Participated · Series A · Mar 2023

Mindset Health builds app-based digital hypnotherapy programs that combine world-class health specialists and clinical research with a proprietary scalable technology platform to deliver evidence-based audio therapies. Its platform currently powers three apps addressing medically-diagnosed irritable bowel syndrome, menopause, and smoking cessation. The company reports top user markets as the US (38%), Australia (19%), and the UK (15%). With US$12 million raised in an oversubscribed Series A, Mindset plans to broaden channels-to-market and scale distribution to meet increasing global demand. It intends to launch new apps for conditions including anxiety and depression, sleep, and chronic pain, and to enhance personalization and features in existing programs. Mindset will continue clinical and real-world research with partners such as Baylor University and Monash University to strengthen evidence of health and economic outcomes. The company is also recruiting across software engineering and healthcare sales to support growth. Mindset Health builds evidence-based, hypnosis-based therapeutic mobile apps for self-management of physical and mental health conditions. Its flagship app, Nerva, delivers a gut-directed hypnotherapy program for IBS and helps more than 10,000 people a month. The company reports that 89% of people who finished the initial program said they had an improved ability to manage their symptoms. Mindset partners with health researchers and clinicians and plans to expand its platform to deliver new programs targeting menopause, depression, and chronic pain. The Y Combinator-backed startup will use its recent seed raise to scale to 100,000 users a month, grow its team from 12 to 40, and run several randomized controlled trials. Founders Chris and Alex Naoumidis aim to automate hypnosis-based approaches to offer scalable, consistent, lower-cost alternatives to in-person therapy. Mindset Health builds hypnotherapy-driven apps positioned as self-management tools rather than therapy, with a general Mindset toolkit and condition-specific products such as Nerva for irritable bowel syndrome. The company was founded by brothers Chris and Alex Naoumidis, who turned to hypnotherapy after earlier startup work and developed the apps based on those experiences. Mindset’s products were designed with clinicians — the initial app with Dr. Michael Japko and the IBS program with Dr. Simone Peters — who receive revenue share for helping develop the course content. Pricing varies by product: Nerva has a $99 upfront payment plus an $88 three-month subscription, while the Mindset subscription was priced at $11 (down from $64). The company reports that among program completers, 90% self-report reduced symptoms. Mindset plans to expand under a multi-app umbrella, delivering researcher-developed programs digitally to make them more accessible.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2022

Cheq, Lifestyle Technology, Inc. offers a social payments platform that combines universal ordering and mobile payment capabilities for the restaurant and hospitality industry. Its app allows guests to place orders and pay from their phones, while also enabling users to send food and drinks to friends anywhere in the world. Any restaurant, café, bar, hotel, or stadium can integrate Cheq to streamline transactions and enhance guest experiences. The company has already secured agreements with prominent sports organizations including the Miami Marlins, Miami Dolphins, Washington Commanders, Tennessee Titans, and the University of Washington Huskies. Seed financing will be directed toward onboarding additional venues in key U.S. markets. Cheq is led by CEO Thomas Lapham and is headquartered in Kirkland, Washington.

Participated · Series A · Jun 2022

Founded in 2014, Fido Ghana delivers digital financial services—namely instant loans, savings products, and microinsurance—through a mobile application. The company targets individuals and MSMEs that lack traditional credit histories by leveraging its proprietary AI-driven “Fido Score,” which analyzes alternative data such as mobile phone usage patterns and transaction behavior to assess credit risk. Operating in both Ghana and Uganda, Fido aims to broaden financial inclusion across sub-Saharan Africa. Its technology-first approach enables rapid credit decisions and product delivery without the need for physical branches. Recent strategic priorities include expanding its lending portfolio, upgrading digital infrastructure, and scaling the platform to reach more users. While specific revenue or user figures were not disclosed, the company continues to secure capital to support growth initiatives.

Participated · Series A · Feb 2022

Formlogic provides autonomous precision manufacturing services intended for space companies. It separates engineering from physical labor by combining remote AI-based planning with autonomous production. The company has developed software that performs the simulations needed to produce parts effectively, replacing traditional guess-and-check methods performed by skilled workers. Formlogic operates factories in Pittsburgh spanning over 50,000 square feet. The company plans to use recent growth capital to acquire new CNC machines and continue scaling operations. Leadership frames the mission as modernizing the industrial supply chain and retaining skilled manufacturing in the U.S. Formlogic replaces manual trial-and-error in precision machining with simulation-driven software and autonomous production, decoupling engineering decisions from physical labor. Its RemoteShop console enables remote experts to plan and run production from anywhere. The company has secured purchase orders from ten leading customers across the medical, automotive, and aerospace industries, and reports all machines operating at or near capacity. Formlogic is pursuing enterprise customers that could each represent roughly $1 million a year in sales. The approach targets a highly fragmented machine tool consumption market valued at over $70 billion, where no incumbent holds more than 1.0% share. The team is led by founder and CEO Paul Sutter, who previously exited companies to AltaVista and Citrix and grew a prior business to $400 million in revenue, and CTO David Montague, formerly of Palantir, alongside aerospace veterans from SpaceX.

Participated · Series B · Dec 2021

Cyrus Biotechnology is a Seattle-based, pre-clinical-stage biotech combining computational and experimental protein design and screening to create novel biologics. Its core platform builds on Rosetta plus proprietary AI algorithms, bioinformatics and cheminformatics tools, cloud infrastructure, and rigorous benchmarking to design and optimize proteins. Cyrus focuses on redesigning natural proteins to improve efficacy (binding affinity, aggregation propensity, solubility, stability) and safety (binding specificity, immunogenicity) across multiple indications. The company has initiated a variety of in-house and partnered programs, including autoimmunity work with Selecta Biosciences, and collaborates with The Broad Institute on next-generation CRISPR engineering. The acquisition of Orthogonal Biologics adds deep mutational scanning protein engineering capabilities and brings a broad-spectrum protein-based COVID-19 therapeutic and another biologic into Cyrus’s pipeline. Cyrus has worked with over 90 industry partners and says its unified tools have helped advance partner molecules to pre-clinical development and IND. Cyrus Biotechnology develops Cyrus Bench®, a graphical, cloud-enabled Software-as-a-Service platform built on the Rosetta protein modeling toolkit and SparksX for protein structure prediction, design and engineering. Bench® is intended to broaden access to advanced computational protein engineering methods and to make them more user-friendly for a wider range of scientists. The company also offers custom software development and scientific support services in computational protein engineering. Cyrus launched a software beta in 2016 with an initial release in early 2017 and has rapidly acquired customers including Fortune 500 pharmaceutical firms (seven of the top 20 pharma firms), chemical and consumer-products companies, and privately held biotech and synthetic biology firms. Management says the platform accelerates drug discovery and new product development and aims to expand capabilities and opportunities for the Bench® platform. The company closed a Series A financing to fund that expansion.