Active Capital recently announced it has closed on its second fund worth $25 million.
A year ago, the San Antonio-based venture capital firm raised a
$21.5 million fund.
Both funds are focused on providing seed-stage capital to business to business software as a service companies, known as B2B SaaS companies located outside of Silicon Valley, said Pat Matthews, Founder, and CEO of Active Capital.
Matthews announced the new fund in a string of tweets.
We just finished raising our second fund in the middle of a pandemic. A little more than $25m to continue leading seed rounds for B2B SaaS companies building all over. Proud of our team and thankful for all of our investors and founders.Here is how it went down…
Matthews
knows what it’s like to build a company from idea to exit and he discusses his entrepreneurial
journey on the Ideas to Invoices podcast.
While
a college student at Virginia Tech, Matthews co-founded Webmail.us. He helped
build Webmail.us into a $10 million business which sold to Rackspace in 2007. Then
he spent six-year in executive positions at Rackspace as a Racker. He has
invested in dozens of startups as an angel investor before founding Active
Capital.
In Austin, Active Capital has invested in Pingboard, Servable, Living Security, CloudSnap, ResturnSafe, VideoPeel, and Prosper Ops. And in San Antonio, Active Capital has invested in FunnelAI and SendSpark, and FloatMe.
In its first fund, Active Capital has invested in more than 40 startups and had three exits, Matthews said. As an angel investor, Matthews has also invested in more than 50 startup companies.
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.
Uhnder, a digital automotive chip maker, announced recently that it has raised $45 million in additional funding.
The
Austin-based startup has raised more than $145 million in funding to date. Its
latest round was led by its newest customer and partner Sensata Technologies.
It also included participation by new and existing investors.
Sensate
plans to use Uhnder’s digital imaging radar chip in mining, agriculture, aerospace
and construction applications.
Uhnder makes digital 4D software-defined imaging radar technology that works better than today’s analog radar technology, according to the company. Uhnder’s technology is used with autonomous vehicles and provides improved resolution and detection capabilities.
“Sensata
is pleased to partner with Uhnder as a customer and strategic investor,” Steven
Beringhause, EVP and CTO of Sensata Technologies, said in a statement. “Our
perception systems will be deployed globally across a range of applications.
It’s exciting to support the evolution to higher performance digital radar,
enabling our customers to deliver increasing levels of safety in their end
applications.”
Uhnder’s
technology allows High Contrast Resolution to detect objects better.
“We are
pleased to see strong investor and market response to our digital radar
product, which will enable our customers to advance mobility to the next
level,” Uhnder CEO, Manju Hegde said in a news release. “With HCR, bicyclists,
children, or pedestrians hidden by a large object such as a truck or an SUV can
be detected early enough for the vehicle to take evasive action.”
“Uhnder’s 4D sensing can quickly detect, track, and generate a digital image of obstacles with precision that hasn’t been seen in the past,” Sven Strohband, Managing Director at Khosla Ventures, lead investor for Series B, said in a news release. “Our investment in Uhnder brings the market increasingly closer to realizing autonomous transportation.”
“The automation of everything, not just vehicles, is upon us,” Ian Ratcliffe, Managing Partner at Sands Capital Ventures, lead investor for Series A, said in a news release. “Uhnder’s ground-breaking digital software-defined radar enables customers to quickly customize their perception stack to the unique features of their application, which I expect will spur a barrage of innovation.”
Uhnder plans to release its flagship product, Voxel, next year.
Despite the Pandemic, Self has seen its customer base rise 250
percent. It has also more than doubled its staff from 50 employees to 115
employees.
Self Financial plans to use the funds raised to serve more
customers.
“Self is addressing a systemic problem of financial inequality in
the right way. It has built the technology while maintaining low operating
costs to be able to offer accessible products and building lasting
relationships with its customers,” Max Motschwiller, general partner at
Meritech, said in a news release. “Meritech invested in Self because it has a
proven and powerful business model, but we believe in the company because it
empowers people to steadfastly achieve their goals and dreams.”
Self provides secured
credit cards to people so they can build their credit history.
CEO James Garvey co-founded Self in 2015 after a time where he
thought he set up his credit cards for automatic payments, yet hadn’t. When he
realized his mistake a few months later his credit score had already fallen
from 750 to 594. The experience gave
him a deeper appreciation of the challenges millions of Americans face in
building and maintaining credit, and so he decided to use his background as a
technologist and entrepreneur to develop a better solution to help people
overcome those obstacles.
