Torch is a leadership development platform with integrated coaching, software, and feedback to raise high performers to the next level. It was founded by a team of executive coaches and experienced psychologists who are passionate about helping senior leaders perform at their highest level. Torch is on a mission to empower leaders to build high growth, high-performance cultures by building the awareness and skills required to manage and lead effectively. Our proven model blends human intelligence and digital technology to accelerate talent development and deliver measurable leadership outcomes.
Hadrian is a machine parts startup that manufactures precision components for technology companies. It builds autonomous, software-defined precision component factories that help its customers make rockets, satellites, jets, and eVTOLs.
Wonolo (Work Now Locally) is an on-demand staffing platform that is changing the way businesses find talent for their immediate labor needs. Founded in 2014, Wonolo's mission is to help people find consistent work. Through our two-sided tech marketplace, we connect hundreds of businesses in need of front-line workers with 1 million underemployed workers in local markets across the United States, within minutes. Wonolo empowers the in-demand workforce by democratizing access to flexible work, opportunities to learn new skills, a living wage, and comprehensive portable benefits and perks. Backed by leading investors including Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, DAG Ventures, PivotNorth, Base 10, AMN Healthcare, Wonolo is a rapidly growing tech startup with great traction and growth opportunities. If you are passionate about truly impacting people's lives, building an amazing community of people who want to change the status quo of making work flexible, and disrupting a $140B+ market (contingent labor), we are interested in talking to you! We value hard work, accountability, humility, initiative, and transparency. We live by these values and hire accordingly. Wonolo is a Great Place to Work-Certified company for delivering a consistently high-trust experience for all employees. We value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive work environment. We provide equal employment opportunities for all applicants and employees. Wonolo is a remote-first company with 180+ full-time employees, and quickly scaling our team within the United States and Canada.
Workrise is a technology company that develops a platform to support the energy workforce. They specialize in vendors needed for skilled men and women who execute in the field and make it easier, faster, and safer to do business in the energy industry, enabling businesses to connect with the workers they need and meet their needs.
Podium Education provides a digital skill program offering learning experiences focusing on tech skills development and intercultural competency. Podium partners with colleges and universities to deliver online programs that provide soft-skilled students with the in-demand hard skills that lead to great employment outcomes. The company was founded in 2019 and is based in Austin, Texas.
Grab operates a mobile technology platform that integrates city transportation for driver-partners and customers in South East Asia. It offers services like GrabTaxi, GrabCar, GrabHitch, GrabShare, GrabCoach, GrabShuttle, GrabShuttle Plus, GrabFamily, JustGrab, GrabNow, and GrabRental. Grab offers services in Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar. Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Lng founded it in 2012 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has additional offices in Seattle, Beijing, Bangalore, Jakarta, and Vietnam.
Flexport, Inc. is a global freight forwarder and logistics platform that provides online customs brokerage and freight forwarding services. Established in 2013 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company offers a comprehensive online dashboard that enables businesses to understand, purchase, manage, and track the necessary services for global trade. Its offerings include customs brokerage services such as clearances, bonds, product classification, and government agency filings, alongside freight forwarding options encompassing ocean freight, air freight, and trucking. Additionally, Flexport provides supply chain services that cover cargo insurance, quality inspections, warehousing, product sourcing, and trade finance. By leveraging modern software, Flexport aims to enhance the user experience in global trade, helping logistics companies optimize transportation routes and manage inventory effectively.
Anduril Industries is a defense product company that builds technology for military agencies and border surveillance. Anduril commits top technical talent to solve complex national security challenges. The company is building the next generation of technology that will aid and protect those who serve on the front lines defending the nation and its interests. Andurils' mission is to develop innovative technology that enables America and its allies to maintain global leadership now and into the future.
