Daily funding roundup - October 21, 2015`

Mitos Suson · October 21, 2015 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/40d0

Arvinas bagged $41.6M; Clavis Insight received $20M; Adjust landed $17M

  • LeanTaaS, a Silicon Valley healthcare SaaS provider, today announced its first institutional funding round of $3 million led by Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc., the leader in innovative claims and productivity management solutions. Funding will be used to advance the product and go-to-market plans for the recently launched LeanTaaS iQueue Healthcare Suite as well as the creation of a “Labs” division focused on advanced algorithms for risk analytics. 

  • Sweeten, a renovation matchmaker connecting homeowners with major renovation projects to a curated network of screened general contractors, today announced that it has closed $3.5 million in Series A funding led by Navitas Capital. Other prominent investors in the round include Overnight Capital and Gotham Gal Ventures. The new funding will enable Sweeten to expand to new cities beyond New York, add a network of local project managers, and offer general contractors even more opportunities to secure highly profitable business leads – with the current Sweeten project size averaging $100,000.

  • Solinea, a global provider of open infrastructure solutions for deployment and adoption of production clouds, has closed a US$4 million Series A investment round, led by Translink Capital and including angel investors. A strategic partnership with ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation is also part of the deal, giving Solinea increased reach into the Japanese IT services market for open infrastructure cloud, complementing the company’s client bases in North America and Europe.

  • Simon Williams, a former top Citigroup executive and an early investor in Lending Club and OnDeck Capital, has invested $5 million in the San Francisco startup, NerdWallet. That expands the size of NerdWallet's Series A financing, first announced in May, to $69 million. The six-year-old startup, which reviews and sells credit cards and other financial products, is now valued at about $510 million.

  • Cielo24, Inc., a Santa Barbara, CA-based online searchable captioning and media data platform, raised $5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by ff Venture Capital, with participation from North Base Media, Pereg Ventures, Indicator Ventures, Wavemaker Partners and existing investors. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate market evolution towards media data driven video experiences by investing in new services, and analytical and media insight technology.

  • Three-year-old specialty indie food site Mouth Foods, one of a number of startups competing in the increasingly crowded online food space, has raised $5.5 million in a Series A round. The company, which has its offices and warehouse across the street from each other in Dumbo, announced the fundraising round on Monday. It was led by KarpReilly, a Greenwich, Conn., investment firm that specializes in e-commerce and food and beverage startups. Previous investors also took part, including Vocap Investment Partners and Jason Calacanis. The investment, which brings Mouth's funding total to around $8.7 million, will be used to make executive hires and expand a fast growing corporate sales business.

  • Citus Data, creator of solutions that scale out PostgreSQL for real-time big data, today announced it has secured $9.5 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation by previous Citus Data investors including Data Collective and Vaizra Investments. Ari Zilka, a partner at Khosla Ventures and previously chief technology officer at Hortonworks, will join the Citus Data board of directors. The funding round will be used to grow the Citus Data development team and expand sales and marketing efforts. 

  • Skills Fund, a student financing and quality assurance platform for coding and data science programs, announced today it raised $11.5 million in seed capital to issue loans to students of leading high-quality accelerated learning programs. Select launch partners include Dev Bootcamp, Metis, Galvanize, Hackbright Academy, CodeU, and Sabio. In partnering with high-quality programs that target diverse student populations, Skills Fund will accelerate bootcamp industry growth and student access to skills training for millions of high-paying, unfilled tech jobs in America.

  • Online grocery delivery service Honestbee has raised $15 million in a series A round, it announced today. Silicon Valley investment firm Formation 8 led the round. The company has a track record of investing in technology companies like Oculus VR. The round was joined by Silicon Valley venture fund Pejman Mar Ventures, an investor in Dropbox and Lending Club, as well as Facebook, Amazon, and Google luminaries Gideon Yu, Owen Van Natta, and Steve Chen. It’s an investment round with an unmistakable Bay Area flavor for the Singapore-based company.

  • Highland Europe has led a $17 million round in mobile app intelligence and analytics startup Adjust. This brings total funding since being founded in 2012 to $30 million. The Berlin-headquartered company (formerly known as Adeven) — which as additional offices in San Francisco, Istanbul, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo and Sydney — offers an open source SDK that enables app developers to track and analyse things like user acquisition, feature releases, and user lifetime cohorts.

