Meta is a social technology company that enables people to connect, find communities, and grow businesses.  Previously known as Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced the company rebrand to Meta on October 28, 2021 at the company's annual Connect Conference. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in Menlo Park, California in 2004. With millions of more users, [Friendster] attempted to acquire the company for $10 million in mid-2004. Facebook turned down the offer and subsequently received $12.7 million in funding from [Accel Partners] at a valuation of around $100 million. Facebook continued to grow opening up to high school students in September 2005 and adding a photo-sharing feature the next month. The next spring, Facebook received $25 million in funding from [Greylock Partners] and [Meritech Capital] as well as previous investors [Accel Partners] and [Peter Thiel]. The pre-money valuation for this deal was about $525 million. Facebook subsequently opened up to work networks eventually amassing over 20,000 work networks. Finally, in September 2006, Facebook was opened to anyone with an email address. Facebook continued to receive funding most notably in January 2011 receiving $1.5 billion and valuing the company at $50 billion. A year later in February 2012, Facebook announced that it was filing for its long-anticipated initial public offering. The company went public on May 18, 2012 opening in [NASDAQ] with shares trading at $42.05. Facebook announced positive numbers in February 2012 upon filing for its IPO. As of July 2013 over 1.15 billion users have logged into Facebook every month and 669 million users daily. Mobile users now make up half of Facebook’s user base with 819 million monthly actives. Facebook is one of the most trafficked sites in the United States. Additionally, Facebook is the top photo-sharing site with 250 million photos uploaded per day. The company has a strategic partnership with AXA Group to develop marketing and commercial collaboration in the digital, social, and mobile sphere. Facebook is currently the owner of many applications and services such as Pagemodo Pagebuilder, [RSS Graffiti], Huddle, and more. It is the world’s largest social network with over 1.32 billion monthly active users.

Y Combinator

Goodwater empowers exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for the better. They believe consumer technology is a force on earth, shaping culture and transforming the global economy at unprecedented speed and scale. They invest in promising entrepreneurs to solve pressing problems. As a combined force, Goodwater companies are a global force for change, poised to measurably improve billions of lives.

Goodwater Capital

LINE develops calling and messaging applications for mobile phones in Japan and internationally. It offers LINE, a smartphone application that allows users to make free calls and messaging with other users regardless of which mobile network provider they are using.The company also offers NAVER, a search communication service; NAVER Matome, a user-participatory curation platform; Livedoor, a portal site; livedoor Blog, a blogging service; and livedoor News that provides information gathered from various news sources, as well as a range of advertising products. In addition, it operates LINE GAME, a platform that lets LINE users to play games.

Line

Pioneer Square Labs is a studio that creates and launches technology startups. They provide market research, concept validation, engineering, data science, visual, UX design, and product management services. They also provide recruiting, fundraising, marketing, company formation, finance, operations, legal, and HR services.

Pioneer Square Labs

SV Tech Ventures focuses its investments primarily on companies that have successfully demonstrated their capabilities to develop advanced technologies.

SV Tech Ventures

Pioneer Fund is a fund of 420+ Y Combinator alumni, investing in the top Y Combinator startups.

Pioneer Fund

TRAC is a quantitative venture capital firm that uses collective intelligence, data, math, and common sense to identify future unicorns. Generally, TRAC invests in the 2nd or 3rd round of targeted startups. The firm was founded in 2020 in Sonoma, California.

TRAC

Pack Ventures' venture capital returns are uncorrelated with asset classes, and returns have been strong over extended market cycles. It is a pre-seed and seed venture capital investing company. For inquiries, an online inquiry form is available on their website.

Pack Ventures

LifeAt

LifeAt develops modular productivity/focus software. It aims to prevent focus drift by making productivity management simple, so users can spend more time doing actual work.

