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Yearly Archives: 2021
Prepaid Technologies Secures $96 Million Growth Round Led by Edison Partners
Source: Cision PRWeb
Prepaid Technologies, a Birmingham, Ala.-based provider of prepaid digital payment solutions, today announced raising $96 million in new growth financing. Edison Partners, the growth equity firm, led the transaction, and StepStone Group (which recently acquired venture capital platform Greenspring Associates) co-led. Stifel Venture Bank, a Division of Stifel Bank, and Top Tier Capital Partners also participated. The company will use the proceeds to accelerate its market expansion and continue to advance its category-leading technology payments platform and customer-focused prepaid solutions.
Analysts estimate $120 trillion in business payments are still check-based, and service providers are fragmented across multiple vendors for verticals such as payroll, rewards, purchasing and disbursement. These four opportunities alone represent $80 billion addressable markets, growing at more than 10% annually and accelerating with the proliferation of smartphones, e-commerce, and digitized payments since the pandemic’s onset. Prepaid Technologies enables its customers to access and customize B2B and B2C payments across these segments with a unified innovative fintech partner with a focus on the consumer and end user experience.
“Prepaid Technologies is making it easy for businesses to transform their outdated disbursement, payroll, and purchasing processes with real-time digital payments across niche categories where competitors don’t have the same level of depth or expertise,” said Jennifer Lee, Partner, Edison Partners, who co-led the investment.
“This is a unique product offering, where a company can access and customize different payment solutions in a one-stop shop. We’re impressed with Stephen Faust and the management team’s ability to remain capital-efficient while growing organically and profitably. We look forward to working with them as they execute on their vision,” added Lee. “Modern payroll and expense management for remote workforces continues to see strong traction through the last 18 months. B2B payments are also trending higher as companies opt for disbursement solutions that make it easier and safer to deliver corporate funds. These tailwinds bode particularly well for the company’s growth and provide a moat for adjunct product opportunities.”
Prepaid Technologies has seen over 15,000% straight-line growth in its load value. Revenue has increased 9x over five years since the company raised its only round of outside capital, $5 million in 2016 through Ballast Point Ventures. The company has delivered a clear product-market fit with 1,700 customers and 450 active partners including banks, payroll processors, payment providers, such as FIS, emergent fintechs including digital banking platforms, enterprise technology companies, marketing, health and wellness payments processors, and merchant services providers.
Recent launches include the MyDashCard app and dashPerks, a cardholder cashback rewards program. Prepaid Technologies also enjoys strong retention metrics with notable blue-chip customers like Lowes, Taco Bell, Nissan, and Sony. The company is also seeing tremendous growth in its disbursements product which businesses use to pay their vendors electronically.
“We purpose-built our platform to create a turnkey way for companies to configure payments solutions across their enterprise however they operate. Clients access payments through our dashboard technology or integrate solutions into their workflows through our robust API suite. We’re laser-focused on productization and customization that will help to transition more companies to card-based and digital solutions. With this investment, and with Edison Partners’ expertise and experience, we can focus on investing in our current solutions, accelerating our industry footprint and expanding our suite of offerings to ensure our customers and partners achieve their goals,” said Stephen Faust, CEO, Prepaid Technologies.
“Loyalty payments and refund programs present an enormous niche opportunity. There is both a programmatic vertical opportunity and underserved community opportunity. Prepaid Technologies has an incredible load volume and data set, and the management team has deep banking and payments expertise, which we’re confident will bode well for the company’s continued growth and deliver value to customers and partners around the globe,” said Chris Sugden, Managing Partner, Edison Partners. Sugden will join the board of directors.
Recognized by LendIt Fintech as Fintech Equity Investor of the Year, Edison Partners has financed and guided more than 50 private fintech market leaders. The firm’s current active portfolio includes Bipsync, ComplySci, Fund That Flip, GAN Integrity, Giant Oak, GoHenry, Houwzer, MoneyLion, Nuula, Yieldstreet, and Zelis.
The investment in Prepaid Technologies is Edison Partners’ first investment in Alabama and is the firm’s third growth financing in an underserved market this year following investments in Boulder, Colorado-based The Pros Closet and Houston, Texas-based MacroFab.
About Prepaid Technologies
Prepaid Technologies is the fintech solution and payments program manager for more than 1,700 customers, providing innovative digital payment solutions including payroll, expense, gift, reward and incentive card products to employers, financial institutions, and government agencies. Learn more at http://www.in-prepaid.com.
About Edison Partners
For 35 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams grow and scale successful companies. The firm’s investment team brings extensive investing and operating experience to each investment. Through a unique combination of growth capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of operating centers of excellence, the Edison Director Network, and executive education programs, Edison employs a truly integrated approach to accelerating growth and creating value for businesses. A team of experts in enterprise solutions, financial technology, and healthcare IT sectors, Edison targets high-growth companies located outside Silicon Valley with $10 to $30 million in revenue; investments also include buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.
Edison’s active portfolio has created aggregated market value exceeding $10 billion. Edison Partners is based in Princeton, NJ and manages more than $2 billion in assets.
Link to article
Key Data Raises $5M Series B from Ballast Point Ventures
Ballast Point Ventures announced a $5 million Series B investment in Key Data Dashboard (“Key Data”), which provides benchmark and comparative market performance data for the vacation and short-term rental industries. Key Data’s platform integrates directly with property management systems to collect real-time reservation and booking data from 400,000 properties around the globe.
“As a former property manager, I understood firsthand the difficulty of obtaining accurate and real-time pricing data across a varied property portfolio,” said Key Data Chief Executive Officer, Jason Sprenkle. “We were determined to solve this problem for property managers with comprehensive and accurate real-time data.”
