A handful of Austin area startups landed $10M-plus funding deals in February, and we logged eight significant acquisition and merger deals during the month.
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Alright, let’s check out the deals from February 2020 …
Funding Rounds
Pattern Bioscience, perviously known as Klaris Diagnostics, announced it raised $13M in new funding. The company has developed methods to cut that bacteria identification time down to about four hours. The new round includes $6.4M in Series B funding, led by Dallas-based Omnimed Capital, which also backed Pattern Bioscience’s $3.75M Series A in 2017. The new round also includes $6.8M in non-dilutive funding from CARB-X, a nonprofit that funds biotech startups. If Pattern can hit its milestones, the company could draw down up to $15.1M in additional funding from CARB-X.
PurPics, an Austin-based social media and brand engagement marketplace startup, announced it raised a pre-seed round, bringing its total funding to more than $2M. The round was led by Felton Group, the family office of Jaffray Woodriff, as well as The Syndicate Fund and Techstars Ventures. The company was founded in 2017 and is led by founder and CEO Aneesh Dhawan.
ICON, which made national headlines nearly two years ago when it unveiled a home built in Austin mostly by its industrial scale 3D printer, reported raising about $26M in new equity funding in an SEC filing. The company, which files as ICON Technology, Inc., raised $25.9M of a total offering set at just under $35M. ICON previously raised $9M in seed funding from a variety of venture capitalists and strategic investors including D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest homebuilder.
Hypergiant Industries, which has offices in Austin, Dallas and beyond, has spun out and helped fund a new startup in Dallas. NTX Inno reports that Worlds, a spatial AI company focused on deep learning and IoT within the 4D environment, which spun out of Hypergiant Sensory Sciences, announced landing a $10M Series A funding round, led by Dallas-based Align Capital Partners. The round was joined by Chevron Technology Ventures, PivaandHypergiant Industries. The company is calling its platform the “first-of-its-kind extended reality (XR) environment.”
Austin’s Frankly Organic Vodka reports that it has raised new investment from Decathlon Capital Partners. The “seven-figure” equity-based funding round will help the company add partnerships and expand distribution. The company, led by co-founder and CEO Philip Risk, uses USDA certified organic ingredients.
Profitable Austin cybersecurity startup Praetorian has parted with its bootstrapped ways and secured a $10M Series A round led by Austin’s Bill Wood Ventures and global consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Founder and CEO Nathan Sportsman said the company hadn’t planned to raise outside capital but reconsidered after a closer look at growth potential with the funding and partnership with McKinsey.
Austin’s Your Fare, which makes third-party restaurant delivery management software, closed a $2.4M equity round from several Texas-based funds. Those include Band of Angels, Houston Angel Network, Capital Factory, Sierra Angels and Texas HALO Fund. The company plans to expand its team and boost marketing to small- and medium-sized restaurant groups with 10 to 50 locations. Your Fare is led by CEO and co-founder Chris Monk.
Swivel Inc. — an Austin-based startup making it simpler for companies to lease move-in ready, short-term office space — is preparing to bring its leasing platform to at least eight more metros by the end of the year. This expansion will be fueled by an $8M Series A led by Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital, which contributed $5M. JLL Spark, a strategic global venture fund and division of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., also participated, contributing $3M. Swivel founder Scott Harmon said the funding round was oversubscribed; it limited this round to two investors, so Breyer Capital and JLL Spark could obtain a “good share” of the company. He did not disclose how much equity the entities would receive of Swivel.
Eventus Systems, Inc., a local software startup that monitors financial markets, said raised a $10.5M Series A funding round. Austin’s LiveOak Venture Partners and Chicago’s Jump Capital led the new round of investment. Other investors included Coinbase Ventures in San Francisco and Chimera Securities in New York City. Eventus Systems plans to use the new money to make key hires to boost sales and development. Meanwhile, it’s expanding its board of directors, adding Krishna Srinivasan, a founding partner at LiveOak, and Peter Johnson, a principal at Jump.
Austin’s Self Financial closed a $20M Series C led by Silicon Valley firms Altos Ventures and Conductive Ventures. Austin’s Silverton Partners also invested, just as they invested in the company’s series A and B rounds. The capital infusion will, in part, go to expanding the team “and building out new products,” Garvey said in an email to the ABJ. The company has experienced steady growth over the last two years, jumping from 30 employees at the end of 2018 to 55 employees today.
Laundris, an Austin startup with a platform to simplify linen operations, is expecting to close a $900K round of funding in coming weeks. That news was noted in an ABJ story about Laundris participating in a SXSW event to highlight black and Latinx founders hosted by Atlanta’s Opportunity Hub.
Insurance data and software startup AgencyKPI reported raising about $3.5M in new equity funding. The round comes about six months after it emerged from a couple years operating in stealth mode. At that time, the company noted it had raised $3M in seed funding from insurance networks, and executives in the insurance industry.
Austin-based boots and accessories startup Tecovas reported raising $15M in new equity funding. The funding comes as the company has been opening brick and mortar locations in Austin, San Antonio, Plano, Houston and Oklahoma City. It’s the third SEC filing the company has posted. It previously reported raising $1.8M in 2016 and $2.6M in 2017.
