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Now, let’s get to the details of the venture capital funding, mergers and acquisitions and venture capital firm activity from July 2019.
Fundings
Signpost, a digital marketing company, announced it has raised $52 million in late-stage funding from HighBar Partners and BMO Bank of Montreal. The New York-based company also has offices in Austin and Denver. The ABJ reports Signpost has 45 local employees and has at least 18 job openings, including four in Austin.
Vyopta, an Austin-based workplace collaboration monitoring and analytics startup, closed a $7.5 million Series B funding round. The new money comes from Austin-based Elsewhere Partners, a relatively new venture capital firm led by Austin Ventures general partners Chris Pacitti and John Thornton. As part of the deal, former Spredfast CEO Rod Favaron is joining Vyopta’s board of directors as chairman. Meanwhile, Betsy Webb, a general manager at Microsoft, will join Vyopta’s advisory board.
Unomi Inc. an Austin-based health and wellness company that makes at-home test kits and supplements, raised $1 million in equity funding, according to a new Form D filing. The company was founded in 2006 under the name Blue Spot Health. The new money follows a February filing showing it had raised $3.7 million from 24 investors.
A Venture Beat story that details investments by Sweden-based Modern Times Groups noted that an Austin startup is among the VC firms new investments. The firm has invested in Austin esports and social-first game studio Tonk Tonk Games. It’s not clear how much the round totaled, but the story noted Bitkraft Esports Ventures also invested.
Home-buying startup Homeward, founded by Tim Heyl in 2018, is ready to accelerate its growth with $25 million in new funding. Of that sum, $4 million comes in the form of equity funding led by LiveOak Venture Partners. The remaining $21 million is debt funding led by Genesis Capital and Keystone Bank. The new funding will help Homeward build out its team, bring on new customers, add new features and expand in its existing markets in Texas, Georgia and Colorado.
Locally based data engineering software startup Viviota has landed an undisclosed Series A funding round from Naya Ventures. Viviota has honed in on sensor data analytics for the automotive industry, especially those developing autonomous vehicles, by providing software that accelerates data analysis for engineering teams. A graduate of Capital Factory‘s accelerator, Viviota is led by CEO Eric Newman, who previously led Austin-based Clockwork Solutions.
Cedar Park-based Virtual Combine, which provides performance tracking and other ways to showcase sporting talent, raised $100,000 for planned $2.75 million round of equity funding, according to an SEC filing. The startup is led by CEO Doug Lambert, whose LinkedIn shows he was previously a defensive coordinator and assistant head coach at WestWood High School in Round Rock.
TrustRadius, a software review startup founded in 2012 by CEO Vinay Bhagat and VP of Product Scott Miller, announced it has secured a $12.5 million Series C led by Austin’s Next Coast Ventures, along with continued investment from Mayfield Fund in the Bay Area and LiveOak Venture Partners in Austin. That brings TrustRadius’ total funding to about $25 million. That will allow them to expand their reach and double their existing headcount of 59 employees over the next year or so.
Locally based vacation rental management startup TurnKey Vacation Rentals announced it has raised $48 million in new funding. The round was led by Altos Ventures, which has invested in the company in prior rounds, and included investment from Adams Street Partners, Greenspring Associates and Harmony Partners. It brings TurnKey’s funding to $100 million-plus. The startup was founded by CEO John Banczak and T.J. Clark in 2013. As part of the new deal, Clark will now serve as president and chief development officer, Banczak will continue as chairman and will also serve as CEO, and CFO Jen Ford will also become chief commercial officer.
Cipherloc, a Buda-based data protection company that was founded in 2006, reported raising $15.6 million in the latest of a pileup of Form D filings. The investment is part of a planned $17 million round. The company trades on the OTC Markets Group under the CLOK symbol. It is led by President and CEO Michael W. DeLaGarza, who also founded MedPay USA in 1998 and is the former CIO/CTO of Texas Regional Hospital Systems.
Austin-based baby food company Serenity Kids, which is sold at Whole Foods and other locations, today announced it has closed a $1.5 million round of funding led by Wild Ventures. The company specializes in nutrient-dense, pouched-packaged foods that avoid gluten, grain, dairy, eggs and nuts and includes things like pasteurized uncured bacon, organic butternut squash and kale and so on. In essence, it’s a high-fat, low-sugar lineup. After the Whole Foods rollout, Serenity Kids is planning to launch at 80.
Austin startup New Knowledge raised $3 million of addition funding from Austin-based BuildGroup and Menlo Park, Calif.-based Lux Capital to help it build out a new enterprise platform later this year and add new talent to its team. It has now raised a total of $18 million since its founding in 2015.
Martin Floreani, who was co-founder and CEO FloSports until he abruptly stepped down last year, has a new startup that today reported raising about $200,000 in debt funding in the form of convertible promissory notes, which can be converted to equity. The company, Rokfin, is a subscription-based platform for exclusive podcasts, videos and articles from a variety of influencers, including MMA fighters, comedians and magicians.
Mergers and Acquisitions
Austin-based Proximity Learning, a K-12 staffing firm, was acquired by Knoxville-based Education Solutions Services. No financial details provided.
