AnthemIQ’s Kenny Tomlin, Founder & Executive Chairman, and Chris Skyles, Founder & Chief Broker Officer
AnthemIQ announced Monday that it has closed a $10 million venture capital round.
The Austin-based real
estate transaction platform reported the Series A round was led by Staubach
Capital with participation from other investors. The company plans to use the
funds raised on rapid growth and expansion, according to Kenny Tomlin, its
Co-Founder and Executive Chairman.
AnthemIQ, launched in February, has created a digital platform to manage commercial real estate transactions from search to a signed lease. It has attracted more than 1,000 users since its launch.
“Clients use digital platforms to run their own companies, book travel, interact with their banks and buy residential homes,” Tomlin said in a news release. “They expect commercial brokerages to provide similar solutions with speed, convenience and transparency to finding and securing their commercial space. Brokers recognize this and finally have an end-to-end solution in AnthemIQ.”
AnthemIQ’s new platform
reduces client site visits by 75 percent, according to the company. It also
allows a broker to win more business by increasing transaction volume. The marketplace
also contains active searches and allows for greater collaboration between the
tenant rep and leasing agents to identify and present options to the client.
“I spent nearly twenty
years as a tenant rep broker with clients from small family offices to dozens
of fortune 500 companies,” Jeff Staubach said. “I’ve never seen a product that
is able to transform the way business is done both for the broker as well as a
corporate real estate team. Staubach Capital is excited to lead this investment
round and strategically participate in the company’s continued growth.”
“We are excited to
be partnering with Staubach Capital to take AnthemIQ to commercial real estate
professionals across the globe,” Chris Skyles, co-Founder and Chief Growth
Officer of AnthemIQ said in a news release. Everyone connected to this
business, including our amazing investors, believes that AnthemIQ will play a
pivotal role in the digital transformation of the CRE Industry.”
Tom Markusic, Founder of Firefly Aerospace, photo by Errich Petersen
Rocket maker Firefly Aerospace has landed $75 million in venture capital funding, giving it a $1 billion valuation, making it Austin’s latest Unicorn.
The company’s Series A funding round was led by DADA Holdings, with participation by Astera Institute, Canon Ball LLC, Reuben Brothers Limited, SMS Capital Investment LLC, Raven One Ventures, The XBTO Ventures, and other investors.
The round was oversubscribed, which led Firefly’s seed
investor, Noosphere Ventures, to sell approximately $100 million of its
holdings of Firefly equity to investors through secondary transactions, according
to the company.
The funding comes as Firefly is set to launch its flagship
Alpha small launch vehicle. The company plans to raise an additional $300
million later this year to fund its growth plans through 2025, according to a
news release.
“It is gratifying to see such strong investor interest that
far exceeded our near-term funding goal of $75 million,” Tom Markusic, Firefly’s
CEO, said in a news release. “Firefly is excited to welcome our new partners,
prior to our inaugural launch of Alpha. Post launch we will embark on a second larger
round, that will enable Firefly to execute fully its business plan of new
spacecraft and launch vehicle development. With our recent major contract wins
and the arrival of new, strong financial partners, 2021 is proving to be a
breakout year for Firefly.”
In addition to the funding, Firefly recently was awarded a
$93.3 million NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract to deliver 10
science payloads to the surface of the Moon in 2023 using its Blue Ghost lunar
lander.
Firefly is currently completing preparations for the
inaugural launch of its Alpha launch vehicle from Vandenberg Space Force Base
Space Launch Complex 2.
“Noosphere is proud to have supported the early development
of Firefly Aerospace and the Alpha launch vehicle, “ Max Polyakov, founder of
Noosphere Ventures, said in a news release. “As Firefly transitions into
commercial service and embarks on additional ambitious programs such as lunar
payload deliver, the time is right to expand the Firefly Investor base. We are
delighted that Firefly has succeeded in attracting new investors that share
Firefly’s long-term vision of “Making Space for Everyone.”
She created EBW to reach one billion women across the globe and help them start and scale ventures. EBW does that by developing women entrepreneurs through mentorship, education, and community.
“That
is the WHY we exist,” Vanderveldt said during a recent interview for the Ideas
to Invoices podcast.
