Tag: boston

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Counting down Boston’s biggest venture rounds from 2019

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Today, the last day of 2019, we’re taking a second look at Boston. Regular readers of this column will recall that we recently took a peek at Boston’s startup ecosystem, and that we compiled a short countdown of the largest rounds that took place this year in Utah. Today we’re doing the latter with the former.

What follows is a countdown of Boston’s seven largest venture rounds from the year, including details concerning what the company does and who backed it. We’re also taking a shot after each entry at where we think the companies are on the path to going public.

As before, we’re using Crunchbase data for this project (here). And we’re only looking at venture rounds, so no post-IPO action, no grants, no secondaries, no debt, and no private equity-style buyouts.

Ready? Let’s have some fun.

Countdown

Boston has produced a number of big exits in recent years, like Carbon Black’s IPO, DraftKings’ impending kinda-IPO, Cayan’s billion-dollar exit, and SimpliVity’s huge sale to HP. Despite that, however, Boston is often pigeon-holed as a biotech hotbed with little technology that folks from San Francisco can understand. That’s not really fair, it turns out. There’s plenty of SaaS in Boston.

As you read the list, keep tabs on what percent of the companies included you were already familiar with. These are startups that will to take up more and more media attention as they march towards the public markets. It’s better to know them now than later.

Following the pattern set with Utah, we’ll start at the smallest round of our group and then count up to the largest.

7. Motif FoodWorks’ $90 million Series A

We could actually call the Motif FoodWorks‘ Series A a $117.5 million round as it came in two parts. However, the first tranche was $90 million total and landed in 2019 so that’s our selection for the uses of this post. The company is backed by Fonterra Ventures, Louis Dreyfus Corp, and General Atlantic.

Motif works in the alternative food space, creating things like fake meat and alt-dairy. Given the meteoric rise of Beyond Meat and Impossible Food’s big year, the space is hot. Lots of folks want to eat less meat for ethical or ecological reasons (often the two intertwine). That demand is powering a number of companies forward. Motif is riding a powerful wave.

What’s beyond Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods in the future of food?

The company’s known raised capital is encompassed in a large, early-stage round. That means that we won’t see an S-1 from this company for a long, long time.

6. Klaviyo’s $150 million Series B

An email marketing and analytics company, Klaviyo gets point for having a pricing page that actually makes sense — a rarity in the enterprise software world.

The Boston-based company was founded in 2012 and, according to Crunchbase data, has raised a total of $158.5 million. It raised just $8.5 million in total (across a small Seed round and a modest Series A) before its mega-round. How did it manage to raise such an enormous infusion in one go? As TechCrunch reported when the round was announced in April of this year:

The company is growing in leaps and bounds. It currently has 12,000 customers. To put that into perspective, it had just 1,000 at the end of 2016 and 5,000 at the end of 2017.

Klaviyo raises $150M Series B after building company the old-fashioned way

That will get the attention of anyone with a checkbook. The Summit Partners and Astral Capital-backed company has huge capital reserves for what we presume is the first time in its life. That means it’s not going public any time soon, even if our back-of-the-napkin math puts it comfortably over the $100 million ARR mark (warning: estimates were used in the creation of that number).

5. ezCater’s $150 million Series D

ezCater is an online catering marketplace. That’s an attractive business, it turns out, as evinced by the Boston company’s funding history. The startup has raised over $300 million to date according to Crunchbase, including capital from Insight Partners, ICONIQ Capital, Wellington Management, GIC, and Lightspeed.

The company’s 2019 $150 million Series D-1 that valued the company at $1.25 billion wasn’t its only nine-figure round; ezCater’s 2018 Series D was also over the mark, weighing in at $100 million.

When might the Northeast unicorn go public? An interview earlier this year put 2021 on the map as a target for the startup. That’s ages away from now, sadly, as I’d love to know how the company’s gross margin have changed since it started raising venture capital in huge gulps.

4. Cybereason’s $200 million Series E

Cybereason competes with CrowdStrike. That’s a good space to play in as CrowStrike went public earlier this year, and it went pretty well. That fact makes the Boston’s endpoint security shop’s $200 million investment pretty easy to understand. Indeed, CrowdStrike went public to great effect in June of 2019; Cybereason announced its huge round two months later in August. Surprise.