  • Clavis Insight, a provider of eCommerce store analytics to consumer goods companies, announced today it has received a $20 million growth equity investment from Accel-KKR, a technology-focused private equity investment firm and existing investors. The investment will be used to support Clavis’ strategic growth initiatives including the expansion of sales and customer support efforts in United States, Europe and China and the continued innovation in its eCommerce Intelligence platform that is used by the world's top 10 consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies and half of the next 100 CPG or fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies.

  • Insureon, an online provider of small business insurance, today announced $31 million in new funding led by Oak HC/FT, a leading venture capital fund investing in financial technology companies. Also participating in the round was Accretive, a leading private investment firm specializing in the creation of disruptive technology companies, which built Insureon and led the company’s previous rounds of financing.

  • New Haven, CT-based Arvinas signed up Genentech as its second marquee collaborator and now has garnered a $41.6 million B round to continue its pipeline development work. Startup backers Canaan Partners and 5AM Ventures jumped into this new round, getting some help from some crossovers while enrolling RA Capital Management, OrbiMed and New Leaf Venture Partners into the financial fan club. Arvinas will use the money to take one giant step beyond protein inhibition and into protein degradation, going after a range of tough targets with a more permanent solution for some serious medical problems.

If you are interested in being included in our funding roundup, submit your press release or blog post about your financing round to mitos@vator.tv. 

Image source: wire2014.eu

Image Description

Mitos Suson

I produce Vator Events and enjoy the challenge. I am learning and growing a lot, being involved with Vator and loving every moment of it!

All author posts

Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs

Siemer & Associates

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on

Siemer & Associates LLC is a global boutique merchant bank dedicated to offering candid insight and guidance to digital media, software and Internet companies throughout their business life cycles. Composed of industry veterans who have worked both inside and out of technology enterprises, S&A has successfully completed more than 50 transactions that aggregated over $3 billion in sell-side mandates and surpassed $1.5 billion in equity capital. Headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in New York and Hong Kong, S&A offers exceptional corporate capital raising, financial advisory services and M&A, specializing in complex cross-border transactions.

Committed to expanding the international technology ecosystem, Siemer & Associates promotes innovative entrepreneurs through its early-stage investment arm, Siemer Ventures, and its incubator, Wavemaker Labs. One of the most active investment funds in Southern California, Siemer Ventures claims more than 40 current portfolio companies and makes an average of 12 new investments each year in digital media startups. Based in Singapore, Wavemaker Labs is a joint venture between Siemer & Associates and Tholons that receives significant co-investment from the Singaporean government as an “approved technology incubator” under the Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS) of the Singaporean government’s National Research Foundation (NRF).

Khosla Ventures

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on

Khosla Ventures offers venture assistance, strategic advice and capital to entrepreneurs. The firm helps entrepreneurs extend the potential of their ideas in both traditional venture areas like the Internet, computing, mobile, and silicon technology arenas but also supports breakthrough scientific work in clean technology areas such as bio-refineries for energy and bioplastics, solar, battery and other environmentally friendly technologies. Vinod was formerly a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins and founder of Sun Microsystems. Vinod has been labeled the #1 VC by Forbes and Fortune recently labeled him as one the nation's most influential ethanol advocates, noting "there are venture capitalists, and there's Vinod Khosla." Vinod Khosla founded the firm in 2004.

Canaan Partners

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on

Canaan Partners invests in entrepreneurs and works alongside them to turn visionary ideas into valuable companies.  Since 1987, the firm has catalyzed the growth of disruptive technology startups and healthcare companies revolutionizing the practice of medicine.  With $3.4 billion under management and more than 95 acquisitions and 55 IPOs to date, Canaan has funded companies such as Acme Packet, Associated Content (acquired by Yahoo), CommerceOne, DoubleClick (acquired by Google), ID Analytics (acquired by LifeLock), Match.com (acquired by IAC), SandForce (acquired by LSI), SuccessFactors (acquired by SAP) and Virsto Software (acquired by VMware).  Current technology investments include Blurb, Kabam, Lending Club, Performance Marketing Brands, SOASTA, Tremor Video and Zoosk in the U.S.; BharatMatrimony, Loylty Rewardz and UnitedLex in India; and PrimeSense and LiveU in Israel.  Canaan maintains a presence in the global innovation hubs of Silicon Valley, New York City, India and Israel.    For more information visit www.canaan.com orwww.facebook.com/canaanpartners. Follow us on Twitter @canaanpartners.