Underscore VC is an early-stage, Boston-based venture capital firm backing bold entrepreneurs with an aligned community designed to fit each startup's unique needs.

Underscore VC

Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. Their portfolio includes pinterest, shopify, twilio, yelp, linkedin, pagerduty, docusign, wix, fiverr, and toast, and has $19 billion of assets under management.

Bessemer Venture Partners

Maine Technology Institute (MTI) invests in promising technologies by funding research and development projects in the state's seven technology sectors. MTI's competitive awards bring new products, services, and processes to the market, generating high-quality jobs across Maine.

Maine Technology Institute

New York Venture Partners is a seed stage venture capital firm dedicated to the entrepreneur.  New York Venture Partners provide an ecosystem of financing, mentorship and strategic marketing consulting to the best entrepreneurs out there today.

New York Venture Partners

Active Capital is a venture firm focused on leading seed rounds to B2B and SaaS companies. The firm is founded and run by former B2B SaaS founders with hands-on experience starting, building, and scaling high-growth businesses in underdog cities across America. They prefer companies that can get to market with very little capital and likes to be a material part of the first million dollars into the business Active Capital is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas by Pat Matthews and Cat Dizon in 2017.

Active Capital

Friday.app

Friday.app develops communication tools to improve team clarity and make informed decisions. The company's platform offers a daily planner feature to organize one's day and share it with others. The platform allows workers working in multiple locations to collaborate with daily standups, weekly updates, one-to-one meetings, etc. They also enable users to track their time spent in meetings, as well as team morale and productivity, using the analytics dashboard of the platform.

Friday acts as a tech layer above existing productivity and collaboration tools. The platform automates routine procedures, provides templates for retrospective meetings and standups, permits goal-setting and tracking capabilities, and offers insights on team productivity and morale. Furthermore, it provides a daily planner that brings together meeting appointments from Google Calendar and tasks from Asana or Trello into a single space.

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

Remote Work Tools

Friday

Friday.app looks outside Maine to raise $450K

Friday acts as a tech layer above existing productivity and collaboration tools. The platform automates routine procedures, provides templates for retrospective meetings and standups, permits goal-setting and tracking capabilities, and offers insights on team productivity and morale. Furthermore, it provides a daily planner that brings together meeting appointments from Google Calendar and tasks from Asana or Trello into a single space.The product was launched in beta in early 2020 and is used by companies such as LinkedIn, Twitter, EA, and Red Hat. Friday operates a subscription model that includes a freemium version, while premium features for additional functionality are available starting at USD 6 per user per month.Friday raised USD 2.1 million in seed funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The round includes participation from Active Capital, Underscore, El Cap Holdings, TLC Collective, and New York Venture Partners. The fresh capital will be used to double its team (currently four full-time members) over the next 10 months.

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

Friday

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