Austin-based HotSchedules, which makes workforce and inventory management solutions for the restaurant industry, is merging with London-based Fourth, which makes a platform to manage hospitality workforces. The move gives the combined company a substantially larger, end-to-end offering for the hospitality clients that includes scheduling, time and attendance, applicant tracking, training, inventory management, HR and payroll. Fourth CEO Ben Hood will lead the combined company, and the executive team will include members from both HotSchedules and Fourth. It will be co-headquartered in Austin and London, with other offices in Bulgaria, China, Australia and beyond.
Austin-based careers site Indeed.com reportedly signed a deal to acquire UK-based ClickIQ, which has an automated job advertising platform that helps optimize recruiting ads in real time. It would be Indeed’s second acquisition of the year, HCM Technology Report noted. It scooped up Syft in May.
VMware, a virtualization and cloud software company that is largely owned by Dell Technologies, is poised to acquire Bitfusion.io, a virtualization and graphic processing startup with offices in Austin and Sunnyvale, Calif. VMware announced the move in a blog post — terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed. The company said acquiring Bitfusion will expand its AI and machine learning-based by virtualizing hardware accelerators. After closing, VMware will fold Bitfusion into its vSphere platform. Bitfusion, founded by Maciej Bajkowski, Mazhar Memon and Subbu Rama in 2015, had raised about $8.3 million, according to Crunchbase. Its investors have included Samsung Ventures, Vanedge Capital, Sierra Ventures, Geekdom and several others.
Locally based B2B digital marketing outfit Bulldog Solutions is being acquired by San Francisco-based marketing and customer experience company Hero Digital. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. As part of the deal, Bulldog CEO Randy Watson will become general manager of the Austin office and Bulldog founder Rob Solomon will become SVP of strategy for Hero Digital.
Think3, a branch of Austin’s ESW Capital, is acquiring Boston-based remote workspace startup Sococo. The deal is happening through a pre-packaged Chapter 11 corporate reorganization. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Think3 founder Andy Tryba is becoming CEO of the company as part of the acquisition. ESW, which operates a $1 billion private equity fund, and Think3 have acquired 75 companies in the past 15 years.
The ABJ reported that Ionization Labs is raising a $5 million Series A at a $20 million pre-raise valuation. The company tests hemp and marijuana to show whether it’s legal CBD or illegal THC-heavy cannabis. It does so without chemists and lab techs. So its clients could be law enforcement and farms who need to test THC contents. The new funding was led by New York-based Merida Capital Partners, which has a bunch of cannabis-related investment.
Kony, an Austin-based digital app platform, landed $37 million in new debt financing from BMO‘s Technology and Innovation Banking group. Kony plans to use the funding to advance its Kony DBX digital banking and Kony Quantum low-code platforms. The new funding follows a recent survey by Kony that found that despite roughly $5 trillion in investment for digital tools, only 19 percent of surveyed consumer report any significant improvement in the experiences they’re offered. And that, Kony CEO Thomas E. Hogan said, “demonstrates the enormous opportunity that remains for businesses to leverage digital for customer loyalty, service levels, convenience, and commerce.”
TalentGuard, which was co-founded in 2010 by CEO Linda Ginac and CTO Frank Ginac, announced it has raised a $4 million Series B round. The investment was led by local VC firm LiveOak Venture Partners, and the new money will help it ramp up global sales and marketing. TalentGuard also expanded its board, adding former Spredfast CEO Rod Favaron, former Dell CFO James M. Schneider and LiveOak Venture Partners founding partner Krishna Srinivasan. TalentGuard currently has 37 employees in Austin and in Mexico.
Venture Capital Firm Activity
Lance Armstrong's venture capital firm, Next Ventures, which is investing in sports and health startups, reported it has raised $24.5 million of a planned $75 million VC fund. The fund was backed by 38 investors, the SEC filing shows. Armstrong is joined in the fund by Lionel Conacher, a former Canadian football and hockey star who went on to investment banking and running Westwind before its acquisition. Next Ventures has made five investments, but none of them appear to be Austin-based startups.
We mostly think of Austin-based Vista Equity Partners as a private equity firm that has found astounding success in acquiring big stakes in software companies. But it also has its Endeavor Fund, run by Alan Cline and Rene Yang Stewart, that’s largely geared to Series B and C rounds, which is something Austin lacks. After an initial fund in 2017 of $560 million, Vista is said to have landed $850 million for round two, Reuters reported. The fund mostly targets SaaS businesses with $10 million to $30 million in annual recurring revenue. Meanwhile, Vista is still cranking on its big buyout fund, which seeks up to $12 billion.
Austin’s Next Coast Ventures has led a $10 million Series B round for Missoula, Montana-based application and submission management software startup Submittable. The deal makes it one of the largest Series Bs for a Montana company. Submittable’s platform currently has 3 million-plus users, including big names such as AT&T, HBO, NPR and National Geographic. The company plans to double its headcount in the next year, and many of them are relocating from more traditional tech hubs.
