Select Venture Partners

Who We Are We are an early stage, post-seed/pre-Series A investment management firm, with an experienced team, all of whom have extensive cross-industry and cross-functional operating experience in software startups. We invest two crucial elements into early stage software companies – money and experience – to launch early stage companies to the next level. Many great early stage companies, which have raised initial seed capital to build v1 products and are now looking for a “pre-Series A” round, face a trade off between money and expertise. Individual Angel investors typically cannot identify, evaluate or help early-stage companies move forward, and traditional VC’s invest at much later stages in a company’s development. The Select team bridges the funding and expertise gap, with combined personal experience of more than 100 years of operating experience and over one billion dollars of successful exits. We are committed to using our personal resources, time, and network to help early stage companies succeed.

Michael Pratt

Managing Partner and Co-Founder

Sameer Shalaby

Managing Partner and Co-Founder

Adam Slovik

Managing Partner

Lilian J. Ting

Principal

Sol Zlotchenko

Managing Partner

23 past transactions

Alef Edge

Convertible Note in 2015
AlefEdge is a leader in the Edge Internet, delivering the power of the 5G based Edge Internet to application developers through our easy-to-use technologies. At AlefEdge, rich media applications, clouds and networks work in tandem to achieve an unprecedented level of performance. We enable 5G applications through open API’s at the Edge that make service adoption and distribution friction free. AlefEdge works with partners to build the world’s first Edge applications that leverage and realize Virtual and Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0, Smart Cities, IoT and Gaming. The AlefEdge Open5G Platform brings 5G applications to life, unleashing a massive Edge Internet economy.

PierceMatrix

Seed Round in 2014
PierceMatrix (formerly PierceGTI) is a security product company that reduces your risk chain exposure. It shares information on known threats, learns about new threats and provides reports, dashboards and targeted recommendations to help you secure your network. Pierce uses artificial intelligence developed for the US military and a unique distributed architecture to optimize your security processes so you spend less time researching security problems and more time fixing security problems! Pierce uses the information gathered from thousands of client networks and industry data sources to detect botnets, attackers, compromised machines, and corporate IP reputation. The Pierce dashboard and reports provide you with up-to-the minute security intelligence on your risk chain.

Geostellar

Convertible Note in 2015
Geostellar applies big-data geomatics to compute precise renewable resource potential, infrastructure capacity, economics and policy impact for clean tech projects. On our subscription services platform, solar, wind and biofuel energy producers can identify the optimal sites for projects, market to property owners, arrange for financing and coordinate deployment. We support complex queries across every rooftop, field and lot in the United States.

Alef Edge

Funding Round in 2015
AlefEdge is a leader in the Edge Internet, delivering the power of the 5G based Edge Internet to application developers through our easy-to-use technologies. At AlefEdge, rich media applications, clouds and networks work in tandem to achieve an unprecedented level of performance. We enable 5G applications through open API’s at the Edge that make service adoption and distribution friction free. AlefEdge works with partners to build the world’s first Edge applications that leverage and realize Virtual and Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0, Smart Cities, IoT and Gaming. The AlefEdge Open5G Platform brings 5G applications to life, unleashing a massive Edge Internet economy.

Optii Solutions

Series B in 2017
Optii Solutions is a rapidly growing and innovative company focused exclusively on optimizing the housekeeping function in hotels. Founded by hospitality professionals in 2006, Optii Solutions recognized the need for an improved approach to housekeeping – particularly where their clients are located in countries where labor is expensive or scarce. Their solutions represent the first innovation in housekeeping in decades. Their clients helped us to shape their applications, and they continue to be involved in the design and refinement of their solutions. Integrating seamlessly with your other operational software, their focus continues to be on enabling you to optimize your housekeeping and achieve real, measurable improvements.

Geostellar

Series C in 2016
Geostellar applies big-data geomatics to compute precise renewable resource potential, infrastructure capacity, economics and policy impact for clean tech projects. On our subscription services platform, solar, wind and biofuel energy producers can identify the optimal sites for projects, market to property owners, arrange for financing and coordinate deployment. We support complex queries across every rooftop, field and lot in the United States.

Regalii

Seed Round in 2016
Arcus Financial Intelligence, Inc. develops and operates an application program interface (API) platform for banks and financial institutions that manages consumer bills and financial data. The company provides real-time bill management and payment services. It provides a detailed picture of the family finances of users such as how many bills they have, how much do they owe, and when the bill is due to be paid. The company was formerly known as Regalii Inc. and changed its name to Arcus Financial Intelligence, Inc. in June 2018. Arcus Financial Intelligence, Inc. was founded in 2012 and is based in New York, New York.

