As Q1 of 2019 disappears in the rearview mirror, we’re taking a moment to celebrate the expanding NVP portfolio. We’re excited to see so many of our NVP Labs companies growing at a fast rate, and when the opportunity arises we are proud to double down in those investments. At the same time, we are excited to be welcoming new companies into our portfolio and community through our direct investment arm, and we look forward to working along side them as they navigate the evolving world of B2B tech.
Congrats to each of these teams on the milestones reached, and all those that are sure to follow!
-The NVP Team
ClassTag announced a $2 million seed round, led by NVP, Founder Collective, One Way Ventures, Silicon Badia, Smart Hub and several other investors. When Founder Vlada Lotkina first came to NVP Labs, ClassTag was a parent teacher engagement tool that had $20k in monthly recurring revenue. Today, investors are counting themselves lucky to be backing their growing team of 20 as they interact with over 500k users in 10,000 classrooms nationwide. What started as communication tool has grown into a community and marketplace for teachers and parents to collaborate on educational goals and needs.
LendingFront’s announcement that it officially closed is $4 million Series A round in early January, generated a strong media buzz in fintech and VC outlets, including a mention in American Banker. We were proud to participate in the good company of prestigious VCs such as Information Venture Partners. Revel Partners, and Contour Venture Partners. Fresh off our spring 2018 NVP Labs program, LendingFront modernizes small business lending with a cloud lending software program, and will use the new funding to expand the company’s sales, marketing and engineering teams.
In February, TechCrunch did a story about Orai’s recent $2.3 million raise. You might miss all the power behind Orai at first glance, but we’re excited about how they’re leveraging AI to solve the #1 soft skills gap in any industry’s employee base: Communication. We joined Comcast Ventures, Menlo Ventures and BDMI in backing Co-Founder and CEO Danish Dhamani and his growing team.
Rounding out or Q1 investments, we jumped on the Pandium bandwagon. Founders, Cristina Flaschen and Shon Urbas, recently completed the Techstars NYC program and are shaking up the way B2B software companies (like those that make up 99% of our portfolio) support integrations. We are so excited about this one, we’re working on developing an expanded investment thesis around it, and will be sharing imminently.
As Q2 kicks off, stay tuned here for our announcement on the next NVP Labs cohort, on track to be one of the biggest cohorts yet, screened from a pool of over 2,000 startups. With our expanding expert team gearing up to dive in, our NVPLabs investments are poised to disrupt everything from talent acquisition to video compression, to the way you find milk in your grocery store (yes, you read that right!). Keep a watch on our twitter account (@NewarkVC) for the who’s who of NVPLabs6 coming out later this month!
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