As far as backing goes, Cybereason has friends at SoftBank, with the Japanese conglomerate leading its Series C, D, and E rounds. Prior leads include CRV and Spark Capital.

The market is hot for SaaS-y security companies, meaning that there is natural pressure on Cybereason to go public. The firm, worth a flat $1.0 billion post-money after its latest round, is therefore an obvious IPO candidate for 2020. If it has the guts, that is. With SoftBank in your corner, there’s probably always another $100 million lying around you can snap up to avoid filing. (More from CrowdStrike’s CEO coming later this week on the 2019 and 2020 IPO markets, by the way. Stay tuned.)

3. DataRobot’s $206 million Series E

DataRobot does enterprise AI, allowing companies to use computer intelligence to help their flesh-and-blood staffers do more, more quickly. That’s the gist I got from learning what I could this morning, but as with all things AI I cannot tell you what’s real and what’s not.

Given its investor list, though, I’d bet that DataRobot is onto something. New Enterprise Associates led its 2014, 2016, and 2017 Series A, B, and C rounds. Meritech and Sapphire took over at the Series D, with Sapphire heroing DataRobot’s $206 million Series E. That round creatively valued the firm at, you guessed it, $1.0 billion according to Crunchbase.

DataRobot is hiring like mad (343 open positions as of this morning) and buying other companies (three in 2019). Flush with its largest round ever, I don’t see the company in a hurry to go public. That means no 2020 debut unless it’s monetizing faster than expected.

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In the shadow of Amazon and Microsoft, Seattle startups are having a moment

Venture capital investment exploded across a number of geographies in 2019 despite the constant threat of an economic downturn.

San Francisco, of course, remains the startup epicenter of the world, shutting out all other geographies when it comes to capital invested. Still, other regions continue to grow, raking in more capital this year than ever.

In Utah, a new hotbed for startups, companies like Weave, Divvy and MX Technology raised a collective $370 million from private market investors. In the Northeast, New York City experienced record-breaking deal volume with median deal sizes climbing steadily. Boston is closing out the decade with at least 10 deals larger than $100 million announced this year alone. And in the lovely Pacific Northwest, home to tech heavyweights Amazon and Microsoft, Seattle is experiencing an uptick in VC interest in what could be a sign the town is finally reaching its full potential.

Seattle startups raised a total of $3.5 billion in VC funding across roughly 375 deals this year, according to data collected by PitchBook. That’s up from $3 billion in 2018 across 346 deals and a meager $1.7 billion in 2017 across 348 deals. Much of Seattle’s recent growth can be attributed to a few fast-growing businesses.

Startups Weekly: Will the Seattle tech scene ever reach its full potential?

Convoy, the digital freight network that connects truckers with shippers, closed a $400 million round last month bringing its valuation to $2.75 billion. The deal was remarkable for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was the largest venture round for a Seattle-based company in a decade, PitchBook claims. And it pushed Convoy to the top of the list of the most valuable companies in the city, surpassing OfferUp, which raised a sizable Series D in 2018 at a $1.4 billion valuation.

Convoy has managed to attract a slew of high-profile investors, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and even U2’s Bono and the Edge. Since it was founded in 2015, the business has raised a total of more than $668 million.

Remitly, another Seattle-headquartered business, has helped bolster Seattle’s startup ecosystem. The fintech company focused on international money transfer raised a $135 million Series E led by Generation Investment Management, and $85 million in debt from Barclays, Bridge Bank, Goldman Sachs and Silicon Valley Bank earlier this year. Owl Rock Capital, Princeville Global,  Prudential Financial, Schroder & Co Bank AG and Top Tier Capital Partners, and previous investors DN Capital, Naspers’ PayU and Stripes Group also participated in the equity round, which valued Remitly at nearly $1 billion.

Up-and-coming startups, including co-working space provider The Riveter, real estate business Modus and same-day delivery service Dolly, have recently attracted investment too.

Pioneer Square Labs is invigorating Seattle’s startup ecosystem

A number of other factors have contributed to Seattle’s long-awaited rise in venture activity. Top-performing companies like Stripe, Airbnb and Dropbox have established engineering offices in Seattle, as has Uber, Twitter, Facebook, Disney and many others. This, of course, has attracted copious engineers, a key ingredient to building a successful tech hub. Plus, the pipeline of engineers provided by the nearby University of Washington (shout-out to my alma mater) means there’s no shortage of brainiacs.

