Dear Startup Investor,
March was a busy month for our companies.
Appvance, SpeechTrans and Connect made significant upgrades to their products. And our two startup portal companies continue to upgrade and expand.
Below we update you on nine of our 23 holdings (not including our latest recommendation)…
That’s the early-stage fund we’re doing with our friends at MicroVentures. The fund – exclusively available to our members only – is filling up fast.
So if you want in, go ahead and click right here as soon as you can.
In the meantime, here’s the lowdown on some of our most active holdings – starting with some exciting news about the first fund we did with MicroVentures…
MicroVentures’ Pre-IPO Fund | Recommended: September 2014
Portal: MicroVentures
The fund boasts five of the top startups in the U.S. All five have growing revenues ranging from the hundreds of millions to billions. One of the five, Spotify, pulled in $1.4 billion in revenue in 2014. It is raising again – a seventh round, Series G. Spotify is already nearing its $400 million round target. Goldman Sachs is among the investors in this round. There is no shortage of institutions wanting to get a piece of Spotify.
Startup Investor members already have a piece through this fund, and are already making money on Spotify, paper profits for now, until an IPO takes place. The company hasn’t set any firm IPO date. Last September, the company was worth around $4 billion. MicroVentures secured shares around this period. Now Spotify is valuated at $8.4 billion, an increase of 68% in less than half a year. When Spotify does IPO, its value should be even higher.
Spotify exemplifies the promise we gave you when recommending the fund: safe gains and exceptional upside wrapped around a waiting period of a year or two.
The fund is on track to fulfilling its promise.
SpeechTrans | Recommended: December 2013
Portal: Onevest
As part of the Intel Business App Portfolio, SpeechTrans will now be able to showcase its solutions to users around the world. From a recent article by Intel…
For SpeechTrans and Intel, it’s all about continuing to work together to make communication tools easier to use, more accurate and truly universal. SpeechTrans is pushing back the border between science fiction and reality. “We think it’s possible that by 2020 every phone – and conceivably many other devices – will have a built-in speech translator,” predicted Auerbach (co-founder and COO of SpeechTrans).
You can also catch Auerbach on Fox business news right here…
SpeechTrans is giving two online webinars, one today, April 14, at 4:30 p.m., and one on April 28. If you’re interested, click here to sign up for the first webinar or here for the second one.
The company is targeting two new markets. One is the police force…
SpeechTrans will instantly translate the officer’s statement and read it aloud. In turn, the victim or suspect may speak in his or her native language, and SpeechTrans will translate into English for the officer. All conversations are automatically saved to the cloud and available for future reference or court proceedings.
The other market is healthcare. To meet Affordable Care Act requirements on providing translation services, Auerbach notes that medical facilities need to…
Integrate face-to-face machine translation at every patient touch point. This includes making automated translation available in ambulances, check-in rooms, ERs, delivery rooms. It’s important to cover every base because translations might be needed when you least expect.
SpeechTrans is nearing the end of its current $1.3 million raise, with just a few slots left.
Wefunder | Recommended: April 2014
Portal: Wefunder
Wefunder is one of our favorite startup portals. If you haven’t visited it yet, go ahead and give it a try.
Wefunder is tantalizingly close to reaching its goal of raising $3 million at an $18 million post-money valuation. We initially recommended Wefunder at a $15 million cap. Right now, you can still invest at the $18 million valuation, which we think is still fair. But with just a little over $43,000 to go, that won’t be the case much longer.
WeFunder’s track record speaks for itself. It’s pulled in over $9 million for over 70 companies that have listed on its site (including $1 million in March alone). It has grown 20% month over month these past two years.
Twelve percent of the companies that successfully raised seed funds have gone on to raise over $100 million in Series A (or follow-on funding).
Check them out by clicking right here.
Privy | Recommended: August 2014
Portal: Wefunder
Privy tracks where customers come from. Also what, when and where they spend, so retailers don’t have to. They’ve made a believer out of Bruegger’s Bagels.
