A Portland life sciences software maker has secured $3 million in seed funding.
Using a round almost entirely comprised of Oregon investors, Kivo will work to develop its software and get the tool to the broader life sciences space.
The startup is a recent spin-out of a services company called Facet Life Sciences that works with emerging and small pharmaceutical companies to gain regulatory approval, run clinical trials and get first drugs to market. Facet had developed its platform over the last 10 years.
Facet led the round along with Oregon Venture Fund. Also participating were Rogue Venture Partners, Cascade Seed Fund and Peninsula Ventures.
“We made it an Oregon deal,” said CEO Toban Zolman, who has worked with Portland ecosystem startups since 2011. His background includes stints at ShopIgniter, Cloudability and Rigado.
Kivo, which spun-out in January, released its software last month under its new brand. The product helps pharmaceutical space customers manage documents for regulatory processes.
“Clearly, there is a huge hunger for some new solutions in the space," Zolman said. "We were able to bring a net new solution and leverage a decade of feature development and fine tune that from Facet.”
Kivo's seven-staffer team employs five Portland workers. The company uses a coworking space but expects to enter its own office soon. It will use the fundraise to double its headcount, as Kivo will hire engineers, sales and marketing workers to help scale its products.
Also on the team is COO Greg Rau, who held the same job at Rigado and has worked at such Portland tech companies as Unicru, StepChange Group, and Chirpify. He was also CEO of Upstart Labs, an investor and accelerator.
For Zolman, taking the helm of Kivo is a homecoming of sorts. Early in his career, he was part of Image Solutions Inc., a company that created the first electronic submissions products for new drug applications to the FDA. After that company was acquired in 2010, he moved to Portland.
It was friends from ISI who created Facet and the initial software that would become Kivo.
“(The software) had momentum, but they weren’t a software company,” he said. “I came in to help figure out how to grow it and go to market. I saw the opportunity for growth.”
