At SmartSweets, they're tackling one of the largest and most concerning problems hidden in their every day foods sugar. It's about kicking sugar but keeping candy and creating a movement based on smaller, smarter choices.
AvantStay is the premier next generation hospitality platform. We are redefining the way in which people travel, transact and invest. AvantStay assures a highly-curated experience customized to guests’ needs, using a proprietary tech suite to power bookings, seamlessly operationalize in-field and remote management, and activate authentic and elevated consumer touch points. AvantStay currently operates in over 60 cities, with a drive-to market approach, including 450+ premier properties across their diversified portfolio, and an AUM of more than $800M. In 2019, AvantStay became one of the initial twelve partners of Homes & Villas by Marriott International, and currently offers direct bookings on more than 50 OTAs.
BetterUp is a human transformation company that dares to innovate the future of work by helping people and businesses grow personally and professionally to reach peak performance and maximize their potential, through coaching, content, community, and cutting-edge AI technology. BetterUp is the inventor of virtual coaching and the largest mental health and coaching startup in the world, with the world’s largest network of over 3,000 Coaches offering support in 46 languages across over 90 countries. Trusted by more than 380 organizations including NASA, Google, Snap Inc., Hilton, Warner Media, and other leading Fortune 1,000 companies, BetterUp delivers on three key impact areas – Mental Fitness, career & leadership development, and social connection – inspiring people everywhere to live with greater clarity, purpose, and passion. Investors include Wellington Management, ICONIQ Growth, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Threshold Ventures, PLUS Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Mubadala Investment Company, Morningside Group, SV Angel, Freestyle Capital, Crosslink Capital, and Tenaya Capital. BetterUp’s Science Board is composed of leading researchers in the fields of positive psychology and human performance including Martin Seligman, Adam Grant, Shawn Achor, and Quinetta Roberson. BetterUp has been recognized in the Inc. 5000, Fortune’s Great Places to Work, and People Magazine’s Companies that Care.
HumanCo is a disruptive mission-driven holding company that focuses on investing in Healthier Living. Despite all the advances in science and modern medicine, this is the first generation in recorded human history that is predicted to live a shorter lifespan than the previous generation. At HumanCo, it hopes to reverse this trend and effect meaningful change through the companies in which we invest and incubate.
Homebase is a software application that provides tools for employee scheduling, time tracking, communication, and task management. The app facilitates communication between managers and employees through messaging features, allowing for easy coordination and updates regarding shifts, tasks, and announcements. Employees can clock in and out using the app, allowing managers to track hours worked and monitor labor costs in real-time accurately.
Avaline makes clean, delicious wines. Full of natural goodness, free of unwanted extras.
Private Equity Round in 2021
Wealthsimple offers financial tools to help investors grow and manage their money. Wealthsimple builds a diversified portfolio of ETFs on the investors' behalf and guides them in achieving their financial goals. Wealthsimple is backed by a team of world-class financial experts. It was founded in 2014 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.
BetterUp is a human transformation company that dares to innovate the future of work by helping people and businesses grow personally and professionally to reach peak performance and maximize their potential, through coaching, content, community, and cutting-edge AI technology. BetterUp is the inventor of virtual coaching and the largest mental health and coaching startup in the world, with the world’s largest network of over 3,000 Coaches offering support in 46 languages across over 90 countries. Trusted by more than 380 organizations including NASA, Google, Snap Inc., Hilton, Warner Media, and other leading Fortune 1,000 companies, BetterUp delivers on three key impact areas – Mental Fitness, career & leadership development, and social connection – inspiring people everywhere to live with greater clarity, purpose, and passion. Investors include Wellington Management, ICONIQ Growth, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Threshold Ventures, PLUS Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Mubadala Investment Company, Morningside Group, SV Angel, Freestyle Capital, Crosslink Capital, and Tenaya Capital. BetterUp’s Science Board is composed of leading researchers in the fields of positive psychology and human performance including Martin Seligman, Adam Grant, Shawn Achor, and Quinetta Roberson. BetterUp has been recognized in the Inc. 5000, Fortune’s Great Places to Work, and People Magazine’s Companies that Care.
Sunday is a subscription lawn care service startup that provides nutrient and soil health plans for garden and lawn care. It incorporates the use of customized planning using climate, soil, and satellite data to deliver gardening and lawn maintenance-related products and services, allowing gardening enthusiasts and lawn owners to design and maintain their lawns in a convenient and hassle-free manner. It was founded in 2019 by Coulter and Trent Lewis in Boulder, Colorado.