There’s long been plenty of smart people in Seattle, mostly working at Microsoft and Amazon, however. The issue has been a shortage of entrepreneurs, or those willing to exit a well-paying gig in favor of a risky venture. Fortunately for Seattle venture capitalists, new efforts have been made to entice corporate workers to the startup universe. Pioneer Square Labs, which I profiled earlier this year, is a prime example of this movement. On a mission to champion Seattle’s unique entrepreneurial DNA, Pioneer Square Labs cropped up in 2015 to create, launch and fund technology companies headquartered in the Pacific Northwest.

Boundless CEO Xiao Wang at TechCrunch Disrupt 2017

Operating under the startup studio model, PSL’s team of former founders and venture capitalists, including Rover and Mighty AI founder Greg Gottesman, collaborate to craft and incubate startup ideas, then recruit a founding CEO from their network of entrepreneurs to lead the business. Seattle is home to two of the most valuable businesses in the world, but it has not created as many founders as anticipated. PSL hopes that by removing some of the risk, it can encourage prospective founders, like Boundless CEO Xiao Wang, a former senior product manager at Amazon, to build.

“The studio model lends itself really well to people who are 99% there, thinking ‘damn, I want to start a company,’ ” PSL co-founder Ben Gilbert said in March. “These are people that are incredible entrepreneurs but if not for the studio as a catalyst, they may not have [left].”

Boundless is one of several successful PSL spin-outs. The business, which helps families navigate the convoluted green card process, raised a $7.8 million Series A led by Foundry Group earlier this year, with participation from existing investors Trilogy Equity Partners, PSL, Two Sigma Ventures and Founders’ Co-Op.

Years-old institutional funds like Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group have done their part to bolster the Seattle startup community too. Madrona raised a $100 million Acceleration Fund earlier this year, and although it plans to look beyond its backyard for its newest deals, the firm continues to be one of the largest supporters of Pacific Northwest upstarts. Founded in 1995, Madrona’s portfolio includes Amazon, Mighty AI, UiPath, Branch and more.

Voyager Capital, another Seattle-based VC, also raised another $100 million this year to invest in the PNW. Maveron, a venture capital fund co-founded by Starbucks mastermind Howard Schultz, closed on another $180 million to invest in early-stage consumer startups in May. And new efforts like Flying Fish Partners have been busy deploying capital to promising local companies.

There’s a lot more to say about all this. Like the growing role of deep-pocketed angel investors in Seattle have in expanding the startup ecosystem, or the non-local investors, like Silicon Valley’s best, who’ve funneled cash into Seattle’s talent. In short, Seattle deal activity is finally climbing thanks to top talent, new accelerator models and several refueled venture funds. Now we wait to see how the Seattle startup community leverages this growth period and what startups emerge on top.

Startups Weekly: Will the Seattle tech scene ever reach its full potential?

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Despite winter’s chill, the Northeast’s tech ecosystem is white-hot

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between.

Today, we’re digging into a host of data concerning the East Coast venture capital scene, specifically looking into the performance of its two key startup markets.

It’s 12 degrees Fahrenheit as I write this in my office situated between Boston and New York City — a perfect vantage point for studying these vibrant tech ecosystems. Let’s see what the data tells us.

The information we’re examining today comes from White Star Capital (often via CBInsights), a venture capital firm that describes itself as “transatlantic” and takes part in seed, Series A and Series B rounds around the globe. The group last raised a $180 million fund that TechCrunch covered here, noting at the time that capital pool was “oversubscribed from an initial target of $140 million” and would be invested into “around 20 new companies from the new fund, writing opening cheques of between $1 million and $6 million.”

With boots on the ground in New York, White Star cares about the East Coast, so the fund’s put dossier on the region isn’t unexpected. What it includes, however, is.

We’ll start with NYC and its surprising 2019 before turning to Boston, digging into its super-giant venture totals and hearing from Founder Collective’s Eric Paley on the state of things in urban Massachusetts.

New York City

White Star’s report details record-breaking figures for NYC’s current year. Off of effectively flat deal volume (New York City sees around 775 venture deals per year at the moment, or a little more than two per day), the overgrown town should set record venture dollar volume in 2019.

