Austin Weekly Deal Highlights for November 18, 2018

From: “Mason Rathe” <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, 19 November 2018 03:00
To: [email protected]
Subject:Austin Weekly Deal Highlights 11-18-18

Austin Weekly Deal Highlights

By Mason Rathe – November 18, 2018

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Here’s a fun fact to pull out at Thanksgiving dinner as you try and curve around those awkward conversations: there are over 15 thousand startups based in Austin…which is over 39% of our total businesses, making this a true startup haven. You can thank me for that one later. Also this week, mobile app management and analytics company Phunware is going public in an unconventional way, at a $301M valuation

Austin Financing Activity

• Self Lender, a fintech company that helps people build credit, raised a $10M Series B led by Altos Ventures. The company has raised approx. $18M to date from investors including Silverton Partners.
• Billd, a payment and finance solution for the construction industry, raised $8.4M in equity funding and other options, in connection with acquisition of assets of Atlas44, an Arizona-based credit supplier for the construction industry.
• Pilosa, an open source index that speeds up data analysis and transfers, raised $3.6M in new equity funding. This new filing appears to be part of the $5.4M seed round the company raised earlier this month, led by Skylark Partners. Pilosa is also one of the six startups in Oracle’s new startup program.
• Babson Diagnostics, a healthtech company focused on consumer blood tests and based out of the Dell Med School, raised a $3.5M Series A from Prism Ventures.
• CrowdOut Capital, a debt marketplace for middle market companies, raised $2.5M in growth capital. The round was led by cofounder and CEO Alexander Schoenbaum and other members of CrowdOut’s investor network.
• Zdaly, a big data and AI platform, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Austin’s S3 Ventures and Moneta Ventures. The company is based in Houston, but also announced it is moving its headquarters to Austin.
• Zilker Technology, a digital consulting firm, received a strategic investment led by Len Pagon of Cleveland-based private investment firm Next Sparc. The amount was not disclosed.

Austin M&A Activity

• Xoxco, who builds digital products like websites, apps, and workflow tools, and creator of Howdy, a digital coworker for Slack, was acquired by Microsoft, for an undisclosed amount. The company raised $1.5M to date, from investors including Bloomberg Beta, True Ventures and Outlier Ventures.
• Barton Watch Bands, an online watch marketplace, was acquired by Altacrest Capital and Route 2 Capital Partners, for an undisclosed amount.
• Geospace Technologies (NAS:GEOS), a Houston-based oil and gas equipment provider, acquired the IP and related assets of the fiber optic sensing technology previously owned by Austin-based PGS Americas. Geospace intends to retain each of the PGS’s employees. The deal includes an initial $1.8M cash payment and up to $23.3M over the next 5.5 years.

Other Regional Deal Activity

• Pickup, an Addison-based last mile delivery application, raised a $5M Series A1 led by TDF Ventures and Noro-Moseley Partners.
• EmpowerMX, a Frisco-based provider of aircraft maintenance software, raised $5M of development capital from The Argentum Group. The company has raised approx. $14M to date.
• Data Gumbo, a Houston-based smart contracts platform for the oil and gas industry, raised $2.4M of venture funding through a combination of SAFE notes and debt from undisclosed investors

Austin (and Other Relevant) People

• Macrofab, a manufacturing platform for PCB boards, named Misha Govshteyn as its new CEO. Govshteyn was the founder of Houston-based cybersecurity company Alert Logic that raised over $40M before being acquired in 2013. Macrofab has raised approx. $7M to date from investors including Techstars, Dentsu Ventures, and Enhanced Capital.
• Favor, an Austin delivery app that was acquired by H-E-B in February, announced three new executives. Angela Lee was appointed VP of finance. Jay Doughty was named VP of sales and Daniel Guzman became managing counsel. Lee has been with Favor since 2015, and she previously worked at uShip. Doughty was previously VP of sales at Granify. Guzman was most recently in-house counsel at H-E-B.

Austin News

• Phunware, a mobile app management and analytics company, going public, after a reverse merger with Athens, Greece-based Stellar Acquisition III. The deal values Phunware at $301M. The combined company will take on Phunware’s name and trade on Nasdaq under the ticker name “PHUN.” Phunware has raised over $100M to date.
• After pushback from activist investor Carl Icahn, Dell Technologies upped its offer to buy back shares of the VMWare tracking stock in order to return to the public markets. Dell set the price at $120 per share (up from $109), but that might not be enough for Icahn, who is suing Dell and suggested $300 as a fair price.
• Austin ranks second nationwide among major metros for the prevalence of startups. A new Austin Chamber of Commerce study found there were 15,077 companies based here in 2016 that were less than six years old, or about 39 percent of the 38,405 total businesses headquartered in the Texas capital.
• Samsung, which has a big semiconducter plant in Austin, is planning to invest $291M as part of a major update to its facilities, and will receive state tax breaks. Samsung currently employs 2,952 full-time workers at the facility.
• Forbes named six Austinites on its 30 Under 30 list this year. Those include Kyle Samani (Multicoin Capital), Sagar Hemani and Shanil Wazirali (Roomify), Sheldon Zhai (Supreme Optimization), Emmanuel Acho (ESPN) and Cory Liu (Office of Gov. Greg Abbott).
• The Forbes 400: The Richest People In Texas, 2018.
• Austin’s ICON, which is developing technology that allows for the 3D printing of entire homes, lands on TIME Best Inventions of 2018.
• Professors Gary Pope and Livia Eberlin honored at the 8th annual Inventor Awards
• These 4 tech companies just opened new Austin offices
• Juicebox Hero, search engine and marketplace for child care services, was accepted into the Women’s Startup Lab.
• Austin officially has its first neighborhood where the median home price is $1 million. the Barton Creek neighborhood

Upcoming Events

• November 27th, TechTalk with Jan Ryan, founder of Women@Austin
• November 30th, Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition
• December 6th, The Medical Device Summit
• December 6th, JBTVL Venture Expo

LiveOak Venture Partners

Think you might be a fit for LiveOak, if I missed a deal, or have feedback, you can reach me at [email protected] If your company is recruiting for a senior level position, happy to include a shout-out.

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