Last Week in Boston Tech Deals
Connected Vehicles, Wearables, Software for Giving, and Robots-as-a-Service
Welcome Back
If you’re a new face, welcome! My name is Nick Stuart and for the past year, I’ve been writing a weekly newsletter about Boston-area technology companies that have raised capital. My goal is to provide more consistent coverage of Boston’s under-shared and underappreciated tech scene while learning more about it along the way.
Stuff I’m Reading:
Justice Department Seizes $1B in Bitcoin Tied to Silk Road — WSJ
2020 Unicorn Cohort Shows Huge Increase in Valuation on IPO Day — CB
Boston VC Financing Deals:
PaybyCar 🚗
Boston-based PaybyCar might be one of the first startups to build a product on top of E-ZPass’s technology. The three-year-old company closed a $2M pre-seed round last week to scale their proximity-based payment solution, its second round of funding to date.
Back in 1996, MFS Network Technologies won a $488M contract from the state of New Jersey to develop the electronic tolling system that we all know today as E-ZPass. The device has since been adopted by 18 states and has retroactively made millions of cars capable of wireless payments. However, the RFID-based transponders have mostly been limited to paying tolls. Founders Anand Raman and Kevin Condon saw another compelling use case and built PaybyCar to help people pay wirelessly at the gas pump.
Technically anyone can skim the RFID information from an E-ZPass and spoof the signal to get through tolls for free, but advanced security measures from tolling authorities have made this less appealing. PaybyCar’s platform adds an additional layer of security with SMS-based authentication to approve payments at partnering gas stations. They’re able to fully utilize the transponder’s tech through an official partnership with E-ZPass.
I think it’s a fascinating go-to-market strategy because they’re leveraging two decades-old technologies (E-ZPass and SMS) to make paying in your car about as easy as using Apple pay. Going forward, they see the platform being used for contactless payments at places like drive-throughs, parking lots, and curbside pickups. Although I do wonder why mobile payments companies haven’t tried to use cell phones to tackle a similar goal, skipping the E-ZPass middle man.
Dynocardia 💗
MIT and Tufts spinout Dynocardia raised $1.75M, according to a Form D. I last mentioned them in February when they raised a $690K angel round. The year-old company is building a wearable for continuously tracking blood pressure on your wrist. Normally you measure blood pressure with those inflated cuffs on your arm, but Dynocardia instead uses a non-invasive, camera-based sensor that measures oscillations in the blood on your wrist.
Continuous Monitoring > Random Daily Measurements
The Company claims that continuous monitoring is more useful because measuring your blood pressure at one single point in the day doesn’t show how it fluctuates in response to the environment. Although this isn’t as consumer-focused, it lines up pretty closely with what other cardio-based wearables on the market are touting.
Last week I talked about Whoop and Oura, which focus on tracking Heart Rate Variability (HRV). They essentially believe the same premise, just for a different metric. They both measure your nighttime HRV because it provides a consistent time of day to measure and because when you’re sleeping, your measurement isn’t fluctuating in response to as many external factors.
Whoop CEO Will Ahmed on the topic:
Now we have several companies tracking various heart metrics like blood oxygen, BPM, HRV, and blood pressure. Amazon’s wearable tracks the emotional tone in your voice. Levels lets you watch how your blood glucose spikes from eating a bowl of ice cream…Soon we’ll be able to tell exactly what’s bringing us closer to death at every moment. Alternatively, you can just watch the election coverage. 😏
More:
They also just joined the Dassault Systems 3DExperience Lab accelerator.
GivingData 🎁
Eleven-year-old grant management software company GivingData just raised $3M per a Form D. The company offers a SaaS product for foundations and other charitable organizations to manage the end-to-end experience of issuing grants. This includes initial applications and follow-on engagements with a custom CRM. It also offers a dashboard for measuring the impact of your social investment.
American Robotics 🤖
According to Crunchbase, Marlborough-based American Robotics raised $2M from unknown investors. The company offers “Robot-as-a-Service” drone solutions that autonomously scout properties in the agricultural, industrial, and security sectors. The service includes an edge computing/charging station, drone, and accompanying fleet management software. It sounds pretty similar to Anduril’s Ghost 4, but with less of a focus on serving the US military. They’re also currently hiring for several positions.
Hey there! If you’re still reading this, I’d love to understand why! Would you fill out one question survey so I can write better content?
Thanks for reading!
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.
Missing something? Spot an inaccuracy?
Email me and tell me about it! I’ll be sure to share it in my next update.