Investors are still on the hunt. That’s the message the D.C.-area startup community got in October, when multiple ventures across age and stage secured new investments.
Leading the pack was McLean staffing startup ShiftMed LLC with $45 million to expand its workforce management platform, which connects hospitals and other health care organizations with nurses and other available workers.
Also during the month, D.C. cooking platform Larabee set out to raise $1 million and Fort Belvoir-based Kinometrix Inc., whose software helps hospitals prevent patient falls, opened a $3 million round. And Georgetown social entrepreneurship nonprofit Halcyon launched a new microloan fund, powered with $100,000 from D.C.'s Kimsey Foundation — and funneling its first investment to D.C. retailer Nubian Hueman.
Related: All of the fundings through January and February, March and April, May, June, July, August and September.
But that’s just a small sampling of the activity. Here are more Greater Washington ventures that raised new funding in October:
- Synaps Dx: The Rockville company, which makes diagnostics for neurodegenerative disorders, announced Oct. 12 $10 million in Series A funding from private equity, corporate investors, and individual and family funds. The business plans to use that capital to scale up production for its minimally invasive test for Alzheimer’s disease. Its biomarker technology comes from more than 10 years of research by scientists at the Blanchette Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, now part of West Virginia University. It’s led by CEO Frank Amato, a two-decade biotech veteran previously of med-tech company electroCore Inc. of Basking Ridge, New Jersey and global pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. Inc.
- Chase Therapeutics Corp.: The D.C. pharmaceutical company said Oct. 20 it raised $20 million in Series B funding to support clinical trials for its two drug candidates in late-stage development: for Parkinson’s disease and major depressive disorder. The capital also enables the business to advance a diagnostic product for Parkinson’s. It comes on top of a prior $5.2 million in Series A capital. The clinical-stage company launched in 2016 and has since been developing drugs for brain disease. Dr. Thomas Chase, president and CEO of Chase Therapeutics, is an alum of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. He’s also founded and led multiple specialty pharmaceutical companies, including Chase Pharmaceuticals, which was acquired by Allergan in 2016.
- ForecastEra: The Reston IT startup said Oct. 20 it nabbed $4.5 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Herndon’s Ringbolt Capital. The company, which reports triple-digit growth, plans to use the funding to expand into Salesforce markets. The service helps finance and sales teams make sales and revenue forecasting, and other metrics, more accurate. The investment comes on top of $2.8 million from Vattikuti Ventures.
- BCMStrategy Inc.: The Alexandria company told us in mid-October it secured $50,000 from the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority Investment Division’s direct investment initiative, the Center for Innovative Technology’s GAP Funds program. The investment more than doubled its lifetime capital to more than $800,000 mostly from angel investors. BCMStrategy may hire a full-time chief technology officer, as well as a dedicated sales and marketing team, “if we acquire sufficient funding and/or revenue during early 2022,” founder and CEO Barbara Matthews said. The company’s tech measures public policy volatility around areas including digital currency, climate, trade policy, monetary policy and banking regulation. Matthews — a lawyer by training with a deep interest in the innovation frontier — started the business in 2017 after working for the Institute of International Finance, the U.S. House of Representatives, the Department of Treasury and the Department of State.
- 1863 Ventures: D.C. business development nonprofit 1863 Ventures, led by founder and managing director Melissa Bradley, said Oct. 19 it received $1.25 million from the District’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning & Economic Development. Money from the Inclusive Innovation Equity Impact Fund, as it’s called, supports local entrepreneurs growing their businesses — and 1863 is handling the investments.
- EarthOptics: This Raleigh, North Carolina-based agri-tech startup with a substantial Arlington footprint raked in $10.3 million in late September, in a round led by Bayer’s impact investing arm. The company’s soil-mapping and machine-learning technologies aim to help farmers better care for their crops. EarthOptics, formerly GroundTruth Ag, spun out of the AgTech Accelerator in Research Triangle Park in 2018 with an initial $2 million raise.
