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.”

The company also recently launched the ActivTrak Workforce Productivity Lab, a global center for research and expertise on working digitally.

“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 announced last week that it has raised $8 million in funding.

ATX Venture Partners led the Series A round. To date, Slingshot Aerospace has raised $17.1 million.

Other investors in the round include Revolution’s Rise of the RestSeed Fund, Techstars Ventures, and Okapi Venture Capital and several angel investors.

“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.

Procore Technologies increased its footprint in Austin last week with its acquisition of Esticom, an Austin-based estimating software company.

Procore, which has more than 500 employees in Austin, makes construction management software. Its acquisition of Esticom will allow the company to add estimating to its Procore platform, which general contractors and specialty contractors use to oversee projects.

Procore did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction.

“We welcome the Esticom team to Procore,” Tooey Courtemanche, Procore Founder and CEO, said in a news release. “Procore is investing in the future of preconstruction, an increasingly important and impactful part of the construction process. Together, Procore and Esticom will deliver a single, comprehensive preconstruction solution on the Procore platform, with data connectivity that helps customers track costs and accurately predict estimates.”

With the acquisition of Esticom, Procore’s software platform can now be used during the early stages of a project.

“Contractors who use Esticom typically see a three-fold increase in the number of construction projects they can estimate and a five-fold increase in takeoff speed. Esticom is modernizing preconstruction by replacing paper plans and spreadsheets, and delivering more accurate estimates. We look forward to further advancing preconstruction as part of the Procore platform,” Chris Lee, cofounder of Esticom, said in a news release.

Esticom will become part of the Procore platform next year and until then is a partner on the Procore App Marketplace.

Procore, based in Carpinteria, California, has raised more than $648 million in venture capital financing since its founding in 2003, according to Crunchbase data.

During the pandemic, the latest perk for local and national tech companies is a paid holiday on election day.

OJO Labs, Sana Benefits and Dell Technologies are among the Austin-based tech companies allowing employees time off to vote. They have joined more than 1,850 businesses nationwide that have partnered with Time to Vote to encourage businesses to give their employees time off to vote.

OJO Labs declared election day as a company-wide holiday and is encouraging its employees to treat it as a day of service, said John Berkowitz, the company’s CEO and Co-Founder.

Last August, Berkowitz wrote a post on LinkedIn encouraging other business leaders to declare election day as a holiday.

“Election Day should be a national holiday, and until it’s recognized as one, the responsibility falls on business leaders to help secure that right for their employees,” Berkowitz wrote.

OJO Labs also joined Civic Alliance to stand up for democracy by making a non-partisan pledge in support of the democratic process.

The U.S. has historically low voter turnout and people often cite a lack of time from the demands of life and work as the reason for not voting. Time to Vote, a nonpartisan business-led coalition, is working to address the problem by partnering with businesses and giving workers the time and tools they need to cast their ballot in the November 3, 2020 election.

This year, it’s needed more than ever because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, said William Young, CEO and Co-Founder of Sana Benefits. Sana declared Nov. 3 as a company holiday to allow its 85 employees time off to vote.

“It is an expression of our values as a company to give that day off and empower people to participate in our Democracy,” Young said. “Whatever their political persuasion, we want them to get out there and participate.”

This is the first year Sana declared election day as a company holiday.

“The pandemic created the opportunity for us to be more thoughtful about how we support employees in the office and outside of the office,” Young said. “When this idea came up, it made total sense for us to do it.”

And after the pandemic ends, Sana still plans to keep the election holiday on the books, Young said.

“A good idea is a good idea,” he said.

Voters face many challenges this election because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Time to Vote. Other problems include a lack of poll workers, malfunction voting machines, and long wait times.

In addition, Time to Vote is calling attention to issues of racial equality and how communities of color are disproportionately affected by systemic voter suppression.

“The need has never been greater for businesses to provide their employees dedicated time off to vote,” Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal, one of the three companies that founded Time to Vote in 2018, said in a news release. “No American should have to choose between earning a paycheck and voting. Business leaders around the country must step up and do what’s needed to ensure all of their employees will have the opportunity to have their voices heard this November.”

