Last Week in Tech Deals
Twelve Boston Companies Raised Over $230M
Greetings
Some people ask me if I know any good resources for learning about the fundamentals of venture capital, either to raise money or for breaking into the space. I’m by no means an expert, but I’ve been putting together a resources page that I hope to build over time. I left a form at the bottom where you can send suggestions for more content, please do so if you have any!
Stuff I’m Reading:
Shopify and The Key Decision for Business-in-a-Box Platforms —NBT
The Internet’s most important—and misunderstood—law, explained
Backstage Capital GP Tells SEC More Accredited Investors Could Benefit Minorities
New Newsletter Analyzing Cloud SaaS Companies, “Clouded Judgement”
13 Boston VCs Share the Advice They’re Giving to Portfolio Companies — TechCrunch
VC Financing Deals:
FinTech Spotlight: Elphi 🏠
I recently had the chance to connect with Eilon Shalev, co-founder & CEO of Elphi, a Boston-based fintech startup on a mission to streamline the mortgage loan origination process. Founded in 2018, Elphi is a SaaS product using cutting-edge, cloud-native technology to gather and settle loan information from disparate sources to save both lenders and borrowers time.
Fresh out of the DCU FinTech Innovation Center, Eilon is joined by co-founders William Lopez-Cordero and Daniel Gottesmann. The three met through a combination of pursuing MBAs at MIT and service in the Israeli Air Force. They’re working together to replace the clunky legacy systems in the lending world that lengthen the mortgage origination lifecycle.
Loan Origination is Slow and Tedious
As someone with family in the loan origination business, it seems like much of what they do isn’t just one specific bottleneck, the whole job is just navigating various bottlenecks around information sharing and verification. For lenders, the company notes that gathering pieces of data on borrowers from disparate sources can take over 40 days, with each step having its own format and protocol. For borrowers, it’s often difficult to verify that you’re correctly entering information.
There are a host of steps in a lender’s “verification stack” being serviced by various companies like Hippo, Blend, Compass, and more. They include things like income and asset verification, appraisals, title management, closing, and notarization. Elphi’s founding team believes that the gathering, verifying, and recording these types of records from third parties should be simpler.
Streamlining Information Sharing
Elphi’s software provides a customizable front-facing interface for borrowers to enter information and a back-office workflow system for lenders to navigate the entire origination lifecycle. By standardizing and streamlining information sharing, the company strives to cut down the origination process by 50%.
For borrowers, their Smart Checklist product works as a turbo-tax style questionnaire for loan origination questions. It’s a white label solution that lenders can integrate into their current loan origination services. For lenders, Elphi’s Loan Origination System (LOS) was built to help processors, underwriters, and closers easily transfer information. They’re utilizing a cloud-native, real-time database to rapidly settle borrower information provided by these parties to make it easier to reconcile changes.
Elphi’s Traction
As of now, the software is live and being used by a mortgage lending group. Looking forward, Elphi is now focusing on signing more customers and raising a $2M Seed Round for growth and product expansion. They’ve already received funding from MIT’s Sandbox Innovation Fund and more recently from the UChicago Polsky Founders’ Fund Fellowship. If you’d like to connect with Eilon and the rest of the team, you can reach out at eilon@elphi.io.
See also: QuickenLoans anticipates IPO
Indigo Ag 🌱
Axios reported this morning that Boston’s unicorn AgTech firm Indigo Ag is in the process of raising $500M, with $300M already secured. They have already raised $200M in 2020 alone, and this deal will put their total raised at well over $1B and likely boost their $3.5B valuation.
Indigo provides a variety of digital agricultural services aimed at increasing crop yields on farms. Using AI, they are able to predict which microbiomes will positively contribute to the growth of crop yields and are able to apply these microbiomes to the coating of unplanted seeds.
Uptycs 📊
SQL-driven security analytics platform Uptycs has raised a $30M Series B led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from Comcast Ventures and Forgepoint Capital. Founded in 2016, the Waltham-based company was inspired to do for business processes what Salesforce has done for CRM. Its software helps IT leaders easily aggregate information across their entire IT infrastructure to discover intrusions and compliance problems. They use Osquery, a SQL-powered operating system, to enable turnkey endpoint security and systems management. Osquery was actually developed by Facebook Engineering in 2014. The company has now raised $43M.