Lyra helps companies improve access to effective, high-quality mental health care for their employees. Lyra's matching technology and innovative digital platform connect members to a curated network of top therapists and coaches, which results in 3x more people receiving care and 7x better outcomes than traditional plans and EAPs. Members can find the right personalized care, match with the right provider for their needs, and feel motivated and supported throughout the entire treatment journey.
Tecovas is a direct-to-consumer western footwear brand that designs and sells handmade men's and women's western boots directly to their customers. They partner with a third-generation, world-class boot maker and custom-developed their leather shoes. It was founded in 2015 by Paul Hedrick. Tecovas is based in Austin, Texas.
Versed is a cosmetic company that offers a clean skincare brand in retail and direct-to-consumer channels. The company combines community-powered development with retail know-how to incubate and scale the next generation of vertical beauty brands. They offer affordably priced, clean skincare brands in retail and direct-to-consumer channels. Versed was founded in 2018 and is based in West Hollywood, California, United States.
Connected Cannabis is a vertically integrated cannabis company for the cannasseurs of the weed industry. They take pride in cultivating high-end, designer strains that are lightyears ahead of anyone else in the industry. With designer strains and immaculate terpene profiles that lend intense and distinct flavor, smells, and colors unlike anything seen or smoked before. Connected Cannabis is based in Sacramento, California.
BetterUp is a human transformation company that dares to innovate the future of work by helping people and businesses grow personally and professionally to reach peak performance and maximize their potential, through coaching, content, community, and cutting-edge AI technology. BetterUp is the inventor of virtual coaching and the largest mental health and coaching startup in the world, with the world’s largest network of over 3,000 Coaches offering support in 46 languages across over 90 countries. Trusted by more than 380 organizations including NASA, Google, Snap Inc., Hilton, Warner Media, and other leading Fortune 1,000 companies, BetterUp delivers on three key impact areas – Mental Fitness, career & leadership development, and social connection – inspiring people everywhere to live with greater clarity, purpose, and passion. Investors include Wellington Management, ICONIQ Growth, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Threshold Ventures, PLUS Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Mubadala Investment Company, Morningside Group, SV Angel, Freestyle Capital, Crosslink Capital, and Tenaya Capital. BetterUp’s Science Board is composed of leading researchers in the fields of positive psychology and human performance including Martin Seligman, Adam Grant, Shawn Achor, and Quinetta Roberson. BetterUp has been recognized in the Inc. 5000, Fortune’s Great Places to Work, and People Magazine’s Companies that Care.
Naadam is an American clothing company specializing in affordable, luxury cashmere products. The company mills and crafts its products to the standards so they become softer with time and design their garments to complement the way people live, not constrain it. Naadam works to protect the planet through anti-desertification programs, clean energy-powered factories, and tree planting nonprofit work. It was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in New York.
Iris Nova powers the SMS payment technology (conversational commerce), customer service, email marketing, fulfillment, and delivery infrastructure for a portfolio of the world's best CPG brands. This strategy was first executed with functional beverage brand DIRTY LEMON, which popularized text-messaging based direct-to-consumer sales when it launched in 2015. The brand has since scaled to over 200,000 customers, leveraging the data to provide a personalized experience and on-demand deliveries to customers nationwide. Iris Nova was formally launched as an evolution of this success, following a minority investment from The Coca-Cola Company in 2018. The Iris Nova platform enables a seamless, end-to-end solution for beverage brands prioritizing the direct to home channel as a core component of their distribution strategy. This includes same-day deliveries in major markets as well average national shipping speeds faster than Amazon Prime. As the space continues to evolve with new entrants and innovation, we believe this is the future of CPG distribution.
Stem Disintermedia helps creators, artists, and musicians to collect digital revenue and enables them to track and share their earnings. It develops a platform intended to provide distribution and payments solution for artists and their teams. The platform aggregates cross-platform earnings, create contracts, and honor splits with collaborators, disburse payments and statements to all stakeholders in a project and visualizes performance data for each platform, enabling businesses to bring clarity to the complicated process of revenue management and ensure everyone involved in the creative process gets paid. Milana Rabkin, Tim Luckow, and Jovin Cronin-Wilesmith formed Stem Disintermedia in Los Angeles, California in 2015.