“Despite increased adversity, this year we’ve seen demand for our
products increase as people look to get control of their finances where
possible. Fortunately, we also see our customers keeping their commitment to
themselves by sticking to their plans,” Garvey said in a news release. “The
latest infusion of capital from Meritech and our other investors means that
Self can continue its mission to support our customers on their journey to
build credit and savings and be financially healthy.”
DISCO, the legal tech startup, announced Thursday that it has raised an additional $40 million in debt financing from Comerica.
In October, Austin-based DISCO announced it had raised $60 million in equity funding. In total, the company raised $100 million during the fourth quarter, bringing its total funding raised to date to $235 million. That values the company at $785 million.
DISCO recently landed on the 2020
Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and the Forbes Cloud 100. DISCO uses applies
artificial intelligence and cloud computing to help lawyers and legal teams.
DISCO has more than 700
corporations, law firms, and government agencies as customers. Lawyers use its
software “in some of the most important cases in the world, including the opioids
litigation and public investigations into government responses to COVID-19
worldwide,” according to a news release. Its products include the DISCO cloud
technology platform, software products like DISCO Ediscovery and DISCO Case
Builder, and legal services like DISCO Managed Review.
“Legaltech is booming now, and the
industry’s real growth has only just begun,” Kiwi Camara, DISCO’s CEO, said in
a news statement. “Over the next five to 10 years, legaltech will emerge as the
next high growth category creator and category leader for legaltech. Legal
departments and law firms are embracing the power of artificial intelligence to
automate away the parts of the practice of law that don’t require human legal
judgment, freeing great lawyers to do the work that only they can do.”
DISCO plans to use the funds raised
to invest in its AI-powered products. It is also expanding its sales and
marketing efforts in North America and it will expand its international
presence. Its also building its strategic channel program.
“Comerica is thrilled to continue our long-term partnership with the DISCO team through the expansion of our existing financing relationship,” Kevin Urban, Senior Vice President and Group Manager, Comerica Technology & Life Sciences, said in a news release. “DISCO continues to differentiate itself in the market with its products, services, and vision for how technology can transform the legal function.”
The startup, which moved to Austin in 2018 from Houston, has more than 300 employees with offices in Austin and London.
Oracle is moving its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas.
“We recently announced that Oracle is implementing a more
flexible employee work location policy and has changed its Corporate
Headquarters from Redwood Shores, California to Austin, Texas,” according to a
statement from the company.
“We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and
provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work,”
according to Oracle. “Depending on their role, this means that many of our
employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from
home part time or all the time. In addition, we will continue to support major
hubs for Oracle around the world, including those in the United States such as
Redwood Shores, Austin, Santa Monica, Seattle, Denver, Orlando and Burlington,
among others, and we expect to add other locations over time. By implementing a
more modern approach to work, we expect to further improve our employees’
quality of life and quality of output.”
Bloomberg first reported the news Friday afternoon, which was quickly picked up by numerous news organizations.
Oracle opened a large Austin campus across from Lady Bird Lake called the Oracle Waterfront Campus at 2300 Cloud Way in 2018. The company had built its first 560,000 square foot building that could hold up to 3,000 employees and it started construction on a second 420,000 square foot building that could accommodate another 2,000 employees.
When that campus opened in March of 2018, Oracle Founder and Chairman Larry Ellison attended the ribbon cutting and said the site would employ more than 10,000 employees eventually. Oracle bought 43 acres around its original buildings and nearby apartment buildings for expansion.
Oracle is the latest high-profile tech company to announce that it is making the Lonestar state its home. Earlier this month, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, known as HPE, announced it was making Houston its headquarters, relocating from San Jose. And earlier this week, Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Space X and Tesla, announced he had moved to Texas.
“Oracle is a global technology giant with an already strong presence here in Texas, and we are proud to welcome its headquarters to Austin,” Governor Greg Abbott, said in a statement. “While some states are driving away businesses with high taxes and heavy-handed regulations, we continue to see a tidal wave of companies like Oracle moving to Texas thanks to our friendly business climate, low taxes, and the best workforce in the nation.”
Oracle, founded in 1977, had revenue of $39 billion in its fiscal 2020. It is the second-largest software company in the United States, behind Microsoft.
Under his leadership, the company grew from $1.5 million in
revenue to more than $1.5 billion in revenue and more than 6,000 employees.
When he left Rackspace, he launched his next venture, BuildGroup, a venture capital firm in Austin, which is also his hometown.
Napier, who has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Rice University, is also the author of Billion or Bust! Growing a Tech Company in Texas, published last year.
“Austin is this really special emerging tech place,” Napier said, during a Zoom interview for the Ideas to Invoices podcast.