Optii Solutions

Series A in 2016
Optii Solutions is a rapidly growing and innovative company focused exclusively on optimizing the housekeeping function in hotels. Founded by hospitality professionals in 2006, Optii Solutions recognized the need for an improved approach to housekeeping – particularly where their clients are located in countries where labor is expensive or scarce. Their solutions represent the first innovation in housekeeping in decades. Their clients helped us to shape their applications, and they continue to be involved in the design and refinement of their solutions. Integrating seamlessly with your other operational software, their focus continues to be on enabling you to optimize your housekeeping and achieve real, measurable improvements.

Consensus

Seed Round in 2015
Consensus is Software as a Service (SaaS) that automates custom product demos to accelerate sales. Their interactive demo platform personalizes video and documents so each prospect automatically learns about your solution in the most relevant way. This cuts sales cycles and increases close rates. Their Demolytics™ dashboard helps you discover and engage the entire buying committee by gathering analytics and tracking who’s involved, what’s important to them, what they watched, and who they shared it with. This drives consensus and gets to a purchase decision much faster than traditional sales methods. Clients have cut their sales cycles by 68% and jumped close rates by 27%.

Miner App

Convertible Note in 2015
Miner Labs is a technology company in NYC with one of the most ambitious visions of any startup on the planet. When you shop online, you can see the inventory available in warehouses hundreds of miles away. Why is it that we cannot see what's available in the retail stores around us? We want to change that. We are building the Everywhere Store, an e-commerce platform tied to physical locations. Our flagship product, the Miner shopping app, debuted on the App Store in May, and was Featured by Apple. We recently closed a Seed round lead by Simon Venture Group (SVG). SVG is the venture capital arm of Simon. Simon is the largest retail real estate company in the world and a S&P 100 company. The Everywhere Store we are building will make it easy to discover anything you need, anywhere you are. Simon Venture Group believes in our vision, and has the ability to help us make it a reality.

CampusLogic

Series A in 2015
CampusLogic provides critical tools and resources for the 15 million students who travel the higher education journey each year. The company currently serves more than 750 schools increase enrollment, retention, and graduation rates with a platform, which includes a net price calculator, complete scholarship management, personalized digital communications, simplified financial aid verification, 24×7 personalized virtual advising, tuition, and scholarship crowdfunding, and integrated data visualizations.

Admittedly

Seed Round in 2014
Admittedly is an online college advisory platform with free tools for high school students, parents, and high school guidance counselors. The website features interactive profiles of various schools in the U.S. Its users can also reach out to current students and alumni to find information about a school and obtain advice. Admittedly launched College Visit Planner, a tool that enables students and their parents to create a plan online for visiting multiple colleges, including schedules and timetables, approximate trip costs, directions, and more. They have also recently launched their new Admittedly App, which is available for download on Apple and Android devices. The app features School Discovery and Personality Discovery sections, where students can find schools they're interested in and learn what type of student they truly are. The company is headquartered in New York, United States.

Consensus

Convertible Note in 2014
Consensus is Software as a Service (SaaS) that automates custom product demos to accelerate sales. Their interactive demo platform personalizes video and documents so each prospect automatically learns about your solution in the most relevant way. This cuts sales cycles and increases close rates. Their Demolytics™ dashboard helps you discover and engage the entire buying committee by gathering analytics and tracking who’s involved, what’s important to them, what they watched, and who they shared it with. This drives consensus and gets to a purchase decision much faster than traditional sales methods. Clients have cut their sales cycles by 68% and jumped close rates by 27%.

Urgently

Series A in 2015
Urgent.ly’s Roadside is a digital roadside assistance platform that features a roadside assistance industry to the benefit of global brands, roadside assistance professionals, and consumers. Its solution delivers the quickest, safest, and most innovative roadside assistance service, products and technology by combining location-based services, real-time data, AI, and machine-to-machine communication.

Optii Solutions Pty Ltd

Private Placement in 2018
Optii Solutions Pty Ltd develops web based hotel-specific software solutions. The company offers Optii Keeper, a labour and quality management system for housekeeping; and Optii Messenger, a pre- and post-stay marketing solution that allows communicating via email and/or SMS. Optii Solutions Pty Ltd was formerly known as Slap Systems Pty. Ltd. Optii Solutions Pty Ltd was founded in 2000 and is based in Brisbane, Australia.

Optii Solutions

Series C in 2018
Optii Solutions is a rapidly growing and innovative company focused exclusively on optimizing the housekeeping function in hotels. Founded by hospitality professionals in 2006, Optii Solutions recognized the need for an improved approach to housekeeping – particularly where their clients are located in countries where labor is expensive or scarce. Their solutions represent the first innovation in housekeeping in decades. Their clients helped us to shape their applications, and they continue to be involved in the design and refinement of their solutions. Integrating seamlessly with your other operational software, their focus continues to be on enabling you to optimize your housekeeping and achieve real, measurable improvements.