Observe the following, astounding chart detailing the abnormality of 2019 from a comparative venture dollar perspective:

By smashing 2017’s local maximum, 2019 appears set to crush the city’s record — and rich — venture investment totals. The graphic also manages to point out (somewhat embarrassingly) that Gotham will manage to best a number of European countries’ aggregate venture dollar investments by itself this year.

That’s is a useful bit of context as in the United States, New York City is always Number Two to Silicon Valley. But, this chart argues, being number two in the number-one market is still a hell of a lot of capital.

Putting New York City’s venture into even sharper comparative perspective, observe the following table:

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Payment startup Chipper Cash raises $6M for Southern Africa expansion

African cross-border fintech startup Chipper Cash has raised a $6 million seed-round led by Deciens Capital.

The San Francisco-based company offers mobile-based, no fee, P2P payment services in six countries: Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Kenya.

Chipper Cash will use the capital to grow its team and move into new geographic areas, according to CEO Ham Serunjogi.

“Southern Africa is an area we’re looking to expand to in 2020,” he told TechCrunch on a call. Chipper Cash won’t yet disclose which countries that could entail.

The digital finance startup’s had a busy 12 months in an eventful year overall for Africa’s fintech scene. After going live in 2018, Chipper Cash raised $2.4 million in May 2019 in a seed round that included support from 500 Startups and Liquid 2 Ventures — co-founded by American football icon Joe Montana.

In September, Chipper Cash expanded into what is now arguably Africa’s largest fintech market, Nigeria. With its latest round, the startup has raised over $8 million in seed capital. Participants in the $6 million financing include previous investors, and a few new backers, such as Boston based Raptor Group.

Deciens Capital Co-Founder Dan Kimerling confirmed the fund’s lead on the latest round and that he will continue his role on Chipper Cash’s board.

The fintech company, co-founded by Ghanaian Maijid Moujaled, now has more than 600,000 active users and has processed over 3 million transactions on its no-fee, P2P, cross-border mobile-money payments product, according to Serunjogi.

Maijid Moujaled and Ham Serunjogi

The startup also runs Chipper Checkout: a merchant-focused, fee-based C2B mobile payment product that generates the revenue to support Chipper Cash’s free mobile-money business.

The startup’s planned move to Southern Africa — home to the continent’s second-largest and most advanced economy of South Africa — will place Chipper Cash in all three corners of the Africa’s triangle of leading digital finance markets.

There are hundreds of payments startups across Africa looking to bring the continent’s large unbanked and underbanked populations onto mobile finance applications.

Some products, such as M-Pesa in Kenya, have succeeded in reaching tens of millions. However, one characteristic of successful African fintech products is their use has been geographically segregated, with few apps able to scale widely across borders.

Chipper Cash touts its ability to grow its P2P product in several countries in 2019, including Nigeria.

Serunjogi explained the imperative to move to the West African country earlier this year. “Nigeria is the largest economy and most populous country in Africa. Its fintech industry is one of the most advanced in Africa, up there with Kenya and South Africa,” he told TechCrunch in May.

Apparently a number of actors were on the same wavelength when he said that, as Nigerian fintech gained $360 million in VC in November — the equivalent of roughly one-third of all the startup capital raised in Africa in 2018, according to Partech stats.

Part of this venture influx was directed to potential Chipper Cash competitors.

In two separate rounds, Chinese investors put $220 million into OPay and PalmPay — two fledgling payment startups with plans to scale in Nigeria and the broader continent. That money dwarfs rounds raised by other P2P focused fintech companies, such as Chipper Cash.

On how the startup will compete with the these new players with big coffers, Serunjogi points to Chipper Cash’s gratis-payment structure, among other factors.

“Money doesn’t buy product market fit. It doesn’t buy ultimate success in this space,” he said.

“By offering our product for free, we’re not in a pricing war or competing on a dollar-to-dollar basis. We’re in a pure utility war on who can provide the most value to our users. We’re quite comfortable with our position, and our long-term value proposition will speak for itself over time,” Serunjogi added.

At the end of 2020 we can review where Chipper Cash and competitive platforms stand on country reach and volumes in the startup race to scale digital payments across Africa’s 1.2 billion people.