Breugger’s has added over 45,000 new email addresses to its list. Before Privy, Bruegger’s says, this would have taken at least two years to accomplish. In the first two months alone, Breugger’s drew 30,000 customers into its stores – all a result of its Privy campaigns.
Tupelo Honey Cafe enjoyed similar results. The cafe chain collected 8,000 new emails (1,000 per location). About half led to store purchases.
Privy continues to build credibility along with happy and loyal customers.
NetPlenish | Recommended: December 2014
Portal: AngelList
Our congratulations go out to NetPlenish. It nabbed the No. 1 spot in Symmetry50’s list of “Top 100 Startups in LA.” Here’s the entry…
Shop any website smarter. ShopGenius will tell you if you’ve found the best price, or if there is a better price elsewhere… all without leaving the webpage you’re on.
ShopGenius is a free browser extension from the team at NetPlenish Inc., recognized award-winning innovators in the field of price comparison-shopping.
By the way, NetPlenish is now named “Intenta.”
Appvance | Recommended: January 2014
Portal: AngelList
Appvance uses the cloud to “simulate” millions of users piling into an app all at once. Its Founder, Kevin Surace, checked in with us last week. He reports making great strides on several fronts: improving technology, stepping up marketing activity and closing deals more frequently than ever before.
But I’m sorry. He has asked to keep the details he has shared with me confidential. Suffice it to say, we’re very pleased with Appvance’s progress to date.
Knightscope | Recommended: November 2014
Portal: AngelList
We recommended Knightscope in early November. By the end of the month, it had raised much more than its $3.4 million target, closing its Series A raise at $5.2 million funded.
The press release explains why one of its strategic investors in the round Konica Minolta decided to invest…
Knightscope’s security solution utilizes some of today’s hottest technologies in Silicon Valley – autonomous technology, robotics, big data, predictive analytics, sensors and social engagement – and we are delighted to help Knightscope define the next generation of public safety
Knightscope is deploying its first generation K5 machines in outdoor areas like corporate campuses, data centers and shopping malls.
Connect.com | Recommended: May 2014
Portal: AngelList
Connect pulls all the contacts from your other networks and conveniently puts them all in one place. In March, it launched the Android version of its mobile app. Along with this new app, it has introduced several new features including chats, groups and location sharing. The new functions are dubbed “Connect 2.0.”
SeedInvest | Recommended: May 2014
Portal: AngelList
We’re not the only ones who like SeedInvest CEO Ryan Feit. So does Mr. Jim Cramer. He had Ryan on his show, Mad Money, in February. Cramer, who certainly isn’t an expert in the startup realm, said his piece… “I think this is an incredibly exciting concept, even though actually investing in startups, as we all know, can be incredibly risky, that’s okay.”
Phew, good to know you now have official permission from Cramer to invest in startups!
Ryan mentioned two companies SeedInvest helped raise funds for. Virtuex was one (a company that intrigued me but didn’t quite make the grade). But a SeedInvest company that did was Knightscope (see our update above). Here’s what Ryan said…
Knightscope makes a five-foot robot that weighs three hundred pounds that can hear, see and smell. It rolls around alongside human security guards to protect schools and malls, and Microsoft actually just adopted them on their own campus.
Cramer’s show attracts over 150,000 viewers. On the other hand, Shark Tank, a show that features startup investing, regularly gets over 400,000. Maybe Cramer should switch his focus to the one tech market where growth is still going strong.
That’s it for now. Next week we’ll be telling you about a demo one of our
startups is doing for a potential client. It’s all very hush-hush right now, so I can’t go into details except to say the product being showcased has the potential of developing a vast global market within 18 to 24 months…
That is, if it does what it’s supposed to do next week. I’ll let you know.
Invest early and well,
Andy Gordon
Startup Investor Portfolio
