventures. It intends to use the funds to hire five additional people across engineering, operations and business development in the next month. The company plans to expand to four additional cities in 2019, including San Diego in January.

Participated · Seed · Mar 2017

Baker provides a customer engagement and marketing automation platform for cannabis dispensaries and brands, offering personalized messaging, loyalty programs, and online shopping. The company uses a data-driven approach to convert anonymous visitors into repeat customers. Baker powers the retail experience for more than 750 dispensaries and over 1.2 million customers. Founded in 2014 and led by CEO Joel Milton, the company graduated from accelerator 500 Startups. Baker recently acquired Seattle-based Grassworks, a CRM platform provider, and intends to use new funding to accelerate growth, particularly in Washington and California. The platform serves both dispensaries and cannabis brands across its customer base. Baker is a Denver, CO-based customer engagement software company founded in 2014 by Joel Milton. The company offers an industry-specific marketing automation platform that connects dispensary owners with customers across every touchpoint, including online ordering, in-store check-in, loyalty, promotions and personalized messaging. Baker also creates interactive shopping menus that dispensaries can embed into their websites. The company serves dispensaries in 10 states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington) and Ontario, Canada. Baker secured additional funding and plans to use the proceeds to expand operations. Its current financing position reflects modest early-stage capital raising consistent with seed-stage growth. Baker Technologies builds software to help marijuana dispensaries win new customers, eliminate long lines, and retain and reward loyal patrons. Founded in 2015 in Denver, Baker began as an order-ahead app to let customers reserve and pick up cannabis products. The platform has since evolved into a full customer relationship management, marketing, and loyalty rewards solution tailored to the regulatory and informational needs of dispensaries and their customers. Baker surfaces product information online so customers arrive informed, reducing in-store decision time and wait times. Its software is used by dispensaries in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Ontario, and investors expect the company to expand into California, Nevada, Arizona, and Massachusetts. The company raised seed funding to support hiring, continued product development, and to raise awareness of its SaaS in the growing North American cannabis market.

Participated · Seed · Jul 2016

GameOn builds white-label prediction and gamification experiences that allow TV networks, OTT platforms, sportsbooks, and sports leagues to transform their content into real-time, interactive games for fans. The company’s platform underpinned NBCUniversal’s late-2020 “Real Housewives of Potomac” prediction game, during which new users jumped as much as 281% week-over-week and active users rose up to 144% week-over-week. Recent additions to its board and advisory council include industry veterans from DraftKings, Bet.Works, and other major gaming and media brands, bolstering domain expertise. GameOn plans to use fresh capital to accelerate product development, expand its team, and pursue M&A opportunities that complement its core offering. The firm is preparing to list its shares on the Canadian Securities Exchange, an event tied to the release of its newly raised funds from escrow. Financially, GameOn has just secured CA$5.8 million in gross proceeds from an oversubscribed private placement, providing runway for these growth initiatives.

Participated · Series C · Apr 2016

Kamcord operates a video network that lets people broadcast gaming action and other smartphone screen activity from their tablets and phones. The company is shifting to an "appcasting" strategy to let users livestream non-gaming apps such as Tinder, Instagram and other mobile experiences. Kamcord aims to expand beyond gaming to attract non-gaming viewers and grow its audience, which the article reports at 1 million viewers. It monetizes streams through virtual goods called "stars"—priced up to $80—that viewers buy for broadcasters, with Kamcord splitting the proceeds; the product currently does not run ads. Kamcord partners with existing online creators, including musical artist Redfoo and makeup creator Wengie, and has rebranded its site around topics like sports fans and YouTube reactions. Following the latest raise, its total funding stands at over $37 million. Kamcord is a mobile video game recording service that allows players to capture and share gameplay clips. Its core product integrates with game developers to surface recorded gameplay content in players' native languages. The company opened an office in Japan and plans a major expansion across Asia, beginning with Japan and then moving into China and South Korea. To support that growth it intends to triple headcount from 23 employees to somewhere in the 60s within a year. Kamcord has raised funding to support this expansion, including a recent Series B. For China it expects to use different infrastructure than Amazon Web Services, which isn’t ubiquitous there. Kamcord offers a developer SDK that enables mobile games to record, share and view in-game videos. The product debuted in 2012 as the world’s first mobile gameplay recording solution. Users now share one video every two seconds; over 1 million videos were shared in the last month, users have shared 5 million videos total, and more than 3 billion videos have been recorded since launch. Kamcord says it will invest in better discovery of mobile gaming content, including within its own apps. The company sees Asia as a major growth market and plans to leverage investor relationships to make inroads with developers there. The platform’s traction and usage metrics underpin its efforts to expand distribution and content discovery. Kamcord offers a developer SDK that lets mobile players record and share video of in-game sessions and view others’ clips on Kamcord.com. The team is adding social features — profiles and commenting — to turn Kamcord.com into a destination for mobile gaming content. The company is YC-backed, runs an 11-person team, and has built its in-game recording into over 115 games. Users have recorded one billion game sessions since the startup launched last year. Management says an Android version of its developer tools is in progress. Financially, the company had previously accrued just north of $1.5 million in capital and recently closed an additional seed round; the team has largely deferred monetization while it builds usage, though it has signaled potential future ad or brand-revenue plans. Kamcord offers a lightweight SDK that lets mobile gamers record in-game footage and share clips (notably to YouTube) with minimal impact on gameplay. The company opened its SDK about four months ago and has seen rapid adoption: the number of games using Kamcord has more than doubled and recordings jumped from three to seven videos per second in two weeks. Kamcord is focused on polishing its iOS SDK as the immediate priority while planning Android support in the coming year. The team is small and is being deliberate about engineering resource allocation as it scales the product. Kamcord plans to use its recent seed funding to cover payroll and expand the team, including hiring a designer and “locking down the team” for 2013.