Private Equity Round in 2017
Didi Chuxing is a mobile transportation platform that offers app-based transportation services. The company offers a mobile tech-based mobility option for users across, including taxi-hailing, private car-hailing, Hitch (social ride-sharing), DiDi Chauffeur, DiDi Bus, DiDi Test Drive, DiDi Car Rental, and DiDi Enterprise Solutions. As a practitioner in the sharing economy initiative, DiDi is committed to working with communities and partners to solve transportation, environmental challenges, and employment problems using big data-driven deep-learning algorithms that optimize resource allocation.
Curology is a cosmetic company that provides actual prescription skincare customized for their skin and delivered to their door. It makes prescription skincare affordable and accessible online, offering virtual consultations and custom formulas for acne and anti-aging. Clinical trials tell us that certain prescription treatments may be more than twice as effective as using over-the-counter options for acne but they can also be twice as expensive, requiring in-person visits to the dermatologist and high drug costs. The company helps people see tremendous, long-term improvements previously accessible only to a small percentage of the population. Their technology enables 1:1 chats with real dermatology providers and lets users share their journeys with an engaged and growing community. Curology was founded by a mother-son team of dermatologists to bring effective acne care to more people, more affordably. The company assembled a committed team of dermatology providers and created a secure online platform, bringing professional acne care and prescription treatment to tens of thousands of people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access or afford it.
Intercom is redefining how businesses support their customers using powerful messaging and automation. Customer service teams from more than 25,000 global organizations, including Atlassian, Amazon, and Lyft Business, rely on Intercom to deliver efficient and personal customer experiences at scale. Intercom is used to send over 500 million messages per month and enables interactions with over 600 million monthly active end users. Founded in 2011 and backed by venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Social Capital, Intercom is on a mission to make internet business personal.
Wish is an e-commerce platform, putting a digital shopping mall of affordable goods directly in the pockets of consumers worldwide. Wish employs big data principles, machine-learning, and search technologies to create a highly-visual, entertaining, and personalized browsing experience for each user. The company leverages a global network of directsuppliers, providing access to top quality, affordable products to anyone with a smartphone. As of 2018, Wish has more than 80 million monthly active users, over one million merchants, and sells nearly 1 billion products annually. For more information about the company or to download the Wish mobile app.
Planet is a startup based in San Francisco and founded by former NASA employees that collects information about its changing planet via a fleet of compact, highly capable Earth-imaging satellites. The broad coverage and high frequency of Planet's satellite imagery will enable customers with unprecedented access to global and local insights that currently are either impossible or cost-prohibitive to obtain. It designs, builds, and operates the largest fleet of satellites, as well as online software, tools, and analytics needed to deliver data to users. Planet offers a diverse selection of imagery and analytic solutions, all made available online through our platform and web-based tools. They provide geospatial insights at the speed of change, equipping users with the data necessary to make informed, timely decisions.
SymphonyAI Sensa provides unsurpassed crime detection services to financial institutions worldwide. Powered by a proprietary combination of advanced AI and machine learning, Sensa discovers criminal activity routinely unseen by other detection systems. Customers have achieved up to an 81x risk-to-alert ratio improvement, 263% increase in SARs and as much as a 77% reduction in false positives. Coupled with predictive insights, operational efficiencies are gained by identifying genuine anomalies from the customers’ current data set. Sensa is user-friendly and delivers fully explainable results to satisfy regulators. Learn more at www.symphonysensa.com, LinkedIn or Twitter.
WorkMarket provides a marketplace for managing contractors and freelancers. WorkMarket helps companies to unlock new levels of productivity, engagement, and growth. It was founded in 2010 with a simple yet ambitious vision: to power the future of work.
Private Equity Round in 2014
Coupang is an e-commerce company. The company sells apparel, electronics, footwear, food products, furniture, nutritional supplements, and other products. Its segments include product commerce and developing offerings.
Course Hero is a subscription-based online learning platform that offers course-specific study resources for students.
Airbnb operates an online platform that connects hosts with guests seeking short-term accommodations. The company facilitates bookings and provides tools for both parties to manage their transactions. Airbnb focuses on various types of lodging, including homes and unique stays.
