Portfolio
iSelect is investing in the innovative entrepreneurs and cutting-edge companies making real change happen in the fields of Agriculture, Healthcare, Resource Efficiency and B2B Software. Our portfolio companies are saving energy, reducing agricultural inputs such as water or fertilizer, breeding more efficient plants, or targeting conditions or diseases like obesity, cancer, or hypertension, and more.
Food & Agriculture
Location: Champaign, IL
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Agrible sells software that connects the agricultural supply chain from field-to-market, providing critical sustainability,agronomic, and yield data.
Location: Sydney, -1
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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AgriWebb is building the digital backbone of the livestock industry, connecting animal and land management to the supply chain and the consumer.
Location: San Francisco, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Arable, the leader in crop intelligence, advances digital agriculture globally. Forward-thinking agribusinesses, farming operations, and food and beverage companies use Arable to be more productive, sustainable, and profitable. Arable’s intuitive IoT-based solution combines reliable in-field weather, forecast, plant, soil, and irrigation data with advanced modeling and machine learning to deliver real-time, actionable insights into the entire crop system.
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Artemis is a software company making indoor farming profitable, efficient and traceable, enabling growers to drive the indoor farming revolution.
Location: Tel Aviv, AL
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Autonomous Pivot turns center-pivot irrigation systems into a noninvasive soil/crop sensor and communications network. This network feeds an artificial intelligence decision support engine for autonomous irrigation, fertigation, and crop protection, which ultimately helps growers maximize yield and minimize inputs.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series D
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Benson Hill is a crop improvement company that taps the natural genetic diversity of plants to develop healthier and more sustainable food. CropOS combines machine learning and big data with genome editing and plant biology to differentiate and accelerate the product development process to modernize our food system.
Location: Boulder, CO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Bond Pet Foods, Inc (“Bond” or the “Company”) develops alternative protein pet foods. Their microbial fermentation process uses animal DNA to create animal proteins without slaughtering any animals. The Company is currently in the process of obtaining regulatory clearance for its novel meat proteins and plans to sell its products to ingredient and pet food suppliers as well as direct to consumers.
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Bonumose is commercializing low-glycemic index, natural sugars through a proprietary, cost-effective enzymatic process.
Location: San Francisco, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Brightseed is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered nutrition discovery company that identifies unique micronutrients in the plant kingdom and maps them to specific human health conditions where they can have the highest impact.
Location: San Leandro, CA
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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Geltor has a platform technology that enables it to cost effectively produce sustainable and beneficial proteins for the cosmetic, food, beverage, nutritional supplement, and healthcare industries.
Location: Blacksburg, VA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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EarthOptics is building the technologies and data products that will allow for the accurate measurement and modeling of key soil attributes, enabling land managers to improve soil health and unlock the value of healthy soils.
Location: Johnston, IA
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Growers Edge offers warranty and lending products and services in the agtech marketplace. Their warranties help farmers by guaranteeing yield with the adoption of new technologies.
Location: Raleigh, NC
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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Harpe Bioherbicide Solutions, Inc. (“Harpe”) is an agtech company focused on providing natural and sustainable solutions to expand and provide new opportunities for organic agriculture while reducing, replacing, and synergizing with synthetic chemical use in row & specialty crops and commercial & consumer markets.
Location: Plant City, FL
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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HarvestCROO is building the premier automation and robotics solution to solve the labor shortage crisis in specialty agriculture, starting with strawberries.
Location: Longmont, CO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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HerdDogg’s patented animal wearable technologies provide animal tracking and aid in the identification of missed heats, illness, and dystocia (difficult births) for the 2.5 billion herd animals worldwide.
Location: Glen Mills, PA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Holganix produces organic plant probiotics that make soils and plants healthier, more resilient, and more productive.
Location: Somerville, MA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Kula Bio is an agriculture biotechnology company that aims to extend the life of microbes to unlock their biological potential and maximize their impact.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Kultevat combines genetic breeding and chemical process engineering to produce natural rubber from the Russian dandelion in North America.
Location: Silver Spring, MD
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Mercaris is a market data service and trading platform for organic, non-GMO, and other Identity Preserved (IP) agricultural commodities.
Location: Oakland, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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TradeLanes offers a SaaS-based trade execution and automation platform that eliminates the manual tasks needed to ship ocean containers. Its interface accesses real-time data about shipments, destinations, and clients, TradeLanes simplifies the export/import process by driving efficiencies, improving visibility, and reducing errors in the process.