But EBW makes money through its enterprise division which includes a medical distribution company and a data company, Vanderveldt said. In those ventures, EBW seeks to do business with women that come through its ranks, she said.
Vanderveldt
is uniquely positioned to make connections. She served as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence
for Dell and was the creator and manager of the Dell $100 million credit fund.
She was also a member of the 2013 United Nation’s Global Entrepreneurship
Council.
Prior to the pandemic, EBW Distributors was creating a one-stop shop for women to get business products and services, Vanderveldt said.
But that
changed on March 20, 2020. That day Vanderveldt got a call from her younger
brother who was an Emergency Room Doctor in Nashville. For six days he worked
in the ER with COVID-19 patients, and he wore the same mask. There was a huge
shortage of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. He asked her
to help solve the problem.
Vanderveldt
tapped into her network.
“We
had relationships across the globe,” Vanderveldt said.
By
that Sunday, March 22, EBW had begun sourcing protective gear from around the
world. So, the entire company pivoted during the pandemic to build the
healthcare distribution business and it has taken off, Vanderveldt said.
EBW
sourced masks, medical gowns, and other personal protective equipment from
vendors in other countries, she said.
“It was one of those times that gave me the opportunity to look through a lot of things through the beginner’s lens,” Vanderveldt said.
“The
supply chain across the globe as everyone now knows was so completely broken,”
Vanderveldt. “We had to build it soup to nuts.”
EBW
faced so many new operational challenges. To get through it all, Vanderveldt asked
a lot of questions. But the fundamentals of doing business are the same no
matter what the industry, Vanderveldt said. It’s a lesson she learned from
Steve Felice, a former president of Dell.
Those
are the lessons she also shares with women entrepreneurs she works with at EBW.
The pandemic has disproportionately affected women in the workforce because
they are generally the caretakers of the family. An estimated 5.4 million women
have lost their jobs during the pandemic.
What
the pandemic has done is it has unleashed this mama bear mentality and self-confidence
is skyrocketing now, Vanderveldt said. Women are looking to create their own
companies and jobs.
“What
we are seeing in droves are women starting to step up to the plate in mass with
a level of confidence I’ve never seen before,” Vanderveldt said.
It’s
the birthing of the SHEconomy, which she defines as Social, Health and Economic
impact for women.
It’s
the transformation of our economy, Vanderveldt said.
“That
to me is one of the most exciting things to ever experience in business,” she
said. “Our global economy is going to look very, very different over these next
few years”
Still, women face big obstacles to obtain venture capital financing. Only 2.8 percent of VC funding went to women-led startups in 2019 and that dropped to 2.3 percent last year.
Despite the lack of VC funding,
women are figuring a way to get their ventures launched and funded, Vanderveldt
said.
EBW’s healthcare distribution
company grew without any outside capital, Vanderveldt said.
“We’re not waiting on anyone
else to give us the OK,” she said. “I’m seeing that with more women.”
Women are figuring out how to
finance their businesses on their own. Now investors are coming to EBW, but EBW
isn’t looking for funding right now, Vanderveldt said. Investors are
recognizing that it is a business imperative to prioritize women, she said.
There is going to be a shift
there, Vanderveldt said.
“What the pandemic has taught
all of us is that what worked before doesn’t work anymore,” Vanderveldt said. “This
pandemic has rocked everyone to their core.”
EBW has a new accelerator to
help women scale their ventures. Less than 12 percent of women ever get over
the six-figure mark and EBW’s accelerator at EBW2020.com/grow is focused on
getting them there, Vanderveldt said.
What matters is who women
surround themselves with that gets them there, Vanderveldt said. There is a
dealmaker mindset that women must tap into, she said.
“Dealmakers want to work with dealmakers,” Vanderveldt said. “People who are doing big things in the world want to work with other people who are doing big things.”
For more, listen to the entire podcast, pasted below, or wherever you get your podcasts – available on Google play store, Apple iTunes, Spotify, PlayerFM, Libsyn, and more.
During
a pandemic, the movement to contactless interaction with customers and safety
is of paramount importance.
Virdee, an Austin-based startup, created a solution for businesses to provide digital check-in and virtual concierge services for customers in the hospitality and commercial real estate industries.