Napier has worked in both San Antonio and Austin and understands the benefits of both cities. The Austin-San Antonio corridor could be a top ten global metropolis in the next ten to 20 years if the region works together, he said. Having a high-speed network between the two cities really matters, and a large regional airport would also help, he said.
“If you have tech in Austin and light manufacturing in San
Antonio, we can really create a lot of
growth here,” Napier said.
Central Texas could be a data, tech, light manufacturing
powerhouse like the world has never seen, Napier said.
In the last few years, there has been a major influx of California investors and companies moving to the Austin area, which has only increased during the Pandemic. That is a good sign for the city and region as a whole, Napier said. The people moving here like Joe Lonsdale and Jim Breyer are leaders in the VC industry and that only strengthens the city’s brand and the region’s technology base.
“I see it as a blessing and a good thing,” Napier said. “I
just think from a Texas point of view, it is a big injection of talent, it’s a
big injection of capital, it’s a big injection of experience, we ought to be
able to as a state build on top of that and accelerate things.”
Texas also has strong innovation sources with the University of Texas System, the Texas A&M University System, and his alma mater, Rice University in Houston, which consistently ranks as one of the nation’s best engineering schools. Napier believes Rice should expand and double in size to keep up with the growth of the Texas economy.
BuildGroup, founded in 2015, has more than $368 million in assets under management and has investments in Anaconda, Benefitfocus, Cybrary, DigniFi, Fiix, vidmob, X-Mode, and yonder.
BuildGroup makes investments in software as a service companies using data plus marketplaces. Its investments range from $10 million to $40 million.
Despite the Pandemic, BuildGroup is still making investments. In June, BuildGroup announced a $14 million investment ground in DigniFi, a startup that matches financing solutions to customers and auto dealers.
DigniFi uses data to match a borrower to a bank for a car
repair, Napier said.
“The company literally gets loves letters from its customers,”
he said.
During the pandemic, BuildGroup is working remotely, but
Napier is looking forward to getting back into the office. He does go in every
so often, but he’s the only one there and the vacant office feels kind of
creepy.
“I miss all my compadres,” he said.
Some companies even after the pandemic will let their employees work remotely but there is real value and magic in getting everyone together, he said.
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.
ZenBusiness, an online platform to help small businesses incorporate and stay compliant with regulators, announced Thursday that it has raised $55 million in additional funding.
To date, the
Austin-based company, founded in 2017, has raised $74.5 million.
Cathay Innovation led the Series B round with participation from Great Point Ventures, Breyer Capital, and Omega Venture Partners. Other investors included Greycroft, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Interlock Partners, Adam Zeplain’s mark vc, and ATX Venture Partners.
“What the ZenBusiness team is doing is a real game-changer not just for their customer base but also for our country. By creating a centralized place for micro-businesses to form, learn, connect, grow and thrive, ZenBusiness is playing a key role to help ensure that the future for aspiring entrepreneurs is bright,” Jim Breyer, Founder of Breyer Capital and Facebook’s first institutional investor, said in a news release.
ZenBusiness’ platform serves small to medium-sized businesses and makes it easy and inexpensive for a company to file an LLC or Corporation with state and federal regulators. ZenBusiness also offers a wide array of business services including accounting, taxes, banking, lending and credit, website, domain, and email.
The company plans to use the funds
raised to expand its services offered on its digital platform.
“ZenBusiness is revolutionizing entrepreneurship, the lifeblood of the economy and job creation, as the new operating system for micro-businesses that allows aspirers to become business owners,” Alex Lazarow, investment director of Cathay Innovation, said in a news release.
Earlier this year, ZenBusiness
bought another Austin-based startup, Joust, a fintech platform. It plans to
launch as ZenBusiness Money later this year. It will provide invoicing and allow
for payments and merchant services.
More than 80,000 micro businesses have
launched using its platform. The pandemic has also spurred an increase in
business as more people launch freelance careers.
“Since the pandemic, we have experienced a 100% increase in growth and seen first-hand incredible resilience and grit among Americans seeking to make their mark as business owners,” Ross Buhrdorf, CEO and Co-Founder of ZenBusiness, said in a statement “We are proud to play a vital role to help micro-businesses, who make up a majority of U.S. businesses, on their path to financial success and economic mobility. We are all in to help our customers — 87% of whom are first-time business owners — make the transition from just a side hustle to full-time entrepreneurship and focus on turning their business dreams into a reality.”
The company also announced the launch of ZenBusinessU next year. It will provide micro-businesses with information as well as connecting them to experts to help grow their businesses.