<div>LifeAt is a workplace productivity tool founded in 2021 by Devin Ajimine, Pouya Rad, Marisa Chentakulm, and Ashika Mulagada&mdash;who was featured on Forbes&rsquo; &ldquo;30 Under 30&rdquo; list in 2022. LifeAt consolidates and organizes various productivity tools onto one screen, allowing users to create their personalized digital office. It offers a selection of virtual backgrounds (called &quot;spaces&quot;) and allows users to add a to-do list, share a calendar, and invite friends into the space for video calls. LifeAt uses a subscription-based business model, which includes a freemium plan, with paid plans starting at USD 9 per user per month.&nbsp;</div>

The tools that power remote work are define the next generation of enterprise software.

Remote Work Tools

<div>
 
 LifeAt is a workplace productivity tool founded in 2021 by Devin Ajimine, Pouya Rad, Marisa Chentakulm, and Ashika Mulagada&mdash;who was featured on Forbes&rsquo; &ldquo;30 Under 30&rdquo; list in 2022. LifeAt consolidates and organizes various productivity tools onto one screen, allowing users to create their personalized digital office. It offers a selection of virtual backgrounds (called &quot;spaces&quot;) and allows users to add a to-do list, share a calendar, and invite friends into the space for video calls. LifeAt uses a subscription-based business model, which includes a freemium plan, with paid plans starting at USD 9 per user per month.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company claims its app has been downloaded &ldquo;over a million times&rdquo; after going viral on TikTok. The app is used by employees from companies like Amazon, Meta, Stripe, and Google.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16062">
 January 2023
 </a>
 , the company raised USD 3 million to further develop LifeAt's platform. The funding was allocated for platform development. LifeAt graduated from the startup accelerator, Y Combinator, and has attracted investments from various venture capital firms, including New Product Experimentation (a venture arm of Meta).
 
</div>

Hive is a productivity platform for project management and collaboration. The platform provides automated workflows, project planning layouts, and action templates to assign and keep track of project tasks. Hive focuses on improving task execution with instant feedback cycles for editing and approvals. Additional features include note taking (Hive Note), instant messaging, online meetings, and file sharing.Hive offers a variety of ways for teams to organize their projects, including Gantt charts, Kanban boards, tables, and calendars, with updates made in one view automatically reflected in all others. The platform allows team members to create action cards with files, sub-actions, dependencies, and comments to stay on top of their objectives, and have access to a personal to-do list that compiles all assigned tasks from all projects. Managers can use Hive to assign approvals, share proofs, provide feedback, and collect project forms from clients and customers. Hive also uses AI and machine learning to provide insights on team productivity and identify potential risks, and to optimize resource allocation and client billing.Key customers and partnershipsThe company’s customer base includes Google, Toyota, Comcast, and Starbucks. Hive offers integrations with over 1,000 SaaS platforms, including Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and Smartsheet, allowing users to import tasks from these platforms.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5208">August 2021</a>, Hive raised USD 10 million in a funding round led by Rembrandt Venture Partners with participation from Zoom, and existing investors Tribeca Venture Partners and Angelpad. Hive is one of the first startups to receive an investment from Zoom’s “Zoom Apps Fund” (a USD 100 million global venture fund). The fresh funds were allocated toward platform development.&nbsp;

Hive

Grain’s software allows users to record, highlight, transcribe, and share online meeting content from tools such as Zoom in an effective manner. It automatically records and transcribes meetings, allowing users to create shareable video clips from highlighted transcript sections. Grain leverages AI to generate customizable meeting notes and answer questions about the transcript. It supports coaching and collaboration through comments and training content creation. The platform offers deal analytics and insights, tracking key account activities and integrating with tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, and Slack. &nbsp;The company’s products focus on distributed teams, sales, product and user research, and hiring teams.In April 2022, the company acquired Ping Pong, a video messaging platform.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9759">April 2022</a>, Grain raised USD 16 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global Management. The funds were raised to expand operations and develop its ​​video meeting system of record for content, which allows employees to collaborate around insights, topics, relationships, or teams.