It’s a timely product for hotels, apartments, condos, residential halls, and offices.
Last
week, Virdee announced it had closed on a $4 million seed-stage round of funding
led by Silverton Partners with participation from LiveOak Venture Partners and
DJR Advisors.
“Virdee’s
suite of SaaS solutions is uniquely positioned to remake the market for digital
check-in and virtual customer engagement,” Morgan
Flager, Managing Partner at Silverton, said in a news release.
“With demand for the company’s products rising faster than anyone could
have expected, we are pleased to partner to help Virdee strategically scale its
businesses.”
Virdee created a kiosk to be placed in a lobby that runs its software and can issue physical key cards and provide easy check-ins and live support. The solution saves companies money. And it elevates the customer experience, according to Virdee. The company already has customers at leading hotel, multifamily, and corporate housing brands.
Virdee’s software and other products work with leading door lock and property management systems, making it easy for companies to provide contactless check-in services.
“We are deeply appreciative of the participation
of each of our new investors,” Branigan Mulcahy,
Virdee Co-Founder said. “This is a group of visionaries with amazing experience
in scaling and building out disruptive SaaS businesses. We could not be more
excited about the insights and strategic guidance each of them brings to the
table and look forward to working closely with all of them to build Virdee’s
exciting future.”
“We are grateful to welcome these esteemed investors to our seed round investment group which includes Rajiv Trivedi, past CEO of La Quinta and Chairman of TST Capital,” Virdee Co-Founder Nadav Cornberg said in a news release. “Along with them, we believe the debate about whether automated check-in, verification and payment solutions will replace legacy methods is now long settled, and the question is now not ‘if’ but ‘when.’ We believe the time is now, and Virdee is the company best positioned to lead hotel and other real estate owners toward a completely contactless, efficient model of operation.”
Before the COVID- 19 Pandemic, Living Security received 50 percent of its revenue from in-person cybersecurity training events.
But those events came to an abrupt halt. Yet, within six weeks, Ashley Rose, co-founder and CEO, and her team pivoted the company to online training and created Teams: CyperEscape Online to replace its Escape Room product, a gamified team training program.
The company had the right product at the right time and saw
the adoption of its online cybersecurity training program skyrocket. In 2020,
Living Security tripled its revenue and employee headcount and more than
doubled its customer count. Its customers include JP Morgan, Target,
MassMutual, MasterCard, CVS Health, Verizon, Hewlett Packard and more than 100
enterprises.
As more employees worked remotely than ever before,
companies saw the need for additional training to keep their networks secure.
And Living Security’s products met their needs, Rose said. She spoke Tuesday during a Beta Austin
Funding Hour on Clubhouse.
That led to Living Security landing $14
million in a Series B round of funding recently. It comes less than a year
after Living Security raised a $5 million Series A round led by Silverton
Partners in Austin. The company has spent that money to strengthen its
interactive cybersecurity training platform.
Updata Partners led the investment that
included previous investors Silverton Partners, Active Capital, Rain Capital
and SaaS Venture Partners.
“During the last three years, Living Security revolutionized security awareness training programs that were boring, ineffective, and implemented just to meet minimal compliance requirements,” Rose said in a news release. “Now, we are leading the charge to use behavioral data and analytics to measure and manage human risk. At the same time, we can deliver powerful insights to senior leaders and board members, and provide predictive interventions to employees. Our goal is to transform people from risks to assets in the defense against cyber attacks.”
Previous speakers on the Silicon Hills News Tech Talk on Clubhouse have included Krishna Srinivasan and Venu Shampant, founding partners of LiveOak Venture Partners, and Bob Metcalfe, professor of innovation at the University of Texas at Austin and Ethernet inventor.
Clubhouse is a popular social audio social network that launched in 2019 and remains an invite-only network that is only available to people with iOS devices. In its latest funding round completed this month, Clubhouse is now valued at $4 billion, according to Bloomberg.
On April 27th, Michelle Breyer, Chief Operating Officer of SKU Accelerator, will be joining the Silicon Hills Tech Talk Club to discuss the success of consumer packaged goods companies in Austin.