Time to Vote represents workers in all 50 states and spanning a variety of businesses. They include Bank of America, Ben and Jerry’s, Cox Enterprises, Expedia Group, Nike, SAP, Tripadivsor, Twitter, Tyson Foods, Unilever, Visa and more.

The companies joining Time to Vote are supporting employees in a variety of ways including making Election Day a paid company holiday, offering paid time off on Election Day and actively promoting early voting and vote by mail.

“What I hope to see from this movement is a shift in mindset toward Election Day—one that increases voter turnout and enables every eligible voter to participate in decisions that impact each and every one of us,” Berkowitz wrote. “Amid a global crisis and widespread social activism, this is more important today than ever before. Voting is not a privilege; it’s a constitutional right. Let’s start treating it as one.”

The demand for video has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s not just from people hunkered down over their laptops on Zoom calls.

All kinds of businesses from retail stores to gyms and restaurants are embracing video as a way to monitor their environments and maintain security.

And that’s been a boon to Eagle Eye Networks, a cloud-based video security company, founded in 2012 by Dean Drako, a well-known serial entrepreneur in Austin who also founded Barracuda Networks, Drako Motors, LivingTree, and Swift Sensors.

Eagle Eye Networks on Tuesday announced it has raised $40 million in Series E venture capital funding from Accel, which has backed Facebook, Spotify and DocuSign to name a few. Eagle Eye Networks has raised $95 million to date, according to Crunchbase. Its high-profile investors include Michael Dell.

“They see the opportunity to leverage AI in the cloud for video surveillance,” said Drako, founder and CEO of Eagle Eye Networks.

Eagle Eye plans to use the money to hire additional engineers, and sales and marketing staff and plans to add as many as 200 more employees, Drako said. The company has 200 employees globally and operates offices in Amsterdam, Tokyo and has 11 data centers worldwide in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong. It currently has 31 jobs open in the U.S. and 11 job openings in the Netherlands.

The global market for video surveillance software as a service is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 20 percent from 2017 to 2022, according to Eagle Eye Networks. It is expected to be a $1.5 billion market this year and a nearly $2.3 billion market by 2022.

“We were the first real developer of video surveillance that is cloud-based,” Drako said. “We were the first company that devoted ourselves to it and to do it right and do it big. We’ve raised this money so we can basically do that same thing with AI and video surveillance. The market is nascent, and the technology is early but it’s going to be big and it’s going to have a huge impact. If you want to do AI, you have to have the video in the cloud.”

Cloud-based video surveillance can help businesses and communities detect dangers such as weapons, erratic driving, robberies, accidents and more, Drako said. It also gives businesses tools to analyze their operations to provide better service, he said. Tens of thousands of companies in more than 90 countries use the Eagle Eye Cloud Video Management System.

 “Eagle Eye Networks pioneered the video surveillance industry’s move to the cloud, and AI applications will drive the industry’s next transformation,” Sameer Gandhi, Partner at Accel, said in a news release. “Eagle Eye is in the pole position to make this happen. Its true cloud technology puts Eagle Eye in a unique position to instantly deploy new analytics breakthroughs.”

Video needs to be in the cloud for the artificial intelligence and data analysis to work, Drako said. It’s not practical to do if a company’s video surveillance footage is stuffed in a desk, he said.

“Just to be very honest, the AI components of what we’re all doing is still kind of on the cutting edge,” Drako said. “It’s changing every week with what they can do and how they can do it and what’s possible.”

Some applications are as simple as sending a notification when someone parks in the handicap parking spot, Drako said. Other businesses use video for license plate recognition to track cars. With Eagle Eye’s technology, they can search for blue cars or red cars or a certain make or model.

Others are using video technology to make sure their stores are neat or the tables are bussed properly at a restaurant.

In addition to businesses, Eagle Eye Networks has customers in law enforcement, schools, and city governments that use its software. One of its competitive advantages is that the Eagle Eye Networks platform works with any type of camera, Drako said. It does not require businesses or government agencies to buy specialized hardware, he said. It adapts to fit with hundreds of different types of surveillance cameras, he said.