Dosist is a developer of proprietary vaporizing dose-pens created to provide safe, targeted, and effective cannabis-based therapies. It's a health and wellness company that provides cannabis solutions—one precise dose at a time. This is used by adults 21 years of age and older only. Dosist was founded in 2016, in California. It is first named "hmbldt". As they grew, they moved from the Lost Coast of Humboldt to the cultural center of Los Angeles, where they learned one immutable, immovable principle. Dosage is the justification for everything they do and every product they create. They are awarded by TIME Magazine as one of the Top 25 Inventions of 2016 Fast Company World Changing Ideas Awards Finalist
Sweetgreen is an American fast-casual restaurant chain that serves simple, seasonal, healthy salads, and grain bowls made in-house from scratch, using whole produce delivered that morning. Founded in 2007, the company is based in Washington, District of Columbia.
Madefire has developed a proprietary Motion Book Tool that delivers a reimagined collaboration experience for the storytellers, stylists, innovators and writers behind the stories. Their goal is to give creators the freedom to escape from the traditional confines of 21 static pages, and create a new world of words, pictures, motion and sound. The Madefire app unites the artistry of comics and graphic novels with the iPad’s groundbreaking interactive capabilities. The app offers a continuous flow of new episodes and original titles from some of the world’s most renowned storytellers, including comics book legend Dave Gibbons, with his new title “Treatment.”
Happiest Baby (www.happiestbaby.com) is a mission-driven technology company dedicated to helping parents succeed at their most important job–raising healthy, happy children. Happiest Baby created SNOO, the world's first smart sleeper using advanced robotic technology, implementing Dr. Karp's landmark 5 S’s method for soothing babies. SNOO has won 29 international honors, including the National Sleep Foundation Innovation of the Year and is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution as an iconic example of 21st Century form and function. The benefits of SNOO to reduce postpartum depression, SIDS, and help drug exposed babies are being studied at top medical centers. Happiest Baby is dedicated to developing science-based products and services to enhance child well-being and to help solve everyday parenting challenges. Based in Los Angeles, California, Happiest Baby, Inc. was founded in 2001 by Dr. Harvey Karp (pediatrician, child development specialist) with his wife and business partner, Nina Montée-Karp. Happiest Baby's hero product SNOO reduces infant crying, boosts sleep and prevents rolling over. That makes SNOO the safest, most effective baby bed ever made. SNOO was designed in collaboration with the celebrated industrial designer, Yves Behar, and a team of MIT-trained engineers. Some of Happiest Baby's investors are Greycroft, Google Ventures, Lux Capital, Felicis Ventures and Obvious Ventures...as well as several influential parent advisors/investors, including Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel, Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Maria Sharapova and Zoe Saldana, in their goal to give support to parents and children across the country and around the world.
Imperva provides activity monitoring, real-time protection, and risk management solutions for critical business data and applications. Imperva is a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions that protect business-critical data and applications in the cloud and on-premises It was founded by Shlomo Kramer, Amichai Shulman and Mickey Boodaei in 2002 and is based in Redwood Shores, California.
Reserve Media, Inc. operates a digital dining concierge service that connects restaurants with diners. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York City, the company offers a platform that allows customers to discover restaurants, make reservations, receive personalized service, and facilitate seamless payment. By partnering with notable restaurateurs, Reserve aims to enhance the dining experience while helping restaurants manage their reservations more effectively, reduce cancellations, and gain valuable customer insights. The platform also enables restaurants to maintain customer databases and manage their tables, ultimately improving customer relationships. As of November 2018, Reserve operates as a subsidiary of Resy Network, Inc.
DSTLD [‘distilled’] designs and delivers premium denim and luxury essentials without retail markup, offering premium product for about 1/3 the traditional price, thanks to its direct-to-consumer business model. As its name suggests, DSTLD is careful to introduce only the most perfect and fundamental pieces within a highly edited color palate - only black, white, grey, and denim - to reinforce its mission to ‘distill’ the business of luxury essentials. It’s focused on crafting items that coincide with the LA denim culture but with a restrained, modern feel. Accordingly, the label maintains an edgy, clean, and sophisticated aesthetic, and boasts the highest level of premium design. All of DSTLD’s products are produced in the most sought after facilities in North America and Italy utilizing the finest materials from Japan, Italy, and the United States.
MoviePass Inc. was a subscription-based service that allowed customers in the United States to attend movies in theaters for a fixed monthly price. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in New York, the service utilized a mobile application to enable users to check into their chosen theaters, browse showtimes, and share their movie experiences on social networks. MoviePass offered access to a wide range of theatrical releases with no blackout dates, aiming to enhance the movie-going experience. The company had strategic partnerships, including one with Flix Brewhouse, to expand its offerings. However, MoviePass faced financial difficulties and filed for voluntary liquidation under Chapter 7 in January 2020, ultimately becoming a subsidiary of Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc.
