Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital offering hands-on support and expertise to startups on their early-stage journey.  It was founded in 2018 and is based in Menlo Park, California.

Unusual Ventures

Alumni Ventures Group provides high-quality, diversified venture portfolios to individual investors who previously haven't had access to VC. It helps accredited alums from top entrepreneurial schools invest together in the ventures of fellow alums. The firm backs companies with an alumni connection and an institutional lead investor with expertise in the space. AVG also offers focused funds that allow any accredited investor access to a venture portfolio, diversified by type, sector, stage, and geography. Beth Obermiller, Michael Madden, and Mike Collins co-founded the firm in Manchester, New Hampshire in 2013.

Alumni Ventures

CoFound Partners is an early-stage venture firm that helps founders build a repeatable sales motion. The company was founded in 2019 by Jordan Wan and is headquartered in New York, United States.

CoFound Partners

Tess Ventures does what it takes to move customers from the earliest stage to Series A and beyond. At the earliest stage, they help customers refine the idea, product, and all aspects of the company’s operations, investor relations, and market positioning. They often invest in you through a seed round and sometimes at a later stage.

Tess Ventures

Xoogler is a group of Google alumni that comes together to help each other in the startup ecosystem. It brings together current Googlers that are interested in helping ex-Google entrepreneurs. It consists of startup founders, early team members, angel investors, VCs, and mentors. Xoogler was founded in 2015.

Xoogler

Driving Forces is a pre-seed and seed stage VC fund that purposefully partners with founders building scalable infrastructure, automated workflows, intelligent collaboration tools, and autonomous systems.  Driving Forces has proven, repeated success at building and scaling transformational businesses. We believe FinTech and DeepTech are not sectors, they're driving forces across all industries. We believe every company will be powered by Artificial Intelligence. We believe every company will a be Fintech company. We believe that Sustainability will be embedded into the mission of every company. Additionally, we believe industrialization will revolutionize the world around us.

Driving Forces

CoScreen

CoScreen is a developer of a screen sharing software designed to facilitate remote collaboration. The company's software turns the secondary display into a joint team desktop and provides each user their own mouse pointer while keeping the primary desktop private, enabling multiple team members to share their application windows with each other simultaneously and to interact with them as if they were their own.

CoScreen, a screen sharing tool for remote teams, provides video and audio chatting capabilities in addition to screen sharing. Multiple team members can share their windows in a joint workspace to edit all documents in the workspace in real time. Founders Jason Thomas, Max Andaker, and Till Pieper bring substantial enterprise experience, having served at Google Cloud, SAP, and Nestle. The company’s key competency is the low latency with which users will be able to view team member screens as if they were originating from their own device.

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

Remote Work Tools

Datadog Completes Acquisition of CoScreen to Add Real-Time Collaboration for Developers

CoScreen, a screen sharing tool for remote teams, provides video and audio chatting capabilities in addition to screen sharing. Multiple team members can share their windows in a joint workspace to edit all documents in the workspace in real time. Founders Jason Thomas, Max Andaker, and Till Pieper bring substantial enterprise experience, having served at Google Cloud, SAP, and Nestle. The company’s key competency is the low latency with which users will be able to view team member screens as if they were originating from their own device.In March 2021, the company announced its product’s public launch while also revealing having received USD 4.6 million in funding. Unusual Ventures led the company’s seed round, and angel backers included Jason Warner (CTO, GitHub) and Anthony Goldbloom (CEO, Kaggle). The majority of its funding was raised before the Covid-19 pandemic with smaller follow-on rounds in 2020.In March 2021, the company launched the product out of beta on both Windows and Mac. It will initially offer the product for free and expects to introduce paid plans later. The platform targets remote engineering teams with current clients that include Slack, Okta, Toptal, SAP, and Salesforce.

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

CoScreen

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