Olea Edge Analytics, a smart water meter startup based in Austin, announced it raised a $9M Series B. The funding was led by Renewal Funds. Other investors included Ananta Family Office and Mercury Fund. As part of the deal, Mike Cormack of Renewal Funds and Jaideep Khanna of Ananta Family Office will join the Olea board of directors.
Austin Eastciders, which makes canned alcoholic ciders, reported raising $5.7M in new equity funding. It’s the first new funding reported by the company since a $4.5M round in 2018.
Austin’s BeatStars, which has a music and beats marketplace to help other artists create new songs, is probably best known as the platform that sold Lil Nas X and is collaborators the beat behind his insanely popular “Old Town Road” song. But it’s doing a lot more. It reported raising $10M in new equity funding. The company, founded in 2008 by CEO Abe Batshon, has reportedly paid out more than $50M to the producers who license and sell their work on the marketplace.
Acadeum announced it closed a $7M round of funding to more quickly expand its outreach efforts and expand its network, which already supports 200 schools. It’s the company’s first round of funding. Its backers are mostly education-centric funds. The Lumina Foundation, a private Indianapolis-based foundation, led the round, with additional investment from Rethink Education and Learn Capital. Locally based firms Next Coast Ventures and Socratic Ventures, which was co-founded by Pierce, also contributed.
Mergers and Acquisitions
Startfor, an Austin-based geopolitical intelligence company, was acquired by New York-based RANE, which stands for Risk Assistance Network + Exchange. The move will bring Stratfor’s content onto RANE’s platform that offers risk and market insights. No details on the financial considerations. Stratfor was founded in 1996 by George Friedman. Crunchbase shows it raised about $12M in a private equity round by Teakwood Capital in 2016.
Upland Software, an Austin work management software company, acquired Boston-based mobile app and analytics startup Localytics for $67.7M. BostInno reports that Localytics was a local tech darling that went through some turbulent times, including some layoffs, before rebounding and landing this deal. Upland has made 25 or so acquisitions since its founding in 2013.
Resideo, an Austin-based IoT company that spun out of Honeywell, acquired Herman ProAV, a Miami area audio visual company. Terms of the deal weren’t reported. Resideo announced Austin as its HQ back in 2018. The new acquisition follows its July 2019 acquisition of Pittsburgh-based LifeWhere.
Austin-based mobile apps and ads platform company Digital Turbine said this week that it has scooped up Arlington, Va.-based mobile ad platform Mobile Posse for about $66M. The deal could provide a substantial revenue boost for Digital Turbine. In 2019, Mobile Posse is said to have had $55M-plus in revenue. That adds to a growing business lineup for Austin’s Digital Turbine, which also has offices in Durham, N.C., Tel Aviv, San Francisco and Singapore.
Austin-based Code Pilot was acquired by AngelList, the company announced this week. Financial details weren’t available. The startup’s platform accelerates deployment of AI solutions. It was founded in 2018. The company doesn’t show any funding on Crunchbase. But in a blog, the company thanked advisors and investors Tony Charles, George Chondros, Michael Fletcher and Marguerita Fletcher.
Austin-based software and data analytic company Enverus, formerly known as DrillingInfo, acquired RS Energy Group. Financial details weren’t shared. Enverus, founded in 1999, is a portfolio company of Genstar Capital. It had $300M-plus in recurring annual revenue as of last year. RS Energy Group has offices in Calgary, Houston, New York and Philadelphia.
Austin code review startup PullRequest has acquired Brooklyn-based remote dev hiring platform Moonlight. No financial terms reported. The deal is the latest win for the company, which in 2018 landed $8M from Google’s Gradient Ventures. Moonlight was founded in 2017 and raised pre-seed funding from Goldcrest Capital, Haystack Ventures and Fathom Capital.
Vertify, an Austin sales and marketing software company founded in 2017, announced it acquired Atlanta-based B2B data tech company Synthio. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Other Venture Capital Activity
LiveOak Venture Partners named new members to its Venture Advisors program. Perhaps the most prominent name on the list is Lynn Atchison, an accomplished CFO who helped lead Hoovers and HomeAway through their IPOs and went on to be CFO of Spredfast. Also on the list is Peter Klante, whose LinkedIn shows him as chairman of Bloomfire and as a board director at NSS Labs, along with earlier work as a CEO at HyPerformix and as a senior director at Lotus/IBM. Dave Rubin, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Austin real estate tech startup OJO Labs, is also part of the program. Prior to OJO Labs, he founded several other startups, including ProfitFuel, which merged with Yodle in 2011, and HomeCity. Keith Zoellner, current CTO of Austin e-discovery startup DISCO, rounds out the advisory program. He also worked at Spredfast and previously helped lead teams at StoredIQ, which was sold to IBM.
Dell Technologies is leading a $60M Series C for Palo Alto-based app experience startup HeadSpin. The company has now raised $117M and has a valuation around $1.1B.