Starburst 💾
Two Boston companies that raised this week are built off open-source projects that originated within Facebook. Starburst is building a distributed SQL query engine product based on Presto. Starburst lets businesses do data warehousing analytics without needing to store data. The company just raised $42 in Series B funding from Coatue’s Caryn Marooney, which is her first VC deal at Coatue since leaving Facebook as their Communications VP, according to Forbes. Index Ventures also participated in the round. The company has now raised $64M since its founding in 2017.
LeverEdge 👩🎓
Back in early December, I wrote that LeverEdge was raising capital to help students negotiate loan rates. Last week, they formally raised $2.5M led by NFX, with participation from Global Founders Capital. The company specializes in pooling student loans together to create what they call a Negotiation Group. They have lenders compete against each other to purchase these debt large packages, which helps get individual students better rates.
TowerIQ 🛡️
According to Crunchbase TowerIQ, has raised $4.5M. Investors include General Catalyst, Hyperplane VC, Vestigo Ventures, Recharge Capital, and Laconia. The three-year-old InsurTech company, led by Adam Demos, is currently working out of GSV Labs in Boston. Its SaaS solution focuses on automating workflows involved with intaking insurance information from clients and standardizing the data to make it more valuable for customers. Their last financing was a $2M seed in 2018 led by Hyperplane.
Botkeeper 🤖
Five-year-old bookkeeping automation startup Botkeeper just raised $25M in Series B funding, bringing its total raised to $47.5M. The deal was led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from High Alpha Capital, Republic Labs, Oakridge, Greycroft, Gradient Ventures, and Sorenson Capital. The company is leveraging AI to analyze various financial transactions from customer’s banks, credit cards, payroll providers, etc. and accurately entering them into a general ledger. By automating these mundane tasks, they can help companies lower accounting expenses and potentially decrease instances of human error.
Abacus Insights 🏥
Per a Forbes Exclusive, Boston’s three-year-old Abacus Insights has raised $35M in Series B funding, bringing its total raised to $53M. The deal was led by Blue Venture Fund, with participation from CRV, .406 Ventures, Horizon Healthcare, and Echo Health Ventures. The company’s platform connects siloed systems in healthcare to help insurers and hospitals analyze information while bringing more transparency to patients. Forbes notes that this investment comes months after the Department of Health and Human Services ruled that by next year, insurers, providers, and hospitals must adopt interoperable data systems to give patients more control.
Hydrow 🚣♀️
Cambridge-based Hydrow, the “Peloton of Rowing,” just raised $25M in Series B funding from L Catterton and Rx3 Ventures, bringing its total raised to $57M. You no longer have to set out on the Charles to work out like the Winkelvoss twins with this immersive $2,200 rowing machine. Even before COVID, the demand for individual workouts with connected communities has been surging and investors are eager to back another Peloton-scale exit:
Zerto 💽
The 11-year-old IT resilience firm Zerto has raised $33M from investors including 83North, Battery Ventures, and IVP, bringing its total raised to $183M. The company’s platform combines disaster recovery, backup, and cloud mobility features to protect enterprise customers from downtime and data loss. According to Pitchbook, Zerto was valued at $260M after its 2018 financing.
Wise Systems 🚗
Cambridge-based Wise Systems has raised $15M for its AI-driven routing and dispatch technology. The deal was led by Valo Ventures, with participation from Gradient Ventures, Prologis Ventures, and E14 Fund. The company’s web app provides real-time visibility into last-mile delivery fleets to reduce travel time and speed up deliveries. The company has now raised $23M since its founding in 2014. Forbes article on the announcement.
Mabl 🧪
In early June, I wrote that Mabl was raising $8M. According to Strictly VC, they have formally closed $6M in funding from Amplify Partners. Their automated and low-code test development product helps speed up the release pipeline for new software products. The product allows you to record an action using its Chrome extension to create an automated UI test that can be easily replayed to test for QA issues.
Openly 🛡️
Three-year-old InsurTech startup Openly has raised $15M per a Form D filing, bringing its total raised to about $23M. The company focuses on providing premium and exclusive home insurance coverage for wealthier individuals. Claims are 100% backed by the carrier Rock Ridge Insurance.
BabelBark 🐕
Per a Form D filing, pet tech company BabelBark has raised $3.9M in equity and debt. I last wrote about BabelBark in February when they had raised $3.4M in what was listed as a $20M offering. The company helps connect pet owners, pet businesses, and veterinary clinics through a mobile application.
Thanks for reading!
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