Grain

Air is a creative operations platform designed for creative teams to streamline their workflows and collaborate more effectively. It offers a comprehensive solution that goes beyond basic cloud storage systems, catering specifically to the needs of the creative process. Air allows users to collect content, approve assets, share versions for feedback, and organize their work seamlessly, eliminating the need for additional organizational efforts.Air provides a centralized hub for content collaboration, approval, and versioning. Air's technology streamlines various aspects of the creative workflow, including content collection, asset approval, version control, and feedback sharing. Unlike traditional cloud storage solutions, Air's platform is tailored to the specific requirements of creative teams, enabling them to work more efficiently and effectively.Key customers and PartnershipsThe company’s customer base includes notable firms such as Native, Together, Spindrift, and Univision.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8139">January 2022</a>, Air raised USD 10 million in an “Operator Round” led by Headline with participation from Tiger Global, Lere Hippeau, and 50+ strategic founders and marketing executives including Peter Rahal (Co-Founder, RXBAR), Kipp Bodnar (CMO, HubSpot), and Joe Thomas (CEO, Loom), valuing the company at USD 110 million. The funds were used to accelerate Air’s go-to-market activities and growth.

Acapela was co-founded by Roland Grenke, founder of Dubsmash, a video sharing social media app. Acapela facilitates online meetings without real-time interaction between participants; instead, members contribute to meetings over time.Acapela provides voice and video messages integrated with popular productivity tools such as Asana, Google Workspace, Notion, and Atlassian. Additionally, meetings will generate tasks and meeting summaries automatically. The company identified distributed tech teams as its initial target segment and plans to shift focus toward small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and larger enterprises eventually. The product is currently in invite-only beta.In October 2020, the company exited stealth mode with a USD 3 million seed funding round led by Visionaries Club. The round included Entrepreneur First and other notable individual investors, such as Christian Reber (founder of presentation software Pitch) and Taavet Hinrikus (founder of online money transfer service TransferWise).

Acapela

iObeya is a cloud-based enterprise visual management platform that enables organizations to digitize their Lean, Agile, and Industry 4.0 practices. The platform provides virtual "Oobeyas" (Japanese for "big room"), which are digital collaborative workspaces where teams can align, synchronize, and visualize their work using digital boards, sticky notes, and other visual tools. iObeya's platform allows teams to recreate the in-person experience of paper-based visual management practices with real-time collaboration, enhancing team efficiency, creativity, and problem-solving.iObeya's technology supports a wide range of enterprise use cases, including industrial product lifecycle management, manufacturing operational excellence, product development, and continuous improvement for business performance and agility. It integrates with various systems like ERP, MES, BI, and Application lifecycle Management (ALM) tools such as Atlassian Jira and Microsoft Azure DevOps Server.Key customers and partnershipsiObeya's customer base includes global enterprises such as Airbus, Thales, Volvo, Philips, Cartier, Axa, Eli Lilly and Company, Western Digital, General Electric, Kimberly-Clark, Danaher, and Sanofi.Funding and FinancialsIn July 2020, iObeya raised USD 17 million in a series A funding round led by Red River West with participation from Atlantic Bridge Capital and Fortino Capital Partners. The funds were allocated to develop its platform further and accelerate the company’s expansion in the US.

iObeya

Platforms that provide virtual workspaces using spatial technology to combine a variety of productivity and collaboration tools in a single space.

Platforms that provide standalone presentation software, prototyping and web development software, templates, and design workspaces.

Platforms that facilitate task delegation and tracking with board, timeline, and kanban style views.

Platforms that provide standalone video communication tools and complementary products such as interactive interfaces, presentation features, and transcription software.

Platforms that offer chat and email-based collaborative tools.

Solutions in this industry hub are predominantly offered under a B2B SaaS model

Some solutions in the virtual office and video conferencing segments are based on AR/VR

Facilitates hybrid workforces by offering tools for employees to collaborate regardless of location

Meeting transcription and note-taking apps, design, and project management tools use AI/ML for product development

LifeAt

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless