TIA Ventures is a seed-stage fund focused on B2B software, helping new businesses scale into industry standards. We are a seed-stage fund focused on B2B software, helping new businesses scale into industry standards. Our process leverages expert customer and team diligence techniques to identify visceral product/market fit and ability to scale - the primary success-drivers for early-stage companies. Our close work with founding teams on 'Critical Period' growth areas amplifies our impact well beyond our initial investment. The result: our investment strategy generates returns in the top of the upper quartile, creates co-investment opportunities for our Limited Partners, and maximizes upside while producing zero failures.

TIA Ventures

Villhard Growth Partners (VGP) is a St. Louis-based private equity firm that invests in Midwest-based businesses. Our venture capital division invests in very young companies that typically have a connection to Washington University and/or St. Louis and have the potential for explosive growth. Our buyout division invests in mature, high-cash flow companies, typically in partnership with entrepreneurial founders or owner-managers.

Villhard Growth Partners

Telescope Partners is an active growth equity firm partnering with best in class entrepreneurs across the technology landscape. We invest ourselves and our capital in companies building long-term, sustainable businesses.

Telescope Partners

Gipper

Gipper is a content creation platform for schools that makes graphic design quick and easy. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered  in New York, United States.

Gipper is a sports graphics and social media content creation platform designed specifically for athletic organizations. It offers a vast library of customizable templates for game day graphics, score updates, schedules, player highlights, and more. Users can easily personalize these templates by adding their logos, colors, text, photos, and videos without requiring any design experience. Gipper's AutoBrand feature automatically applies an organization's official branding elements to the graphics.

Create Sports Graphics in Seconds

‎Gipper

USYS Kansas

Gipper Raises $8.6M to Allows Athletic Programs to Bring Their A Game When it Comes to Social Media – AlleyWatch

‘GIPPR’ Chatbot for Conservatives Hits the Market

Creating affordable content for the digital age

Content Creation Tools

Gipper Announces $2.7M Seed Financing, Releases Gipper 2.0, Gipper.com, and More

Gipper is a sports graphics and social media content creation platform designed specifically for athletic organizations. It offers a vast library of customizable templates for game day graphics, score updates, schedules, player highlights, and more. Users can easily personalize these templates by adding their logos, colors, text, photos, and videos without requiring any design experience. Gipper's AutoBrand feature automatically applies an organization's official branding elements to the graphics.
The platform's user-friendly interface allows for seamless editing, including moving, resizing, and rearranging various elements on the templates. Gipper caters to the on-the-go needs of sports administrators and coaches by providing a mobile app for iOS and Android, enabling real-time content creation and sharing from any location.
Gipper streamlines the content distribution process by offering direct posting or scheduling capabilities to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Additionally, users can download the graphics for use on digital scoreboards, print materials, or other mediums.
Key customers and partnerships
In December 2022, Gipper partnered with the Kansas Youth Soccer Association (KSYSA) to provide its member clubs with affordable access to the platform, enabling them to drive participation, engage communities, promote athletes, and generate sponsorship opportunities through professional-looking social media content.

Canva is a graphic design platform that offers a web-based suite of tools and features for creating professional-looking designs for various purposes, including social media graphics, presentations, marketing materials, and more. Founded in 2013 by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams, Canva provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop functionality, an extensive library of templates, graphics, and fonts, allowing users to design without extensive technical expertise.
Canva's key product offerings revolve around its versatile design tool that enables users to create visually engaging content. The platform incorporates features such as customizable templates, a vast collection of graphics and images, video editing capabilities, and tools for designing websites, presentations, and documents. Canva's collaborative features allow multiple users to work on designs simultaneously, fostering teamwork and streamlining the creative process.
In 2021, Canva generated revenue of over USD 1 billion, with 10 million paid subscribers and 4.5 million paid team subscriptions. The company has experienced remarkable growth, amassing 90 million users as of October 2022. Canva's profitability and strong cash reserves, with USD 700 million on hand, have positioned it as a resilient player in the industry, even during challenging economic conditions.
To further enhance its offerings, Canva has acquired several companies, including Zeetings (a presentations startup), Pexels and Pixabay (stock photography websites), Kaleido.ai (an Australian startup), and Smartmockups (a Czech-based company). In September 2022, Canva announced the launch of its "Canva Worksuite," a comprehensive suite of products aimed at professionals, including Canva Docs (a document editor), Canva Websites (a website builder), and Canva Whiteboards, among others.
Key customers and partnerships
Canva has established partnerships with various companies to expand its reach and enhance its offerings. In 2020, Canva signed contracts with FedEx Office and Office Depot, enabling users to print and ship their designs directly from the platform.
The company has also forged strategic collaborations with industry leaders, such as its recent partnership with Affinity, a provider of professional-grade creative software. This alliance aims to bridge the gap between user-friendly platforms and professional-grade tools, empowering creators at all levels.
Furthermore, Canva has gained significant traction within the enterprise sector, with 85% of Fortune 500 companies, including FedEx, L'Oréal, and Salesforce, utilizing Canva's design tools. As of 2022, Canva reported having 4.4 million customers paying for its "Canva for Teams" offering, demonstrating its growing presence in the business world.

