Last Week in Boston Tech Deals
Fourteen Boston Companies that Raised $420M
Happy Tuesday
I’ve been publishing a late for the last few weeks, will get back on pace next week!
Pitchbook and the NVCA just released the Q4’20 Venture Monitor Report. Lots of interesting bites of information I recommend checking out. One that stuck out to me the most:
Stuff I’m Reading
Analyzing the Capitol Breach Through Parlor GPS Data — Gizmodo
Demystifying VC co-investing with data from >5,000 SPVs — Oper8r
🚨 Founders: Get a Free Intern 🚨
The UNH Entrepreneurship Center has a neat program that pays students to work at startups. A generous donor pays for a handful of students to get invaluable startup experience while founders benefit from a free summer employee. Startups can apply to receive an intern no later than February 19th. Investors: something to pass on to portfolio companies!
Boston Tech Deals:
AirSlate 🤖
AirSlate, a low-code process automation company, raised $40M from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, General Catalyst, and HighSage last week. The fifteen-year-old company has now raised ~$80M to help automate document/workflow management processes. Similar to enterprise AI solution of Boston-based Indico, which raised $22M last month.
More
Sequoia managed to snag Zapier shares at a $4B valuation
Valo 🧬
Valo Health, a Flagship Pioneering company that’s using machine intelligence to generate new drugs, just raised $190M in Series B funding led by PSP Investments, with participation from Invus Public Equities, HBM Healthcare Investments, Atinum Investment, and Mirae Asset Capital. Citing a 5% success rate and average drug development price of $2B, the company created a drug discovery engine meant to shorten and cheapen the drug development cycle.
Reggora 🏘️
Reggora, the all-in-one appraisal software for mortgage lenders and real estate appraisers just raised a $30M Series B from Spark Capital, with participation from Boston Seed, 1984 Ventures, Shine Capital, and Greenpoint Partners. I wrote about them in February when they raised a $10M Series A also led by Spark. For lenders, the product offers payment processing, flexible order allocation, inspection scheduling, and automated underwriting. For appraisers, it offers accounting tools, send and receive tools for orders, company management workflows, and a mobile application.
Folia Health 🤒
Cambridge-based Folia Health has raised $500K in convertible debt in a round sized at $1M. According to Crunchbase, the round is expected to close in February and includes investors Social Starts, Joyance Partners, and TBD Angels.
The company is developing an app that makes it easy for patients to track a range of medical symptoms for 90 seconds each day. Over time, that data can be used to graph out symptom instances and print out an overview to give to your doctor to go over during appointments. If they want to, users can contribute their anonymized data to research to help others with similar conditions.
It’s founded by Nell Luo (CEO) and Daniel Toffling (CTO).
Slim.ai 🐋
Back in August, I wrote that a stealth mode DevOps company called Slim.ai had raised $5M in a $6.6M round. Last week that round officially closed as the company launched with funding from Boldstart Ventures, Decibel Partners, FXP Ventures, and TechAviv Founder Partners. The team met while founding CloudLock and while working on the open source project DockerSlim (which Slim.ai CTO Kyle Quest created). They’re now building a product on top of DockerSlim that takes care of the complexity associated with containerized applications so developers can instead focus on writing and running code.
Jellyfish 🔍
After raising a $12M Series A ten months ago, Jellyfish just announced a $31.5M Series B led by Insight Partners, with participation from Accel and Wing Venture Capital. Jellyfish leverages data being generated by engineering platforms to help company leadership understand engineering operations in a holistic way. This way leadership can ensure that engineering work is closely aligning with long-term business objectives instead of generating unnecessary technical debt.
Capchase 💸
Back in August I wrote about SaaS securitization and in September I covered where Capchase fits into that model. Last week, the company announced that they raised $60M in debt from i80 Group, a specialty finance firm that works with fintech/financing companies.
In short, Capchase let’s SaaS companies convert their existing MRR into ARR, with a slight discount taken off that Capchase gets to keep. Example: A SaaS company has $50K in MRR, worth $600K annualized — but they can’t access that value today. Capchase will buy the monthly receivables of those customers from a the company in exchange for the $600K up front, minus X% that is essentially the interest rate.
“[Capchase] claims that its initial customers have delayed fundraises by an average of 8 months and saved about 16% in overall dilution.” — TechCrunch
If you’re interested in this space, I highly recommend reading Debt is Coming, When the Tailwinds Vanish, and Recurring Revenue: The Rise of an Asset Class.
Wasabi 💽
Wasabi, a six-year-old data storage company, raised $31.2M in debt last week per a Form D. In June, I wrote that they raised a $30M Series B from Forestay Capital. According to Crunchbase, some of the new investment comes from NY-based private lender MGG Investment Group. The company, started by the co-founders of Carbonite, is a cloud storage provider that can instantly upload and retrieve data using a “hot storage” technique that’s more efficient than existing tiered storage systems.
Jassby 💳
According to Crunchbase, children’s digital wallet startup Jassby has raised $2.9M via crowdfunding on SeedInvest. The app helps parents easily distribute funds to their children on a digital debit card while helping them learn financial literacy.
I wrote about them in March when they raised a $5M seed from investors including Moneta Capital, Needham Bank, Blumberg Capital, and Correlation Ventures. They also went through Plug and Play Tech Center as part of the Fall 2019 Fintech Batch.
OwnUp 🏡
OwnUp, a home loan marketplace startup, just raised $12M in new funding led by Brand Foundry Ventures with participation from previous lead Link Ventures and others — following a Series A in October of 2019. They use data science and a transparent marketplace approach to help consumers stop overpaying on mortgages.
6K ⚛️
Per a new Form D, advanced materials company 6K raised $5M. The company is building a materials production platform called “UnitMelt.” It centers around the use of microwave-based plasma technology for generating advanced materials. It seems similar to what Boston Metal is working on, but with a different approach. I wrote about them in August when they were raising $2.2M.
Velir & Skyword 🛎️
Somerville-based Velir, a digital agency that designs software for businesses with experience-driven websites, raised an undisclosed sum from Stella Point Capital.
Digital marketing firm Skyword also raised $6.2M in equity last week. According to Linkedin, “Skyword is a private equity backed software company that provides, under a SaaS revenue model, a marketing content management solution.”
Salienc Technologies 👻
A company called Salienc Technologies just raised $4.8M according to a Form D. Not much else online about the company. Although the filing lists Ittai Dayan and others.