Last Week in Boston Tech Deals
Happy Anniversary!
I realized last week that I’ve been writing this newsletter for one year!
Twelve months ago I wrote to a dozen or so people, and now I’m writing to hundreds. It’s been a great way to keep a close tab on the ecosystem and meet some of the incredible people driving its growth. Thanks to all of you for being readers.
As work/life continues to pick up, I’ll probably start to rethink the layout of my updates to focus more on heavily on 1-2 topics a week. Suggestions and feedback around this are always welcome.
-Nick
Stuff I’m Reading:
Meet the Excel Warriors Saving the World from Spreadsheet Disaster — Wired
Profile of Fred Ehrsam and Matt Huang, whose VC firm moved all $400M into Bitcoin in 2018 — Forbes
The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy-League-Obsessed Parents — The Atlantic
VC Financing Deals:
Smartvid.io 🚧
Smartvid.io, the developer of a software platform for predicting and minimizing risk on construction sites, has raised $5M from IA Capital Group. Other investors included Building Ventures, Companyon Ventures, and Converge. Smartvid.io’s Safety Suite integrates visual data from construction sites to predict potential safety hazards, helping managers get projects done quicker.
Syrg ⚡
Syrg, a Boston-based developer of an application for efficiently managing hourly workforces, recently raised $3.8M out of a $4.8M sale according to a Form D. They focus on helping hourly-based employers like Dunkin’ and Wendy’s re-hire former workers instead of overspending on new recruits. The result is a reduction in cost for employee acquisition and time to fill an open shift. They’re previously backed by Underscore VC, Food Retail Ventures, Hardvard i-Lab, and others.
Arist 📱
I mentioned in my last post that Tone had raised a seed round for its SMS marketing platform and how a Wellesley-based company called Arist had a similar thesis on SMS-based engagement for education. Last week, Arist announced a $1.9M seed round to grow its SMS-based education service, led by Acadian Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and Craft Ventures. The recent YC-grad helps education institutions and businesses deliver quick courses to users via text message. According to Arist, SMS-based courses are easier to develop, more accessible for a broader range of users, and have a 94% completion rate. Here’s a video demo for creating courses.
BluStream 📶
BluStream, the creator of a customer engagement platform for physical products, has raised $1.1M according to a Form D. The company helps businesses analyze customer product usage from IoT sensors to trigger after-sale engagement at just the right time. The founder, Bob Bean, was inspired to start BluStream after his favorite guitar developed a crack in it, and he didn’t know it needed additional care until it was too late.
They work with companies to develop creative IoT-based solutions for re-engaging customers post-sale. I think a lot of marketing tech companies can use data to predict when to re-engage a customer with pretty high accuracy at this point, no sensors needed.
It sounds like they’ve found their niche in musical instruments and cases, but I’m curious about what other kinds of products would need a custom IoT sensor installed to figure out a better re-engagement time — and how it would impact the product’s margins.
From a customer perspective, would they see any difference in the re-engagement from this product vs from regular marketing messages? Or would it just feel like every other company emailing me saying I need to buy more of their stuff, but this time they also know the temperature of my bedroom?
Edit: It was a $3M round, led by NH-based York IE
Nym Health 🏥
Nym Health, a two-year-old Isreal and Boston-based company that’s making medical coding autonomous, just raised $16.5M in Series A funding from GV. The company is building tech that can analyze medical records and accurately label them with proper billing codes using AI.
Grata 🔎
Grata, a Boston and NY-based search engine for finding business development opportunities with private SMB customers, just raised $3.2M led by Bling Capital, with participation from Accomplice and AVG. The four-year-old company was bootstrapped until this round, with over 100 customers already paying and over $1B in transactions done through opportunities found through Grata.
Actnano 💧
Actnano, the creator of nanocoating materials for electronics, closed their $12M Series A led by Emerald Technology Ventures, with participation from Material Impact, Henkel Tech Ventures, PTT Global Chemical, and Hellas Oil. I wrote that $10M of the round was closed back in August. The eight-year-old company specializes in making water-resistant nanocoating materials that require no special technology to apply to electronic components and vehicles. Crunchbase reports that the funding will be used to expand operations into Germany, Korea, and Japan.
Preddio Technologies 📡
In the first week of September, I wrote that then pre-launch Preddio Technologies had raised $1M, per an SEC filing. The company’s funding and launch have now become official. Led by Aaron Gannick, Preddio is building an Industrial IoT product for monitoring infrastructure in water treatment plans, oil and gas refineries, and more.
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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 nickstu.art.
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