Africa Roundup: Nigerian fintech gets $360M, mints unicorn, draws Chinese VC

 

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Uber guarantees space for skis and snowboards with Uber Ski feature

Uber is launching a new feature aimed at skiers and snowboarders.

The ride-hailing company said Wednesday that beginning December 17 an Uber Ski icon will pop up on the app that will let customers order a ride with confirmed extra vehicle space or a ski/snowboarding rack.

Uber is launching the feature in 23 U.S. cities located areas near mountain resorts such as Anchorage, Boise, Boston, Eastern Washington, Flagstaff, Arizona and Grand Rapids, Michigan, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Lehigh Valley, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Hampshire, Portland, Oregon, Portland,Maine,  Salt Lake City, Seattle, Upstate New York, Vermont, Wilkes-Barre Scranton and Worcester, Wyoming. Riders living in Colorado cities such as Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins and the front range of the Rockies where numerous resorts are located will also have the feature.

Uber hasn’t said if it will offer the ski feature outside of the United States.

Uber Ski is the latest of additional features aimed at attracting new users or retaining existing ones. Uber wouldn’t say if a bike option might be next. However, Nundu Janakiram, head of rider experience, said to expect more features like this one.

“No one customer is the same, which is why part of our platform strategy is unlocking capabilities for unique needs, at the right times,” Janakiram said. “Uber Ski is the latest step toward that goal, and we’ll have more to share in the future as we continue to identify ways we can do more in the vein of Uber Ski, Uber Pet, and more for riders that love Uber’s convenience.”

The feature comes with a cost. Riders pay an additional surcharge for the selection, on top of their standard trip fare. Riders will be able to view the Uber Ski surcharge on their receipt, and the surcharge will be added to their upfront price when that option is selected in-app, the company said.

Drivers don’t have to participate in Uber Ski. They can opt-out of Uber Ski trips in the driver preferences menu in the app, while still receiving other eligible trip opportunities, according to the company. If they choose to accept Uber Ski trips, drivers will also receive a significant portion of that surcharge, on top of their standard trip earnings.

Drivers who want to participate will first need to snap and upload a photo of their vehicle to the app’s documents section to confirm eligibility.

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RaySecur, a mailroom security startup, raises $3M in seed funding

Raysecur says at least ten times a day someone sends a suspicious package containing powder, liquid, or some other kind of hazard.

The Boston, Mass.-based startup says its desktop-sized 3D real-time scanning technology, dubbed MailSecur, can intercept and detect threats in the mailroom before they ever make it onto the office floor.

Mailroom security may not seem fancy or interesting, but they’re a common gateway into a corporate environment. They’re a huge attack vector for attackers — both physical and cyber. Earlier this year we wrote about warshipping, a “Trojan horse”-type attack that can be used as a way for hackers to ship hardware exploits into a business, break the Wi-Fi, and pivot onto the corporate network to steal data.

Now, the company has raised $3 million in seed-round funding led by One Way Ventures, with participation from Junson Capital, Launchpad Venture Group, and also Dreamit Ventures, a Philadelphia-based early stage investor and accelerator, which last year announced it would move into the early-stage security space.

Raysecur’s proprietary millimeter-wave scanner, MailSecur. (Image: supplied)

Raysecur uses millimeter-wave technology — similar to the scanners you find at airport security — to examine suspicious letters, flat envelopes, and small parcels. Its technology can detect powders as small as 2% of a teaspoon or a single drop of liquid, the company claims.

The startup said the funding will help expand its customer base. Although still in its infancy, the company has about ten Fortune 500 customers using its MailSecur scanner.

Since it was founded in 2018, the company has scanned more than 9.2 million packages.

Semyon Dukach, managing partner at One Way Ventures, said the funding will help “bring this compelling technology to an even broader market.”

With warshipping, hackers ship their exploits directly to their target’s mail room

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A US federal court finds suspicionless searches of phones at the border is illegal

A federal court in Boston has ruled that the government is not allowed to search travelers’ phones or other electronic devices at the U.S. border without first having reasonable suspicion of a crime.

That’s a significant victory for civil liberties advocates, who say the government’s own rules allowing its border agents to search electronic devices at the border without a warrant are unconstitutional.

The court said that the government’s policies on warrantless searches of devices without reasonable suspicion “violate the Fourth Amendment,” which provides constitutional protections against warrantless searches and seizures.