Alef Edge

Funding Round in 2017
AlefEdge is a leader in the Edge Internet, delivering the power of the 5G based Edge Internet to application developers through our easy-to-use technologies. At AlefEdge, rich media applications, clouds and networks work in tandem to achieve an unprecedented level of performance. We enable 5G applications through open API’s at the Edge that make service adoption and distribution friction free. AlefEdge works with partners to build the world’s first Edge applications that leverage and realize Virtual and Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0, Smart Cities, IoT and Gaming. The AlefEdge Open5G Platform brings 5G applications to life, unleashing a massive Edge Internet economy.

Optii Solutions

Seed Round in 2013
Optii Solutions is a rapidly growing and innovative company focused exclusively on optimizing the housekeeping function in hotels. Founded by hospitality professionals in 2006, Optii Solutions recognized the need for an improved approach to housekeeping – particularly where their clients are located in countries where labor is expensive or scarce. Their solutions represent the first innovation in housekeeping in decades. Their clients helped us to shape their applications, and they continue to be involved in the design and refinement of their solutions. Integrating seamlessly with your other operational software, their focus continues to be on enabling you to optimize your housekeeping and achieve real, measurable improvements.

Consensus

Venture Round in 2016
Consensus is Software as a Service (SaaS) that automates custom product demos to accelerate sales. Their interactive demo platform personalizes video and documents so each prospect automatically learns about your solution in the most relevant way. This cuts sales cycles and increases close rates. Their Demolytics™ dashboard helps you discover and engage the entire buying committee by gathering analytics and tracking who’s involved, what’s important to them, what they watched, and who they shared it with. This drives consensus and gets to a purchase decision much faster than traditional sales methods. Clients have cut their sales cycles by 68% and jumped close rates by 27%.

blaxxun interactive

Venture Round in 2001
blaxxun interactive was an early Internet company, headquartered in San Francisco. blaxxun provided 3D Virtual Worlds technology. blaxxun was initially funded by CMGI@Ventures (in the same fund as Lycos and GeoCities), with additional investors such as General Electric joining in later rounds. blaxxun was an early leader in 3D Virtual Worlds with ongoing contributions to the VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) standard, especially for all aspects of multi-user interaction with avatars. Customers included BMW, Canal+, CBS, Deutsche Bank, IBM, Intel, Lycos, Siemens with many spectacular and highly innovation 3D environments. The company employed various people who started highly successful companies after blaxxun, including Franz Buchenberger (co-founder and CEO of Foroso Communications), Konstantin Guericke (co-founder and VP Marketing LinkedIn), Munjal Shah (co-founder and CEO of Like.com), Mike Jetter (co-founder and CTO of Mindjet).

Urgently

Convertible Note in 2014
Urgent.ly’s Roadside is a digital roadside assistance platform that features a roadside assistance industry to the benefit of global brands, roadside assistance professionals, and consumers. Its solution delivers the quickest, safest, and most innovative roadside assistance service, products and technology by combining location-based services, real-time data, AI, and machine-to-machine communication.

PierceMatrix

Convertible Note in 2015
PierceMatrix (formerly PierceGTI) is a security product company that reduces your risk chain exposure. It shares information on known threats, learns about new threats and provides reports, dashboards and targeted recommendations to help you secure your network. Pierce uses artificial intelligence developed for the US military and a unique distributed architecture to optimize your security processes so you spend less time researching security problems and more time fixing security problems! Pierce uses the information gathered from thousands of client networks and industry data sources to detect botnets, attackers, compromised machines, and corporate IP reputation. The Pierce dashboard and reports provide you with up-to-the minute security intelligence on your risk chain.

ClientSuccess

Seed Round in 2015
ClientSuccess is a customer success platform that empowers B2B SaaS companies to proactively manage post-sales customer relationships, measure customer health, maximize customer retention and growth, and drive a culture of customer success. It provides a holistic approach to managing success throughout the customer lifecycle as well as provides insights, customer analytics, and best practices that enhance the client’s company. The company also provides SuccessScore, a solution that represents the holistic health of customers; and SuccessCycle, an application that provides the framework to define, manage, and measure success throughout the entire customer lifecycle. In addition, it offers renewal management application that allows users to track customer subscriptions; customer engagement solutions; and application to helps users mitigate risk or identify opportunities for expansion and growth; an application that helps clients in tracking key contacts, users, and executive sponsors within the organization; Support View application that integrates with customer support tools to CRM, support, social, and communication platforms; and customized scorecard to track the progress of each customer. ClientSuccess was founded in 2014 and is based in Lehi, Utah.