Boston Tech Deals (12/1-12/8) + Forbes 30 Under 30 Representation
33 Bostonians Made the Forbes 30 Under 30 List
Welcome Back!
For those on the east coast, hopefully you all enjoyed the first blizzard of the season. It didn’t stop companies in fintech, defense, recruiting, cleantech, healthtech, cannabis, and more from raising new funds. Additionally, a handful of Boston residents were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 2020 list.
Last week, eleven Boston tech companies raised over $75M
For any first-time readers, welcome! My name is Nick Stuart and I write a weekly newsletter on tech VC financing trends in Boston because I feel the city deserves more coverage. You can learn more about me here and about the micro-VC I help run here.
Forbes 30 Under 30 2020 List: Boston Edition
I made a list of every Bostonian that made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list during my snow day and it ended up being a lot more than people than I expected. LA obviously dominated on the consumer side, New York for Finance recipients, and SF for just about everything else, but Boston had a decent share of representation that I thought should get some more coverage. Below is a split of recipients by category. I counted 33 people in Boston who are moving the needle in fields like Enterprise SaaS, EdTech, DTC food brands, healthcare, and more.
Enterprise Technology
Layla Lynn of AceUp, Tarek Alaruri of FairMarkit, Matt Arbesfeld & Ben Edelstein of LogRocket, and William Denslow & Brian Zitin of Regorra.
Finance
Bain Capital’s Magdalena Kala, VP of Consumer Investing.
Science
MIT’s Siddharth Kirshnan.
Education
Saad El Yamani & Soham Khaitan of Ambi and Samantha Pratt of KlickEngage.
Energy
Dane deQuilettes & Anurag Panda of GridEdge Solar and Jordan Kearns of Medley Thermal.
Food and Drink
Nico Enriquez of Willie’s Superbrew, Andrew Jones & Cayla Marvil of Lamplighter Brewing, and Bennet Byerly, Matt Czarnecki, and Andre Montiero of Verb Energy.
Healthcare
Jean Fan, Zaamin Hussain, and Sana Raoof of Harvard University, Dean Travers & Scott Xiao of Luminopia, and Lea Hachigan & Tomasz Kula of Tscan Therapeutics.
Manufacturing & Industry
Andrew Caunter, Karlo Reyes, Scott Goodrich, Joshua Martin, and Dan Shores of Fortify
Media
Deanna Pan of the Boston Globe
VC Financing Deals
Thirteen companies in Boston tech raised this week. However, one was technically Palo Alto based, and another out of India, so I didn’t count them in the final deal calculations.
LeverEdge, which provides loan negotiation services to students, has raised $2.42M, bringing their total raised $2.51M. Previously out of Harvard i-Lab, LeverEdge helps students get cheaper loans by allowing them to build a large group of students seeking loans called a Negotiation Group and getting lenders to compete against each other to purchase these large debt packages, ultimately saving individual students money.
Just the other week, I reported that Avenify had begun their crowdfunding campaign for their ISA lending platform/marketplace. So many great financial innovations happening in the education space right now.
Image: As student loans reach over 51% of the federal government’s total assets, many worry about the rising default rate among students. Will pooling risk of these loans be the next mortgage backed security?
According to an SEC filing, Sync Computing has raised $1.3M in equity. Sync is an Engine portfolio company that hopes to solve combinatorial optimization problems in industries like telecom, pharma, finance, logistics, and more. They’re essentially using advanced mathematics and AI to find the optimal way of getting things done on a very large scale. Some examples include deciding which Uber should go to which rider, which turns an Amazon delivery truck should take to save time, or how to set up a network of airlines for maximum efficiency of traveling. The company was founded just last month and is lead by Suraj Bramhavar and Jeff Chou. It was spun out of MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center.
Mail-screening device maker RaySecur has raised a $3M Seed Round from DreamIt Ventures, Junson Capital, Launchpad, and One Way Ventures. The company previously went through the DreamIt Ventures SecureTech Accelerator program, receiving $50K. RaySecur’s technology is able to detect suspicious powders, liquids, and other threats in extremely small quantities using their MailSecur scanner system.
Image: The RaySecur’s MailSecur device
Skinary is raising a crowdfunded Pre-Seed Round through iFundWomen that will close in January 2020, which is when they plan to launch their Android and iOS app. The company, lead by Bianca Maxwell Harris, is building a health-tracking app for skincare to help users avoid breakouts and build healthy skin health habits. According to the founder, the average modern woman spends over $3700 a year on skincare and makeup.
According to an SEC filing shared by BostInno, Whele has raised $2.3M in equity. Whele acquires and operates successful Amazon Marketplace businesses to help e-commerce upstart founders get liquidity. The company is lead by Chris Bell, previously a Principal at Bain & Co. and Head of Custom Supply Chain, Transportation, and Delivery at Wayfair. It sounds like an e-commerce-specific version of Think3.
Last month, I didn’t report that JobGet had received a $250K grant from the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge. They won the first spot for the Income and Job Creation category in the challenge. JobGet is a mobile app that helps users get jobs with hospitality, restaurant, and retail companies instantly without a resume. In the past, the company won $50K as a Gold Winner for MassChallenge.
Image: The simple profiles needed for JobGet users to find roles nearby.
MetalMark Innovations has raised $150K from the New York-based Urban-X accelerator. The company, founded in 2017, “turns toxic fumes into human air” using 3D nano-structured purification materials that can be integrated into existing industrial purifiers. It’s being run by CEO and Co-Founder Sissi Liu, who was previously Director of the Board for Cerahelix.
Lucideus, an India-based company with Boston offices, has raised $7M from MS&AD Ventures and Western Technology Investments, bringing their total raised to $13.18M. Serving clients such as SoftBank, KFC, and AlphaPoint, the company provides cyber risk assessments to proactively secure and monitory cyber threats.
Another cyber security company, Cyberhaven, raised this week as well. Based in Palo Alto with operations in Boston, the firm has raised a $13M Series A from Alex Stamos, Costanoa Ventures, Crane Venture Partners, Jeff Rothschild, Kamal Shah, and Vertex Ventures Isreal. With $15.5M raised in total, the company plans to expand their ability to gain “real-time visibility into the behavior of business critical data as it moves across endpoints, servers, on-premise, and in the cloud” to help clients better understand the context of a data breach.
Micro-Leads has received a $10M grant from the National Institutes of Health. The Somerville-based company has developed a high-resolution spinal cord stimulation therapy device called HD64 for chronic pain relief. The “wireless implantable neuro-modulation device” can be programmed to receive advanced spinal cord stimulation therapy for back pains and other disorders. They’ve also received six other grants including SBIR grants and a Department of Defense grant since 2016.
Image: A photo of Micro-Leads’ HD64 therapy device, courtesy of Micro-Leads.
Medically Home raised a $22.84M Series B led by Cardinal Health, bringing their total raised to $36.66M. The company provides a virtual hospital for high-acuity patients in a home setting. The Brookline-based digital clinical enterprise is already partnered with Huron, Atrius Health, and VNA Care.
Based out of North Reading, RiverRun Gardens raised an $850K Angel Round to expand their locally owned, organically grown cannabis products. A portion of all RiverRun sales are donated to local homeless shelters, veterans, schools, and medical patients that cannot afford access to cannabis.
That’s all from me until next week — If you’d like to connect with me, you can find me on Linkedin and Twitter or check out my website at www.nickstu.art.
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