Location: Emeryville, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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PatternAg’s crop protection product delivers actionable intelligence to farmers, based on high resolution mapping of the DNA found in a farmer’s soil. With nearly 100 billion organisms per soil core, Pattern’s metagenomic DNA sequencing technology maps the unique microbial community found in a farmer’s field, identifying key opportunities to increase yield and save money. Armed with Pattern’s insights into next season’s risks, especially from the most costly pathogens like Corn Rootworm and Soybean Cyst Nematode, farmers can apply recommended protective measures to maximize their yield or save money on inputs when those risks are absent.
Location: Durham, NC
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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PlantResponse Biotech is a Raleigh, NC based company that is developing and commercializing biologically related products that improve plant health and protect yield potential.
Location: Saint Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Plastomics has developed a proprietary genetic engineering model that can produce high performing crops through editing the chloroplast.
Location: Columbus, OH
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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ProteoSense is building a biosensing platform for rapid, cheap and highly sensitive food safety testing.
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Sentera is a UAV and crop analytics company delivering the most comprehensive suite of value-added hardware and software solutions available today to growers & agronomists.
Location: Springfield, TN
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Stony Creek Colors, Inc. produces eco-friendly, bio-based dyes for sale to premium denim and garment brands, as well as other consumer goods, to allow them to sell traceable and environmentally friendly products.
Location: Chicago, IL
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Tillable, Inc. is a digital agriculture real estate platform that allows farmers, landowners, sellers, and buyers to buy, sell, rent, manage, or finance farmland.
Location: San Diego, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Vence is a livestock data management and technology company that enables the scaling of the sustainable production of nutritious grass fed and pasture raised livestock. Its initial offering is solving the labor and capital intensive problem of fencing in pastured livestock management. The benefits to livestock management include improved control of animal movement, enhanced nutritional quality of animal products, reduced land degradation, improved soil health and sequestration of carbon in the soil.
Location: Kalamazoo, MI
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Vestaron is developing new products in the crop protection industry that address the growing concerns of resistance, high costs of R&D, and safety/environmental externalities.
Location: Mississauga, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Vive Crop Protection is delivering precision chemistry crop protection and fertility products that can reduce the volume of chemistry applied, reduce application costs, improve yields and improve the viability of more sustainable inputs, like biologics.
Healthcare
Location: Davis, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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BCD Bioscience discovers, develops and understands naturally occurring carbohydrate based prebiotics that enable unprecedented control of the microbiome for beneficial health and nutritional outcomes.
Location: Cambridge, MA
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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Cocoon Biotech is a biomaterials company that uses fibroin, a protein derived from the cocoon of the silkworm, to both replace unsustainable ingredients and provide the foundation for a new generation of innovative products.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Cofactor Genomics is a precision medicine company that focuses on RNA for its understanding of disease – initially cancer but with applicability across many diseases.
Location: Seattle, WA
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Cyrus Biotechnology is a drug discovery company that has developed and is employing innovative protein design software to make highly differentiated therapeutics. The company is building both internal and partnered protein biologics that are engineered to be safer, longer lived, more efficacious and more readily manufactured than those currently available.
Location: Germantown, TN
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Entac Medical is developing noninvasive devices for predictive and diagnostic medicine based on a novel, patented, platform technology, Previs Audio Spectral Analysis. Their first product is used to predict post operative ileus after GI surgeries.
Location: St. Louis, MO
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Euclises Pharmaceuticals is developing novel enzyme (COX-2) inhibitors designed to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy safely
Location: Davis, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series D
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Evolve Biosystems is an infant nutrition that develops microbial products that are key to the development of gut & immune health.
Location: San Francisco, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Overview
Faeth Therapeutics, Inc (“Faeth” of the “Company”) is clinical stage biotechnology company targeting cancer therapeutics. Faeth’s highly personalized precision nutrition program is designed to deprive tumors of the nutrients they need to grow. The Faeth Program includes meals, therapeutics, and on-demand support from Faeth nutritionists
Problem & Opportunity
More than 1.6 million people in the US are diagnosed with cancer each year, and close to 600,000 people die from it, making cancer the second leading cause of death.[1]
For many years, cancer has been thought of primarily as a genetic disease. New research suggests that while genetics may initiate cancers, it is metabolic interactions that cause the tumors to thrive and proliferate. Cancer cells grow continuously and rapidly, and they do this with metabolic processes that are distinct from that of healthy cells.[2]
Given that the research on the metabolic nature of tumors is new, researchers have not deployed this knowledge in the form of approved therapies. Oncologists have instead traditionally relied on the four pillars of cancer treatment: surgery, radiation, small molecules (targeted therapies or radiation), and increasingly immunotherapy (targeting the immune system to detect and kill cancers).