Please join the Silicon Hills Tech Talk Club on Clubhouse and follow Laura Lorek to keep informed on future speakers and other special events.
The Series D round came from new and former investors including Weatherford Capital and Accel, according to a news release.
The Zebra saw its revenue increase last year to $79 million, from $37 million in 2019 and it’s on track to hit $150 million this year, according to a news release. The company has also increased its staff to 325 employees, up from 200 employees in 2019. The staff has also pivoted to a fully remote model during the pandemic.
“This investment is going to be used
to grow our team and build our brand. We are accelerating our efforts to make
The Zebra a household name and help educate, empower and advise consumers to
find the best policies for their unique needs, no matter where they are in
their lives,” Keith Melnick, CEO of The Zebra, said in a news statement.
“As one of the earliest investors in
The Zebra, this inflection point in the company’s history is something I’ve
been eagerly anticipating. “Startup” isn’t the right word anymore. The Zebra is
a full-fledged tech company that is taking on – and solving – some of the biggest
challenges in the $638 Billion insurance industry,” Mark Cuban, entrepreneur
and owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
The Zebra did a national advertising campaign last year to increase consumer awareness. The company also added more tools and information for consumers, expanded its home and auto bundling capabilities, and more.
The Zebra’s investors include Accel, Silverton Partners, Ballast Point Ventures, Daher Capital, Floodgate Fund, The Zebra’s CEO Keith Melnick, Weatherford Capital, KDT, and others.
“We’ve been working with The Zebra
since 2017 and the team is hitting their stride. As more of the insurance
market goes digital, anyone who needs insurance will be able to successfully
start their insurance search with us,” John Locke, partner at Accel, said in a
news release.
Phishing, malware, and ransomware are increasingly becoming problematic for businesses as more employees work from remote locations and open them up to attack.
Cybercriminals can disrupt a business
costing it time and money and putting its customers’ data and privacy at risk.
Intrigue, an Austin-based cybersecurity startup, is focused on protecting companies from attacks. On Tuesday, the company announced it has closed on a $2 million seed round led by Austin-based LiveOak Venture Partners. It plans to use the funds on product development of its Attack Surface Management platform. The funds will also foster the developer community around “Intrigue Core, the open-source asset discovery project that serves as the backbone of its enterprise solutions,” according to a news release.
Jonathan Cran founded Intrigue. He is a former principal at Rapid7, Bugcrowd, and Kenna Security, and an architect of multiple leading security technologies, standards, and frameworks. Intrigue focuses on addressing gaps in asset and vulnerability management. It partners with leading security teams to monitor and mitigate key information security risks.
“Intrigue began with the idea that
security teams must be able to scale to enable innovation while also managing
an ever-growing and changing attack surface. To do this well, however, requires
deep visibility of assets and awareness of their exposure to threat actors,” Cran
said in a news release. “In this transitional moment, where technology is
becoming more dynamic and distributed, and in the wake of yet another
unprecedented wave of breaches, we partnered with the team at LiveOak to
quickly bring our solution to market. The founding team at Intrigue has spent
years in the trenches exploring the problem set and building our open core. With
this investment, we are now in a position to expand upon this foundation –
investing in our enterprise solution and partnering deeply with our customers.”
As companies adopt new technologies, they have to stay on top of security threats. Intrigue helps them do that. It maps and secures all Internet-facing assets throughout an organization. As more companies move to provide cloud-based services, SaaS, and mobile products, they can put themselves at a greater risk of vulnerability and attack.
“You can’t secure what you can’t see, and
with increased dynamism of IT environments from agile, cloud, and now
work-from-home, there’s a lot more that security teams are likely unaware
of. Intrigue gives enterprises awareness
of their entire public-facing footprint so they can monitor it and secure it,.”
Creighton Hicks, Principal at LiveOak Venture Partners said in a news release. “LiveOak is super excited about our
partnership with Intrigue. We move
quickly and early when we see this rare combination of rapid customer adoption
and a founding team that defines technical expertise. Intrigue’s ability to
solve a very difficult problem via a simple and usable solution adds a lot of
value to a lot of people and sets it apart from the standard market hype.”
Intrigue, with more than 1,000 customers,
currently maps and monitors more than 120,000 organizations with more than 250
data sources.