The case was brought by 11 travelers — ten of which are U.S. citizens — with support from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who said border agents searched their smartphones and laptops without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing or criminal activity.

The border remains a bizarre legal grey area, where the government asserts powers that it cannot claim against citizens or residents within the United States but citizens and travelers are not afforded all of their rights as if they were on U.S. soil. The government has long said it doesn’t need a warrant to search devices at the border. Any data collected by Customs & Border Protection without a warrant can still be shared with federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement.

Esha Bhandari, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said the ruling “significantly advances” protections under the Fourth Amendment.

“This is a great day for travelers who now can cross the international border without fear that the government will, in the absence of any suspicion, ransack the extraordinarily sensitive information we all carry in our electronic devices,” said Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney at the EFF.

Millions of travelers arrive into the U.S. every day. Last year, border officials searched 33,000 travelers’ devices — a fourfold increase since 2015 — without any need for reasonable suspicion. In recent months, travelers have been told to inform the government of any social media handles they have, all of which are subject to search prior to being let in to the United States. But some have been denied entry to the U.S. for content on their phones shared by other people.

A spokesperson for Customs & Border Protection did not immediately comment.

US border officials are increasingly denying entry to travelers over others’ social media

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Cyber-skills platform Immersive Labs raises $40M in North America expansion

Immersive Labs, a cybersecurity skills platform, has raised $40 million in its Series B, the company’s second round of funding this year following an $8 million Series A in January.

Summit Partners led the fundraise with Goldman Sachs participating, the Bristol, U.K.-based company confirmed.

Immersive, led by former GCHQ cybersecurity instructor James Hadley, helps corporate employees learn new security skills by using real, up-to-date threat intelligence in a “gamified” way. Its cybersecurity learning platform uses a variety of techniques and psychology to build up immersive and engaging cyber war games to help IT and security teams learn. The platform aims to help users better understand cybersecurity threats, like detecting and understanding phishing and malware reverse-engineering.

It’s a new take on cybersecurity education, which the company’s founder and chief executive Hadley said the ever-evolving threat landscape has made traditional classroom training “obsolete.”

“It creates knowledge gaps that increase risk, offer vulnerabilities and present opportunities for attackers,” said Hadley.

The company said it will use the round to expand further into the U.S. and Canadian markets from its North American headquarters in Boston, MA.

Since its founding in 2017, Immersive already has big customers to its name, including Bank of Montreal and Citigroup, on top of its U.K. customers, including BT, the National Health Service, and London’s Metropolitan Police.

Goldman Sachs, an investor and customer, said it was “impressed” by Immersive’s achievements so far.

“The platform is continually evolving as new features are developed to help address the gap in cyber skills that is impacting companies and governments across the globe,” said James Hayward, the bank’s executive director.

Immersive said it has 750% year-over-year growth in annual recurring revenues and over 100 employees across its offices.

Goldman Sachs leads $8M round in cybersecurity skills platform Immersive Labs

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Vendr, already profitable, raises $2M to replace your enterprise sales team

Vendr has developed an enterprise SaaS solution for managing enterprise SaaS.

The new startup, founded by InVision’s former head of enterprise sales Ryan Neu, is another standout from Y Combinator’s latest batch. Contrary to the majority of those businesses, however, Vendr is already profitable.

In classic YC fashion, the company has created software to sell to other startups and as such, it was quick to gain the confidence of top venture capital investors. Headquartered in Boston, Vendr has raised a $2 million round led by F-Prime Capital, with participation from Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, Joe Montana’s Liquid2 Ventures, Garage VC and angel investors including Canva co-founder & chief operating officer Cliff Obrecht and HubSpot COO JD Sherman.

The company offers subscription-based software, priced depending on company headcount, that helps fast-growing businesses buy and manage enterprise SaaS. In short, the product cuts the human out of the sales process, allowing companies to purchase or upgrade software using software. The goal isn’t to eliminate the sales profession, rather to put an end to “persuasion driven” sales, Neu explains, and to make enterprise software purchases as easy as consumer product purchases.

Vendr 1

Boston-based Vendr graduated from the Y Combinator startup accelerator earlier this year.

“We see software sales actually going away because most people are tired of being sold to, they are tired of being persuaded, they want to transact,” Neu, who previously led sales at HubSpot, tells TechCruch. “Vendr was created to allow people to transact software without actually having to talk to people.”