Solution & Technology
Faeth is developing a paradigm shift in oncology: using our metabolism to beat cancer through nutrition. The founders (see Team below) are world class researchers in oncology and have found that pairing a precision nutrition regiment with a known cancer therapeutic (chemotherapy, radiation, etc.) can greatly improve the efficacy of the therapeutic.
Faeth has three main components:
- Precision nutrition (e.g., an insulin suppressing diet or the targeted elimination of certain amino acids that have been implicated in tumor growth)
- Pairing the precision nutrition protocol with a known therapeutic intervention that has been shown to be more effective in animal models with a precision nutrition regiment
- Software and mobile application for patients to find treatment information, improve compliance, and build community
Faeth’s first three assets are in Phase 1 clinical trials. The first clinical trial pairs an insulin suppressing diet with a known cancer therapeutic that the Company has licensed from Takeda. The second two programs involve an amino acid restricted diet with existing and approved chemotherapies. These clinical trials are currently for pancreatic, colorectal, ovarian, and endometrial cancers, with more therapies in preclinical studies addressing other cancers.
Business Model & Commercial Traction
Faeth’s therapies are not currently in market. However, the Company has convened reimbursement panels consisting of representatives from large insurance companies, including Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna. The payer panel indicated that Faeth, based on other approved drugs in adjacent markets, is well positioned to receive reimbursement for its cancer therapies.
Competition & Differentiation
Faeth’s is the first of its kind in its metabolic approach to cancer treatment. Historically, cancer has been treated by surgery, radiation, drugs, or immunotherapies. Cancer drugs have predominantly focused on mutating growth signaling through small molecules. Some historical approaches focused on the metabolic pathways themselves, but Faeth’s approach is novel in that it goes upstream and focuses on controlling nutrients.
Deal Summary
Faeth is raising $55M of Series A Preferred Stock at a $165M pre-money valuation led by S2G Ventures (Benson Hill, Arable, et al.). Other participants include Khosla Ventures, Future Ventures, and Digitalis Ventures. Proceeds from the round will be used for continuing the clinical trials for its first three assets, R&D, and G&A. The Offering will close on September 14th, 2022 but iSelect needs to notify the Company of our interest by early June 2022.
If you have further questions, please reach out to your iSelect representative. Please let us know at your earliest convenience if you would like to participate.
Investment Disclaimer
Investments in private placements are speculative, illiquid and carry the risk of complete loss. In addition to the foregoing risks, the adverse economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are unknown and could materially impact this investment. Certain securities as designated are offered through North Capital Private Securities, member FINRA / SIPC. This document does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or interest in any fund or other issuer which can only be made through official offering documents that contain important information about risks, fees and expenses. Any investment information contained herein has been secured from sources we believe are correct, but we make no representations or warranties as to the accuracy of such information and accept no liability thereof. The information contained herein is subject to discussion, completion and amendment.
Red Herring Disclaimer
Faeth Therapeutics, Inc. (the “Company”) is seeking financing but has not obtained definitive investment documents for any such financing at this time. Moreover, iSelect Fund Management, LLC has not completed its due diligence review and approval of an investment in the Company. This information is being provided to you now because there is likely to be a short period of time between reaching definitive terms on any financing and the time when investors are required to decide to participate in such financing. Information contained herein is subject to completion or amendment. No securities for any proposed offering for the Company may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the definitive investment documents are provided for all investors to review.
Any final offer and sale of securities of Faeth Therapeutics, Inc. shall be subject to completion of the due diligence requirements set forth by the iSelect Investment Committee, including a review of a final Securities Purchase Agreement setting forth the full terms of such offering.
Existing Investors
Khosla Ventures, Future Ventures, KdT Ventures
Team
Anand Parikh, J.D. (CEO and Co-founder): Former CFO at Virta Health.
Oliver Maddocks, PhD (Head of Research and Co-founder): Professor of Cancer Biology & Metabolism, University of Glasgow
Lew Cantlay, PhD (Co-founder): Director Meyer Cancer Center, Weill Cornell Medicine Founder: Agios (NASDAQ), Petra, Volastra
Greg Hannon, PhD (Co-founder): Director of CRUK (Cancer Rearch UK) Cambridge Institute
Scott Lowe, PhD (Co-founder): Chair of Cancer Biology & Genetics at Memorial Sloan Kettering; Founder: ORIC (NASDAQ)
Sid Mukherjee, MD PhD (Co-founder): Asst. Prof., Columbia; Pulitzer Prize Winner; Time 100 Most Influential People; Founder: Vor (NASDAQ)
Karen Vousden, PhD (Co-founder): Chief Scientist of CRUK; Group Leader, Crick Institute; Director, Bristol Myers Squibb
Marcus Goncalves, MD PhD (Co-founder): Assistant Professor Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Weill Cornell Medicine New York
Ben Hopkins, PhD (Co-founder): Asst. Prof., Genetics Genomics & Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai New York
Simon Knott, PhD (Co-founder): Assistant Professor, Biomedical Sciences & Associate Director, Center for Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics, Cedars Sinai Medical Centre Los Angeles
[1] CDC
[2] American Journal of Pathology
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Flywheel offers a SaaS platform that provides cloud-scale data management and computational analysis.