Austin-based KdT Ventures announced a new $50 million fund to back early-stage science companies.
This is the company’s second fund. In 2017, KdT closed on a $15 million inaugural fund. The firm made 18 investments with that fund in early-stage science companies including PathAI, 54Gene, Checkerspot, Dyno Therapeutics, Terray, and Solugen.
KdT Ventures’ Fund II will focus on making investments in areas
such as gene and biological circuit fabrication, novel delivery technologies,
biomaterials innovation, and consumer biology. It has already invested in
Elegen, Xilis, STRM, Abridge, Dimension Inx, and Andes.
“We believe that science is entering a golden age. We now have
the source code to the physical world. Computation applied to biology and
chemistry is redefining what’s possible in major industries from chemicals to
agriculture to medicine,” Cain McClary, Founder and Managing Partner of KdT
Ventures said in a news release. “The great investment of our lifetime is in
companies rewriting the physical layer. With Fund II, we will steward the
next-generation of science companies that are dramatically changing how the
world works, from nano to whole earth scales.”
KdT has made investments in 24 seed-stage companies doing work in ground-breaking areas like synthetic biology and gene therapy. KdT, founded in 2017, has offices in Houston and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.
“The KdT team speaks the language of science, making them an
outlier in this area of venture investing,” JD Montgomery of Canterbury
Consulting, a limited partner in KdT’s first and second fund, said in a news
release. “They are passionate about building the science companies of the
future that will tackle some of the significant challenges our world faces in
the next decade and beyond.”
By Laura Kobylecky, Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News
This year, like many conferences, South by Southwest
transformed into an online experience and became SXSW Online 2021. As a result,
brands were unable to do their usual level of in-person experiential market
events. However, Wisconsin Cheese made an effort to bring some of their usual
SXSW energy.
At SXSW in 2019, Wisconsin Cheese created a particularly popular
marketing event. They had a room full of cheese at the Austin Convention Center.
Badge holders stood in a fairly long line to get into this event. Inside, there
was a giant cheeseboard that spanned the length of the room. The edges of the
room also had samples of cheese.
At times, a woman in a large dress with a wide skirt that held champagne flutes wandered through the room offering drinks. There were free samples of cheese to take home. There were also commemorative promotional items like postcards, buttons, and stickers. People stood around at small tables eating plates of cheese.
This year at SXSW, Wisconsin offered a virtual cheese experience. People were given the chance to RSVP to “Cheesin’ Around with Nick Offerman at #SXSWisconsin.” Some people were also sent samples of Wisconsin cheese. The Wisconsin Cheese Twitter account says that 2,021 customized boxes were sent out to people at “SXSWisconsin.”
I was sent one of the cheese boxes. It contained smoked Gouda, sharp cheddar, and a block of pungent blue cheese. There was also a Wisconsin Cheese lunchbox, a pint glass, some buttons, and a kazoo. This is the sort of thing you might normally expect from certain promotional marketing events at SXSW.
The event itself occurred over a Zoom call. There were several of these 30-minute sessions scattered throughout the day on Thursday, March 18th. There were a large number of people on my Zoom call. They all seemed cheerful and happy to be there. Some were eating the cheese they had been sent. People were encouraged to use their “Wisconsin Cheese” kazoos to hum a song.
Nick Offerman was summoned to the Zoom call. His overall demeanor was a bit similar to his
popular character on Parks and Rec, Ron Swanson. However, Nick seems a bit
friendlier than Ron. He really liked the bag of cheese curds he was sent and
claimed to have finished half already.
Later, a dairy farmer from Wisconsin joined the Zoom call
and he talked with Offerman about sustainable dairy practices. They discussed
the importance of sustainability in farming. Offerman seemed particularly
interested in the subject.
Later in the Zoom call, there were some celebrity cameos
that included Paul Lieberstein, widely known as “Toby.” The call was concluded with a brief cameo by American
smooth jazz saxophonist, Kenny G. Spirits were high throughout the zoom call. I
would have to say it was one of the most cheerful zoom calls that I’ve been on
recently. Despite the distance,
elaborate marketing stunts were alive and well at SXSW Online 2021.