Eagle Eye Networks has a very large deployment with a city in Mexico which is using its network on a 4G wireless network to monitor public spaces, Drako said.

Initially, Eagle Eye Networks saw a slowdown in business in March and April related to the Covid-19 pandemic, Drako said. But business has continued to rise through the summer and into the fall, he said. All of Eagle Eye Networks employees are working virtually and Drako expects that continue.

“One of the pandemic’s impacts for us is we’re more open to remote workers than we might have been in past,” Drako said.

By LAURA LOREK, publisher of Silicon Hills News

NSS Labs, an information security testing company, has shut down operations resulting in more than 40 employees losing their jobs.

The Austin-based company posted on its website “Due to Covid-related impacts, NSS Labs ceased operations on October 15^th.”

“It was unexpected, and it took a lot of people by surprise,” said a former employee who requested anonymity.

Employees were not offered severance pay or extended benefits, according to the employee.

NSS Labs received a Paycheck Protection Loan of between $1 million and $2 million in April through Silicon Valley Bank to keep its 47 employees on staff.

NSS Labs moved into new headquarters with 23,000 square feet of space at 3711 S. Mopac a few years ago, according to Austin Inno. The company had ping pong tables, sit and standing desks, and provided catered lunches daily to its employees, landing it on Austin Inno’s 50 on Fire list for 2017.

Attempts to contact the company for comment via email and phone were unsuccessful.

DARKReading first reported the news of the shutdown last week. TechCrunch and TechTarget also reported the news.

Jason Brevnik, CEO of NSS Labs, posted to LinkedIn about the shutdown and wrote “If you are in need of excellent people that exceed my high standards, please get in touch.”

On Nov. 1, 2019, Consecutive Inc., a private equity company based in San Francisco, acquired NSS Labs, according to mergr. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Attempts to get a comment from Consecutive via email were also not successful.

Bob Walder, now a real estate investor in Austin, founded NSS Labs in his garage in 1991. NSS Labs had raised $27 million in venture capital and was backed by LiveOak Venture Partners. The company created the “Cyber Advanced Warning System,” cloud-based software that monitors networks for attacks and tests security products against those attacks.

Other high-profile Austin tech companies that have shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic include ScaleFactor, a Techstars company that had raised $103 million, announced its plans to close shop in June. And GoDaddy, which bought Main Street Hub for $125 million in 2018, shut down its Austin office in June and laid off 331 local employees.

MassChallenge handed out more than $400,000 in equity-free prizes last week to the top startups in its 2020 program.

MassChallenge held its event online with a virtual awards ceremony. In fact, the entire four-month accelerator for 58 startups took place online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“All of the startups from this year’s program exemplify the grit and tenacity needed to build sustainable solutions,” Mike Millard, Managing Director of MassChallenge Texas in Austin said in a news release. “At the end of the accelerator, these startups have raised $40 million in funding, generated $17 million in revenue, and created 328 jobs. They are on a great path to impact our future – the way we live, work, and play.”

$100,000 Diamond Award Winners

 ● DanceFight of Austin: DanceFight is a mobile dance competition platform.

 ● RealKey of San Francisco: a mortgage processing platform.

$50,000 Gold Award Winners:

 ● At Ease Rentals Corp. of Round Rock: temporary housing for military and federal employees.

 ● Civic Champs of Bloomington, Indiana: creates a mobile platform for nonprofit organizations to organize and engage with volunteers.

 ● Code 1 Medical Devices of St. Petersburg, Florida: a medical device that prevents aspiration of stomach contents into the lungs.

 ● CUE Audio of Franklin, Tennessee: CUE transmits data between any microphone and speaker using sound waves.

 ● Locker Lifestyle of Orland Park, Illinois: created a wearable wrist wallet to stash cash, keys, phone, ID, and other objects.

 ● Muxy of Austin: created software that allows broadcasters to interact with viewers.

 $15,000 FM Global Resilience Prize

 ● Power Polymer, based in Wimberley, the company’s patented solution shows significant promise in reinforcing existing structures, with the goal to enhance a property’s resilience.