Point Health, a digital health startup, announced plans to acquire Austin-based The Karis Group, a patient advocacy bill negotiation service.
Austin-based Point
Health did not disclose the terms of the deal.
The Karis Group, founded in 1996, brings decades of pricing data, healthcare navigation, and bill negotiation experience to Point Health, according to a news release.
Together, the two Austin-based companies plan to develop a new, digital-first healthcare navigation platform and marketplace that will make healthcare easier to find and easier to afford for health plan members.
Point Health’s platform aims to provide consumers with a medical marketplace offering transparent pricing. The platform is targeted to health insurers with high deductible plans, health sharing communities, third-party administrators, and employers.
“The consumer health experience needs an overhaul. This acquisition is very positive for both companies but even better for our clients and their members who will use our new, digital-first healthcare navigation platform,” Matt Dale, CEO of Point Health and The Karis Group. “Our easy-to-use technology will continue to push healthcare towards transparency, affordability, and simplicity.”
When Dr. Tony Dale founded The Karis Group to advocate for patients
there was a lack of transparency in billing for healthcare services.
“We helped resolve some of those issues by navigating billions of
dollars in medical bills and assisting millions of people solve the
complexities of healthcare bills,” Dr. Dale said. “I am proud and excited by
the opportunity this new venture represents.”
The acquisition is expected to be complete by the first quarter of
2021. Its initial platform is set to debut in early 2021.\
ActivTrak, which makes employee monitoring software, announced it has raised $50 million in funding.
The Austin-based startup plans
to use the funds raised on sales and marketing, engineering to expand its
platform with analytics and data to provide insights on digital workers.
Sapphire Ventures led the Series B funding round with participation from Elsewhere Partners. To date, ActivTrak has raised $77.5 million.
ActivTrak, which moved to
Austin from Dallas in March of 2019, has seen a huge demand for its software.
It has seen sales grow by more than 200 percent since then, according to a news
release. The company now has more than 8,000 customers and over 250,000 users.\
Monitoring of employees
is on the rise during the Pandemic as more companies allow their employees to
work remotely, according to Gartner, a research firm which has been studying
workplace trends.
“Gartner analysis shows that 16 percent of
employers are using technologies more frequently to monitor their employees
through methods such as virtual clocking in and out, tracking work computer usage,
and monitoring employee emails or international communications and chat. While
some companies track productivity, others monitor employee engagement and
well-being to better understand employee experience.”
“The move toward remote
work has triggered companies to rethink how they measure and analyze employee
productivity in today’s digital workplace,” Nino Marakovic, CEO and
Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures, who will join ActivTrak’s board of
directors, said in a news release. “We’re excited to welcome ActivTrak to our
portfolio, and to partner with CEO Rita Selvaggi and the team on their mission
to improve the way employees, teams, and companies work.”
“Our goal is to bring
context to digital work data, providing productivity insights that help
companies identify work patterns, set benchmarks, and optimize and sustain outcomes
for ongoing success,” Rita Selvaggi, CEO of ActivTrak, said in a news release.
ActivTrak’s software platform tracks websites and applications employees visit and use during work hours. Its focus is on increasing productivity and security. It allows companies to block sites and provides insights on how employees work.
“Slingshot Aerospace is providing government and commercial
customers a high-impact return on investment through its innovative situational
intelligence technologies,” Chris Shonk, Co-Founder and Partner, ATX Venture
Partners, said in a news release. “There is no doubt Slingshot Aerospace will
continue to experience high growth as the company has only scratched the
surface in terms of customer acquisition and industry use across
verticals.”
Slingshot Aerospace’s products include Orbital
Atlas, a space situational awareness platform; Earth Portal, a geospatial
visualization portal; and N2X, an edge-AI framework for drones and spacecraft.
The company plans to use the funds raised to
further develop its products and to expand into new markets outside of
aerospace and defense and to hire additional employees.
“The funds we raise enable us to continue developing our innovative technology, bringing us one step closer to creating a safer and more sustainable world,” David Godwin, Co-Founder and CEO, Slingshot Aerospace, said in a news release. “By providing users with the right data, at the right time, all in one place, we are giving users the tools they need to make faster, better-informed decisions so they can protect and improve our way of life.”
Slingshot
Aerospace’s customers include NASA, United States Air Force, BAE Systems,
Boeing, Northrup Grumman and others.
The
company is currently working with the United States Space Force to create Slingshot Orbital Laboratory,
and has partnered with the United States Air Force on two contracts to
develop Slingshot Edge and
another solution for the military branch’s Base of the Future initiative.
