Austin Weekly Deal Highlights(6-10-18)

Austin Weekly Deal Highlights

Austin Weekly Deal Highlights for June 10th, 2018

From: “Mason Rathe” <[email protected]> on behalf of “Mason Rathe” <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, 11 June 2018 02:57
To: [email protected]
Subject: Austin Weekly Deal Highlights 6-10-18

Austin Weekly Deal Highlights for June 10th, 2018 by Mason Rathe

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If it hadn’t before, Austin has now firmly planted its flag as a crypto hub. This week, 3 blockchain-focused companies pulled in $20M, with Altr raking in the lion’s share, Phunware launched a $100M token sale, and McCombs School of Business was selected for a multi-million-dollar partnership with Ripple. Lastly, and possibly most importantly, blockchain beat out electric scooters for today’s intro. Here are your Austin Weekly Deal Highlights:

Austin Fundraising Activity

  • Trust Ventures, a new Austin-based venture capital firm partnered with Koch Industries, raised an initial $35M to invest in and support innovative startups facing public policy barriers.
  • Altr, a blockchain based cybersecurity company, raised a $15M round after 4 years in stealth. The company raised its funding from institutional and private sources in the cybersecurity, IT, and financial services industries, including participation by angel John Stafford, CEO of Ronin Capital
  • 101 Commerce, an Austin startup that aims to acquire Amazon FBA businesses, raised a $12.7M round from investors including Next Coast Ventures, 3L Capital, HomeAway founder Brian Sharples and RetailMeNot founder Cotter Cunningham.
  • HeatGenie, developer of self-heating beverage containers, raised a $6M funding round led by ARTIS Labs. The company has raised approximately $10M to date
  • Unchained Capital, a crypto-finance company that lends cash to long-term crypto-investors, raised a $3M seed round from investors including Michael Komaransky, formerly of Cumberland Mining; Brian Spaly, co-founder of Bonobos and Trunk Club; Mike W. Erwin and Whurley of Ecliptic Capital; and Ezra Galston of Starting Line.
  • SeriesX, a blockchain based CRM platform, closed on two rounds of funding, totaling $2M, from investors including Shasta Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, and Capital Factory.
  • Guidefitter, an online community for guided hunting and fishing adventures, raised $1M of angel funding from undisclosed investors.
  • Nulo Pet Food, provider of dog and cat food, received an undisclosed amount of development capital from Main Post Partners. The company last raised $5.5M in February and approximately $12M prior to this PE round.

Austin M&A Activity

  • Corning Incorporated (NYSE: GLW) has entered into agreements with 3M to purchase substantially all of their Austin-based Communication Markets Division in a cash transaction valued at $900M.
  • Austin physical resource management software company Accruent has acquired Maintenance Connection, a provider of computerized maintenance management software and also EMS Software. No financial details were provided. EMS helps organizations with conference and meeting room scheduling. Accruent has made 9 acquisitions in the past 2 years
  • BudURL, an enterprise link management system, has been acquired by domain name registry Donuts, and rebranded as BLINK
  • San Antonio-based PE firm Dura Holdings has acquired Utah-based Moki, a provider of a mobile device management platform, for an undisclosed amount. As part of the acquisition, the headquarters for Moki will relocate from Utah to San Antonio. The company had previously raised approximately $15M from investors including Pelion Venture Partners and Epic Ventures.

Other Relevant Deal Activity

  • People who hate seeing their cities overrun with masses of stand-up scooters got some bad news. Bird, the fast-growing Santa Monica-based scooter sharing startup, has authorized a $200M financing round at a valuation of $1B. Meanwhile, rival Lime is reportedly seeking to raise $250M.
  • Viziv Technologies, a Waxahachie-based developer of wireless power systems to transport electricity over long distances, raised $6.17M of angel funding from undisclosed investors
  • Vidatronic, a College Station-based developer of energy analog and mixed-signal products for wireless applications, raised $1.65M of angel funding from undisclosed investors.

Austin People

  • Convey, a supply chain visibility platform, makes 4 key hires. They name Kirsten Newbold-Knipp as VP and CMO; Michael Miller as VP, Channels and Alliances; Kellie O’Malley as Director, People Operations & Experience; and John Lebowitz, Senior Advisor. Newbold-Knipp previously was at Gartner; Miller was most recently at Dell; O’Malley has served at BlackLocus, Vast, Dell, Trilogy and others; and Lebowitz had previously served at Stryker and Dell. Convey also moved into a new downtown office in the historic Hannig Building, and has raised over $15M to date.
  • Vista Equity Partners named Read Simmons as president of Vista Consulting Group, where he’ll lead consulting, talent management and other acceleration for Vista’s 50-plus portfolio companies. Simmons was previously the director of Bain & Company’s private equity practice.
  • Datical, a developer of database automation technology, hired Hyrum Smith as its CRO. Smith was previously SVP of North America enterprise sales at OpenText. Datical has raised approximately $19M to date, and also announced a new HQ in North Austin.
  • RVShare, a marketplace for renting RVs, announced HomeAway co-founders Brian Sharples and Carl Shepherd, and the former chief marketing officer of Southwest Airlines, Kevin Krone, to its board of directors. RVshare recently received a $50M commitment from Austin based Tritium Partners.
  • FloSports, the innovator in live digital sports and original content, hired Lindsey Ross as Director of Rights Acquisition. Ross was most recently with ESPN as Manager of Programming and Acquisitions.
  • 3 Day Startup names Alexis Taylor as its new CEO. Taylor has worked with 3 Day Startup since 2013.
  • 8 Austin tech companies welcome new leaders from ESPN, IBM, Rackspace and more.

Austin News

  • 8 inspiring business people honored with EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards, including Ben Rubenstein, founder and CEO, and Michael Lamm, founder and CFO, Opcity; and Matt O’Hayer, founder and CEO, Vital Farms Inc.
  • Phunware, a mobile software company, aims to raise $100M through coin offering. In February, Phunware announced plans to go public via a merger. Phunware has raised nearly $90M since inception.
  • University of Texas System ranked No. 3 for patents received in 2017.
  • SolarWinds has filed for an IPO, two years after it was acquired for $4.5B by Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake.
  • UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business part of $50M blockchain innovation program launched by Ripple. As part of this program, Ripple, a company that uses blockchain technology to provide real-time international currency transfers, has made a five-year, multimillion-dollar commitment to support McCombs.
  • Online retailer Spreetail sets up shop in Austin, plans to hire 100-plus.
  • Austin-based Carserv, a cloud-based software platform for the automotive repair industry, has partnered with Lyft for new loaner fleet option.
  • Announcing the 2018 class of Techstars Impact.
  • Car2go to move HQ to hip East Austin project. The company was recently acquired by Daimler for $341M.
  • CIOReview names BP3 to Top 20 Most Promising Robotics Providers. The company last raised $10M of development capital from Petra Capital Partners in 2016.

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Mason Rathe

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[email protected]
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