Canva

Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps professionals and students communicate effectively across various platforms and devices. Developed by linguists and engineers, Grammarly uses algorithms to provide suggestions for improving grammar, spelling, punctuation, clarity, conciseness, tone, and overall style.
Grammarly's key product offerings include a free version with basic writing suggestions, as well as premium and business plans with advanced features like full-sentence rewrites, plagiarism detection, vocabulary enhancements, and brand tone consistency. The AI analyzes writing in real-time and makes contextual recommendations to ensure the message resonates with the intended audience.
One of Grammarly's standout capabilities is its seamless integration with over 500,000 apps and websites, allowing users to receive writing feedback wherever they type.
Key customers and partnerships
Grammarly has formed partnerships with educational institutions like Harvard University and Stanford University to help students and faculty improve their writing proficiency. Its business plan serves companies across various industries, assisting teams in maintaining consistency and adherence to specific brand tones through customizable style guides.
As of June 2024, Grammarly's user base includes over 30 million people worldwide and over 70,000 professional teams.

Grammarly

Picsart is a digital content creation platform that offers a suite of AI-powered tools for creating and editing images, videos, GIFs, logos, and other visual content. The company's flagship product, Picsart Ignite, comprises over 20 AI tools that enable users to generate visuals, enhance existing content, and streamline creative workflows.
Picsart's AI capabilities span image generation, upscaling, object removal, background replacement, style transfer, and avatar creation. Its tools cater to both individual creators and businesses, assisting with tasks like designing social media posts, ads, and product visuals. The platform has seen significant adoption, with over 2 million AI-generated images produced daily as of November 2023.
The company has also expanded its enterprise offerings, launching an API program in February 2022 that allows businesses to integrate Picsart's creative tools into their platforms. This move aims to support the creator economy by enabling businesses to offer deeper creative experiences.
Key customers and partnerships
In June 2024, Picsart announced a partnership with Getty Images, a leading provider of stock imagery. This collaboration enables Picsart subscribers to generate unique images with commercial rights and indemnity directly within the platform, streamlining the content creation process for marketers and businesses.
Additionally, Picsart has integrated its tools with Walsworth Yearbooks, one of America's largest yearbook printers. This integration grants students access to Picsart's photo editing suite, enhancing their yearbook design capabilities with AI-powered solutions.

Picsart

Typeform is a no-code SaaS platform offering conversational forms, quizzes, surveys, and asynchronous video solutions to help companies engage with their audiences and grow their businesses. Founded in Barcelona in 2012 by David Okuniev and Robert Muñoz, Typeform revolutionized online data collection by emphasizing empathy and seamless design to make digital interactions feel more human. The platform's intuitive, mobile-responsive forms feature one question at a time, natural language, and built-in logic to emulate real conversations.
Typeform's core product allows users to create visually appealing, customizable forms without coding. Its paid plans, ranging from USD 290 to USD 990 annually, offer advanced features such as unlimited questions, payment integration, and email notifications. The platform integrates with various business tools like HubSpot, Google Sheets, MailChimp, and Salesforce.

Typeform

Ceros is a cloud-based experiential content creation platform that empowers marketers and designers to create rich, interactive content without code or traditional web development. The Ceros platform provides a no-code solution for creating and publishing engaging digital experiences that drive user engagement, lead generation, and sales.
At the core of Ceros is a design studio that offers complete creative control, enabling users to develop and deploy pixel-perfect layouts using a familiar freeform canvas. They can incorporate animations, interactions, and multimedia elements into their designs using presets and templates. The studio facilitates collaboration, with features for real-time previews across devices, version control, and file management.
Ceros simplifies the creative workflow by allowing direct import of design files from Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and integration with Getty Images library. It is compatible with all major CMS platforms for seamless embedding of interactive content on websites. Published experiences can be easily updated in real-time and optimized for search discoverability.
Ceros has evolved from a digital publishing startup in 2012 to a comprehensive experiential content solution serving enterprise clients across industries. With over 350 employees, it reported annual recurring revenue of over USD 50 million as of September 2022 after raising USD 133.5 million in funding led by Sumeru Equity Partners.

Ceros

Assists content writers in creating digital written media including blogs, ebooks, magazines, and journals.

Offers tools to create pictures, videos, animations, and other visual media.

Assists in creating a variety of digital media channels including podcasts, polls, quizzes, and surveys.

Platforms for discovering and purchasing digital content. Typically offering a repository of digital content or a marketplace to discover and connect with content creators.

Tools for collaboration between internal and external team members on content creation.

Platforms that provide an all-in-one solution that covers the entire content creation process. Typically also provides consultancy services covering content strategy, design, and analytics.

NLP automates the creation of personalized written media content for different use cases

For written and visual content creation AI/ML is a core part of the end result

Uses generative AI to automate the creation of personalized content across multiple media formats

Gipper

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