2U is a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service platform providing schools with the comprehensive operating infrastructure they need to attract, enroll, educate, support, and graduate students globally. Blending live face-to-face classes, dynamic course content, and real-world learning experiences, 2U’s No Back Row approach ensures that every student can experience the high-quality university education for the most successful outcome. The platform partners with universities to offer online degree programs. 2U supplies universities with the tools, expertise, capital, and global recruiting needed to compete in a space currently dominated by unexceptional programs, while developing state-of-the-art technology platforms that enhance traditional offline curricula to create transformative instruction using the best educational and Web 2.0 technologies. The platform provides the vital logistical components of any online program, including comprehensive student support services from enrollment through graduation and beyond as well as practical learning experiences within distant communities around the country. 2U partners with colleges and universities to deliver the world’s best online degree programs so students everywhere can reach their full potential. It was launched in 2008 and is based in Hanover, M.D.
Apptio is the leading provider of cloud-based Technology Business Management (TBM) software that helps CIOs manage the business of IT. Apptio’s suite of applications use business analytics to provide facts and insights about technology cost, value, and quality, so IT leaders can make faster, data-driven decisions. The purpose-built applications help companies align technology spend to business outcomes and automate IT processes like cost transparency, benchmarking, showback/chargeback, operational efficiency, and planning. Powering Apptio’s applications is a next generation, in-memory cost analytics platform that takes data directly from all financial, operational, and billing systems, and powers applications that give customers deep insight.
Eventbrite develops an online platform that lets users find and create events. Its platform helps them plan events, such as event academies, classes and workshops, conferences, endurance, food and drink, music, nonprofits, and fundraisers, performing and visual arts, politics, and reunions. Eventbrite's platform also lets users sell tickets, register online, post events, manage events online, event management, register event for free online, and search San Francisco events. Moreover, the company offers mobile application opportunities. Eventbrite serves customers worldwide. Renaud Visage and Julia and Kevin Hartz founded Eventbrite in 2006, with its headquarters in San Francisco in California.
Spotify is a commercial music streaming service that provides restricted digital content from a range of record labels and artists. Users can browse through the interface by artist, album, genre, playlist, record label, and direct searches. It also enables individuals to create, share, and edit playlists with other users. If users want recommendations, they can integrate their system with Last.fm, an application that provides music recommendations based on listening history. The radio feature installed in Spotify creates random playlists for its users that are related to preferred artists. Spotify is available for mobile device platforms such as Android, Blackberry, Boxee, iOS, Linux, MeeGo, Squeezebox, Windows mobile, and more.
Palantir Technologies offers a suite of software applications for integrating, visualizing, and analyzing information. Palantir software allows analysts within and between government organizations to collaborate and analyze large quantities of data. The company's software platforms are designed to help organizations, particularly in the fields of government, defense, finance, healthcare, and other industries, make sense of large and complex data sets.
Postmates is an on-demand food delivery platform that gives customers access to restaurants and retailers. The platform gives customers access to the most selection of merchants in the US with more than 600,000 restaurants and retailers available for delivery and pickup, many of which are exclusive to Postmates. The market leader in Los Angeles and markets across the southwest, Postmates covers 80% of US households, across all 50 states. Customers can get free delivery on all merchants by joining Postmates Unlimited, the industry's first subscription service.
SolarCity is a solar energy system provider that delivers reliable clean energy to homes and businesses. In 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity. Following the merger, Tesla transformed SolarCity's business model, moving it to a fully online platform and incorporating it into its vehicles and battery systems.
Tumblr is an online publishing platform created to connect, express, and discover people. Their platform lets users effortlessly share text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos from their browser, phone, desktop, or email, enabling them to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog.
Space Exploration Technologies is a space-transportation startup company founded by Elon Musk. SpaceX designs manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. SpaceX develops crew and cargo capsules, engines, cryogenic tank structures, avionics, equipment, guidance, and control software. The company is developing the partially reusable launch vehicles Falcon 1 and Falcon 9. Founded in 2002, Space Exploration Technologies is headquartered in Hawthorne, California.