Leaders Fund in Review - Q1 2021

It’s wild to think that just a few months ago we were writing our 2020 year in review. Time is flying in the venture world, with Zoom deals continuing to flourish and funding continuing to soar to unprecedented volumes. 

For Leaders Fund, we had an exciting quarter of portfolio news, with updates and milestones across the board. 

Raises & Acquisitions

This was a busy quarter with TopHat raising a $72M Series D, Manifold being acquired by SNYK, and Zaius being acquired by Optimizely. We are grateful to have been a part of the Manifold and Zaius journeys, and are looking forward to watching them continue to progress within these organizations.

News & Milestones

For our portfolio companies that didn’t go through funding cycles this quarter, they were heads down, executing. While it’s impossible to reflect all that they’ve achieved this quarter, here are a few highlights:

Spatial

• Named one of the top 10 most innovative companies in AR/VR by Fast Company.
• Hit 8 million minutes spent in Spatial.
• As the NFT world gained momentum this quarter, Spatial became a go-to platform for NFT artists to showcase their work.
• Launched guest mode, allowing you to access Spatial without an account — you can explore Spatial here.
• Launched Spatial 3.0 with live translation into 40 different languages, new features, outdoor environments, and more.
• They’re hiring (in NY and SF)! View open roles here.

Drata

• Launched out of stealth and publicly announced their Seed raise.
• Signed on cornerstone customers including Clearbanc/Clearco, Spot, SmartRecruiters, Ada, Chameleon and others.
• Partnered with Carta to give Carta customers a 25% discount on the product. You can sign up via Carta to get the discount here.
• They’re hiring (remotely)! View open roles here.
  

Ada

• 120M conversations were completed on the platform in 2020.
• Helped Shapermint raise their SCAT (Customer Satisfaction) score to 98%.
• Featured in Forrester’s Contact Center Technologies for Customer Service Report.
• Awarded a Bronze Stevie Award in Sales or Customer Service Solutions or Technology.
• CEO Mike Murchison was featured in ChannelBuzz to discuss the power of AI Chatbots in customer support.
• Named as one of 2021’s Best Places to Work for Start-ups.
• They’re hiring (in several locations and remotely)! View open roles here.

Seegrid

• Seegrid continues to lead the AMR industry in number of miles driven.
• Introduced Fleet Geek, a cloud-based analytics software that provides a holistic, data-driven view of material flow with on demand insights into AMR fleet performance.
• Brought on new CRO, Jay Link, who brings 30 years of experience from a number of software technology and robotics companies, including Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), Berkshire Grey, IBM Cloud, and BMC Software.
• Promoted Tim Spang to COO, who has led Seegrid’s operations teams for the past five years, and brings 30 years of experience as an executive at large medical device and technology companies, including Haemonetics, Ariba, and Bayer.
• They’re hiring (in Pittsburgh)! View open roles here.

CallRail

• Turned 10! CallRail celebrated their 10 year anniversary since founding.
• Named of the 10 best tech startups in Georgia, and in Atlanta.
• Won Appealie’s 2020 Overall SaaS Award.
• Named a G2 leader in G2’s Winter 2021 report.
• Ranked in the Top 50 Best Sales Products for 2021 by G2.
• Launched a new product: Lead Center’s Live Chat.
• Named a small business marketplace leader in the Contact Center Operations Software category in G2’s Spring Report.
• Launched an integration partnership with Supermetrics, which created a Google Data Studio report template for CallRail customers.
• They’re hiring (in Atlanta)! View open roles here.

360 Insights

• Reflected on their explosive growth in 2020.
• Listed as #13 on the list of Top 50 Best Workplaces in Canada.
• Listed as one of the Best Workplaces for Women in Canada
• Named on the Channel Software Tech Stack 2021 list by Forrester.
• They’re hiring (in several locations)! View open roles here.

ACME Technologies

• Introduced touch-free entry to help customers adapt to the constraints of a COVID-19 environment.
• Using Open APIs, ACME can now plug into best of breed systems to connect ticketing, membership, finance, retail, donor management, and more into one platform.
• They’re hiring (in San Jose)! View open roles here.

CrowdRiff

• Announced partnership with European Cities to work towards rebuilding a sustainable and healthy tourism economy in Europe.
• Partnered with Visit California to create the California Now Travel Story Network.
• Named on 2021 list of Best Workplaces.
• They’re hiring (in Toronto)! View open roles here.

Influitive

• Recognized by TrustRadius for two 2021 Top Rated Customer Awards for Customer Advocacy and Community Software.
• Earned the #1 Spot for Customer Advocacy on G2’s Winter 2021 grid.
• They’re hiring (in Toronto and Boston)! View open roles here.

FlashPoint

• Listed as a strong performer in Forrester’s threat intelligence report
• Launched two new products to mitigate card fraud and neutralize phishing threats
• They’re hiring (in NY and remotely)! View open roles here.

We are extremely proud of the resilience, creativity and determination our portfolio companies have demonstrated over the last extremely turbulent and unpredictable twelve months. Congrats to all of the teams on everything they have been able to accomplish! 

This is only publicly announced portfolio news. There is still much in the works behind the scenes, and more in development as we move further into Q2.

We are looking forward to sharing more good news and milestones this quarter.

Onwards and upwards,

Leaders Fund Team