Workpop is the world's first Applicant Hiring System that doesn't just track applicants, but delivers the best candidate experience required to win in today's competitive talent market. While other hiring software focuses on tools that help you screen candidates, we know that top candidates are evaluating YOU on your application and hiring process. Through modern design that showcases your brand and intuitive software that encourages candidate interaction rather than hindering it, Workpop helps you attract and hire the best. Our technology automates sourcing, removes friction and engages candidates from the moment they see your job post. Our user-friendly screening tools empower managers and collaborators to meaningfully communicate with applicants and to make thoughtful decisions faster. And our paperless onboarding system drastically reduces costs while allowing new hires to contribute immediately on day one of the job. With Workpop, you don’t track applicants; you engage and hire them.
Surf Air is the nation’s first All-You-Can-Fly private air travel membership, providing frequent regional business and leisure travelers with a sophisticated and hassle-free air travel experience that saves valuable time and money. The company operates Pilatus PC-12s in executive interior configuration to and from convenient airports in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles Metro Area, Santa Barbara, and Truckee Lake Tahoe, with service to additional locations to follow. Prospective members can take advantage of pricing as low as $1,599 per month prior to September 1, at which point membership prices will increase as part of the new service offering. Membership options include Individual, Friends & Family, Group, and Business Memberships.
WEVR is a developer of a technology platform used to offer virtual reality content. Its technology uses immersive computing and real-time massively scalable simulations to create immersive entertainment experiences that enable digital artists and developers to produce and publish digital media for virtual reality devices. It creates transcendent immersive stories and globally shared experiences. WEVR was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Venice, California.
Spring is a retail company that sells a wide range of items from apparel to home and garden items. It is a shopping application for iOS devices. Spring enables its users to follow the brands they love as well as purchase new arrivals, exclusives, and one-of-a-kind products. The company originally operated as Jello Labs and announced the name change in July 2014. Spring was founded by David Tisch, Alan Tisch, and Octavian Costache in New York.
DanceOn is an entertainment-focused digital media company connecting music and pop culture through dance. It reaches engaged millennials seeking on-demand music content everywhere. It creates buzzworthy music and pop culture programming for millennials seeking entertainment everywhere.
Madefire has developed a proprietary Motion Book Tool that delivers a reimagined collaboration experience for the storytellers, stylists, innovators and writers behind the stories. Their goal is to give creators the freedom to escape from the traditional confines of 21 static pages, and create a new world of words, pictures, motion and sound. The Madefire app unites the artistry of comics and graphic novels with the iPad’s groundbreaking interactive capabilities. The app offers a continuous flow of new episodes and original titles from some of the world’s most renowned storytellers, including comics book legend Dave Gibbons, with his new title “Treatment.”
DevOps-oriented application security solution.
Chromatik connects the world's musicians. Their applications enable millions of musicians to play, learn, and share their favorite music through sheet music, guitar tabs, lyrics, and more. Chromatik was acquired by TakeLessons (https://TakeLessons.com) in April 2017.
DSTLD [‘distilled’] designs and delivers premium denim and luxury essentials without retail markup, offering premium product for about 1/3 the traditional price, thanks to its direct-to-consumer business model. As its name suggests, DSTLD is careful to introduce only the most perfect and fundamental pieces within a highly edited color palate - only black, white, grey, and denim - to reinforce its mission to ‘distill’ the business of luxury essentials. It’s focused on crafting items that coincide with the LA denim culture but with a restrained, modern feel. Accordingly, the label maintains an edgy, clean, and sophisticated aesthetic, and boasts the highest level of premium design. All of DSTLD’s products are produced in the most sought after facilities in North America and Italy utilizing the finest materials from Japan, Italy, and the United States.
Kettle & Fire is a food and beverage company that combines marrow bones with organic vegetables and filtered water in steel kettles. The mixture is slow-simmered for 20-24 hours at 130 F. This provides enough time for nutrients, collagen, and amino acids to soak into the broth. They only use bones from grass-fed, grass-finished organic cows and pasture-raised chickens. Kettle & Fire maintains strict standards to deliver bone broth made from the bones of cattle that are humanely raised, with no antibiotics or hormones, 100% grass-fed and grass-finished. The company was founded in 2013 and is based in Austin, Texas, USA.