Location: Saint Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Geneoscopy is developing next generation diganostics that use stool-derived RNA to prevent, detect, and guide treatment for gastrointestinal diseases.
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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GeneMatters is a digital health platform that provides scalable, on-demand genetic counseling to meet the rapidly growing demand for genetic services.
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Gila Therapeutics is developing a treatment for obesity using naturally occurring hormones known to induce satiety, leading to weight loss.
Location: Seattle, WA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Healionics, Inc. has developed a novel bio-material called STAR, that features strong anti-infective properties and significant reduction in the formation of scar tissue around implanted medical devices coated with the material.
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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HepaTx is a cell therapy company developing stem cell technologies to produce low-cost and scalable sources of liver cells that can be used to preserve or regenerate liver function in patients with liver failure.
Location: Cambridge, MA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Holobiome is developing a platform for microbiome-based therapeutics to treat diseases of the central and enteric nervous systems.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Immunophotonics has developed a novel polymer that retains cancer antigens after an ablation procedure. Injected into the tumor site after the procedure, it primes the immune system for a systemic wide response to the tumor and its metastases.
Location: Exton, PA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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MOBILion Systems is an analytical instrumentation company using ion mobility to substantially improve the ability to see and identify previously undetectable, clinically significant molecules in minutes.
Location: San Diego, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Molecular Assemblies is developing an enzymatic DNA synthesis platform technology. Molecular Assemblies’ novel enzymatic DNA synthesis platform has the potential to fundamentally transform how we write genetic building blocks with applications across food, healthcare, energy, and beyond.
Location: Willoughby Hills, OH
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Neuros Medical, a medical device company, develops an electrical nerve block to treat chronic pain for conditions including neuroma/residual limb pain and chronic post-surgical pain.
Location: Boston, MA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Nix Biosensors is developing a wearable device and biosensor system platform that monitors hydration in real-time, helping reduce health incidents associated with dehydration while improving performance for athletes, laborers, military personnel and the elderly.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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Readout (or The Company) has developed a low-cost breath-analysis device with clinical grade accuracy for measuring blood-ketone levels, an important indicator of a patient’s metabolism.
Location: Burlingame, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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SciBac is developing a platform technology called MERGE that enables the Company to efficiently combine desired traits of two microbes into one stable hybrid organism through lab-induced directed evolution.
Resource Efficiency
Location: Austin, TX
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Bractlet forecasts and verifies energy savings for retrofits of energy consuming equipment in commercial buildings, enabling significant energy saving and cost reduction.
Location: Boulder, CO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Rebound Technologies builds IcePoint, a novel cooling technology that delivers unmatched control and efficiency to industrial freezers.
B2B Technology
Location: Columbia, MO
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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AdKiosks is a digital ad platform that enables advertisers to display unlimited products from a single ad space.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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CrazyForEducation provides an online database of educational and tutoring programs in which lecturing occurs primarily outside the classroom while tutoring (homework) is done inside the classroom.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Denim Social, Inc. (fka Gremlin Social) is secure social media software for regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare. A full marketing and analysis suite wrapped in a security layer to maintain compliance.
Location: Boulder, CO
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Honcho monitors and archives all digital employee communications on authorized company devices using artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure compliance in regulated industries.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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Mentor Spaces (fka The Whether), provides a job-matching platform that helps employers hire better-qualified candidates based on individual skills and business culture fit.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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BenchmarkONE provides all-in-one sales and marketing software designed especially for small to mid-sized businesses
Location: Kansas City, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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PopBookings develops software that streamlines the temporary employment market, with an initial focus on the event-staffing segment.
Location: St. Louis, MO
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Rewards Caterings (Time to Cater) is a web-based full service national catering concierge service used to manage catered events of any scale.
Location: Cleveland, OH
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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StreamLink sells grant and board of Director management software to public sector and nonprofit institutions. StreamLink helps these grant recipients comply with new Federal and state transparency and accountability laws – in so doing, increasing grant effectiveness, transparency, and compliance.