Founded 14 months ago, Vendr has reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue, which, for context, has historically been amongst the benchmarks necessary for a SaaS startup to raise its Series A. Neu says the company is growing 15% month-over-month with monthly recurring revenue currently sitting at $96,500. Already profitable, Neu says they want to put themselves in a position in which they don’t have to raise any additional outside capital.

“I can’t imagine looking at the bank account every month and watching it deplete,” Neu said. “We want to be in a position where we can control our own destiny.”

Vendr currently operates with a team of six employees and 19 customers including Canva, Grammarly, GitLab, Brex, HubSpot and InVision. The company is also backed by Okta’s general counsel Jon Runyan, AppDynamics’ COO Dan Wright and YC partner Aaron Epstein.

Sales professionals get a bad rap — Bravado wants to change that

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Obvious Ventures makes CBD sporty with beam, which sells cannabis products to the GNC set

Athletes looking to take a break from all their worries over prescription painkillers and anyone who’s hankering to try out the new cannabinoid-based treatments for their conditions (without worrying about potentially getting dosed with some THC) can now turn to beam.

The Boston-based company founded by two former athletes (who were friends at Boston College) is pitching a product that’s 100% CBD sourced from hemp plants without any of the psychoactive ingredients that are found in tetrahydrocannabinol.

Matt Lombardi, a former minor league hockey player and serial entrepreneur, and Kevin Moran, who played baseball in the minors before taking an enterprise software sales job, launched the company back in 2018.

The longtime athletes both were intrigued by cannabis-based treatments and their possibility as an alternative to the chemically derived pain relievers and anti-inflammatories that could have severe side effects or result in addiction. But they also wanted products that would not be tainted with the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that could cause problems for users in certain states.

So they developed a product set by working with multiple independent laboratories to ensure their products were free of leads, heavy metals, and pesticides, the company said. That devotion to purity has led the company to sign agreements with fitness pros like Mat Fraser, Brooke Wells, Tia-Clair Toomey, and Mikaela Mayer.

Beam Founders RMatt LKevin

Beam founders Matt Lombardi and Kevin Moran

The company currently sells three lines of products — cannabinoid-infused oils, which sell for anywhere from $60 to $140; a cannabinoid-infused salve that retails for $60, and protein bars with cannabinoid powders, which cost between $25 and $45. The bars, oils, and salve can be sold in every state and ordered online, according to the company.

“At the high level we look at being a performance wellness company,” says Lombardi.

While the cannabis industry is still in its infancy, products infused with newly legal cannabinoids have been surging in the market recently. Not a day goes by that some startup isn’t launching a cannabis-infused brand touting its health and wellness benefits.

Beam looks to differentiate itself through its focus on testing and the purity of its products, along with an approach that’s aimed at the health and fitness market. There will be other products coming down the pike that will increase the company’s focus on tailoring its offerings to meet performance needs, says Lombardi.

“We’re launching some blend products that will be purpose-driven for different use cases,” he said. 

The company has also managed to land some venture capital backing to pursue its vision as Obvious Ventures came in to lead a $5 million seed round into the company.

“At Obvious, we believe that natural cannabinoids hold the promise for significant health benefits. We identified beam as a stand-out in a crowded landscape for their product innovation, rigorous focus on quality and ensuring zero THC content in those products and their amazing growth within the fitness community,” said Obvious co-founder James Joaquin, in a statement. “We also feel that the pro-athlete pasts of both beam’s co-founders have informed a unique entrepreneurial skill, putting beam on a quick trajectory towards profitability.”

Obvious definitely has a recent track record of successful investments that point to an awareness of what’s on the horizon for consumers. The firm was an investor in Beyond Meat, whose launch has transformed the market for plant-based meat substitutes.

Joaquin sees another successful recent exit, from the portfolio company Olly, as the closest parallel to the thesis behind beam. “It’s very similar to the work that we did,” he says.

Olly, which had a line of health supplements, was sold to Unilever for an undisclosed amount earlier this year.

With the money in hand, beam is now thinking about the next phase of product development, which will be the launch of two different products — a daytime blend and a nighttime blend. The company intends to roll out additional functional products over time, says Lombardi.

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