Sprenkle continued, “We are excited to bring an institutional investor into our company and are eager to get to work with Ballast Point Ventures. We look forward to this next leg of the journey and to continue to deliver a comprehensive solution to our many customers.”
According to a press release, “[Key Data’s] benchmarking and business intelligence dashboards aggregate proprietary, directly sourced data, providing historical, real-time, and forward-looking market data for customers seeking to understand hospitality trends for any given global market. Key Data will use the investment to accelerate development of its technology and product platform, add to its sales and marketing efforts, and for general corporate purposes.”
Related: Key Data Raises $2.4 million in Series A
“As BPV has gotten to know Jason over the last several years, we’ve been very impressed with the growth and success that Key Data has been able to achieve with minimal outside investment,” said Ballast Point Ventures partner Robert Faber who will join Key Data’s board of directors. “Given our focus on partnering with rapidly growing private companies with great management teams in the Southeast and Florida, in particular, Key Data is a great fit for us.”
“We are excited to partner with Jason, Scott McLeod, Dan Haligas, and the entire Key Data team to drive continued growth and solidify the platform’s position as the leading provider of accurate, real-time vacation rental data,” Faber added. “Given some of the dynamics brought on by the pandemic, we believe that the work-from-anywhere trend is likely to make short-term rental data an even more important part of the picture for travel and hospitality markets.”
Key Data has raised $7.4 million to date and recently won the 2021 Technology Innovation Award sponsored by Expedia Group at the 3rd Annual Data and Revenue Management (DARM) Conference.
Website: https://vrmintel.com/key-data-raises-5m-in-series-b-funding/
Carterra Takes Part in “Dousing the Pandemic’s Flames”
Source: GEN – Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News
Neutralizing antibodies represent an important class of therapeutics that could provide immediate benefit in the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 or as a passive prophylaxis before vaccination. Passive prophylaxis also could be an alternative to vaccination in populations where vaccines have been found to be less efficacious.1
When AbCellera became a participant in DARPA’s P3 (Pandemic Prevention Platform) program in 2018, the aim was to build a pandemic-ready, rapid response, antibody discovery platform capable of developing field-ready medical countermeasures within 60 days of isolation of an unknown viral pathogen. At the time, AbCellera didn’t know that within two years its platform and team would be mobilized to react in record time to a real-life global health scenario, the COVID-19 pandemic.
In every person’s body, billions of antibodies exist, each with unique properties and functions. AbCellera’s full-stack AI-powered antibody discovery platform deeply searches natural immune responses to identify antibodies with desired properties such as virus neutralization, safety, longevity, and manufacturability.
The company’s mission is to make its technology stack available and to empower all antibody-based drug discovery programs. To date, the technology stack has been used in over 100 programs to address a wide range of indications in addition to COVID-19 and other infectious disease.
Putting a plan into action
At the end of February 2020, AbCellera obtained a single blood sample from a recovered COVID-19 patient. Close to six million peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were screened in three days, and thousands of therapeutic antibody potentials eventually narrowed to a final subset of 500 unique antibodies that recognized the interaction between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein’s receptor binding domain (RBD) and the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) cellular receptor.
These candidates underwent extensive analysis and characterization—approximately 500 data points per molecule. An important aspect of the technology stack is the machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) tool that allows analysis of large data clouds comprised of approximately 250,000 data points for this data set.
“We were able to visualize the analysis and down selection process using our custom in-house visualization software, Celium,” said Ester Falconer, PhD, chief technology officer at AbCellera, who led the AI-powered antibody discovery platform’s development.
Bryan Jones, PhD, senior research fellow at Eli Lilly and Company, co-led most of the discovery activities that took place at Lilly, in close partnership with AbCellera. His group played a large role analyzing and transitioning the initially discovered set of hundreds of antibodies—through selection, production, and characterization of a narrowed set of antibodies—that ultimately led to the identification of LY-CoV555 (bamlanivimab) for clinical development.
“Due to the rapidly evolving and geographically diverse nature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, continued scientific innovation remains critical to develop additional treatments,” said Jones, who adds that Lilly remains committed to developing complementary neutralizing antibodies to address potential SARS-CoV-2 variants that undoubtedly will arise. Currently, a next-generation antibody, LY-CoV1404, is in the preclinical pipeline.
Intense pressure and challenges
“Our platform and the extended team were ready,” said Falconer. “But in reality, this was a new virus that the world was racing against. We had no experience with it and did not know what type of immune response it would elicit. To develop an antibody database to mine, we had only one blood sample from one of the first recovered patients in the United States.
“Plus, this was an early immune response. The blood was drawn 20 days after onset of symptoms. It was not clear what we were going to find. We had one shot, it had to work, and it had to be the fastest discovery ever. The pandemic-ready platform and team had to deliver.”
The speed at which things needed to progress was the biggest challenge. “Because of the urgency,” Jones recalled, “we were making decisions based on little data and testing a new virus, while simultaneously trying to coordinate these activities across multiple organizations ranging from Lilly and AbCellera, to the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to the numerous academic collaborators who were providing critical data.”
All of these efforts played out against a backdrop of everyone trying to learn how to work nearly completely remotely.
Antibodies were characterized deeply to ensure that any data points that could direct the team in the right direction would not be overlooked. The number of data points per antibody highlights the importance of the visualization software Celium and the infrastructure AbCellera developed to generate, aggregate, and process the data. High-stakes decision making was made in real time.
The discovery efforts, which have been detailed in Science Translational Medicine, included the rapid identification and characterization of the potent anti-spike neutralizing antibody, LYCoV555, derived from PBMCs isolated from a patient after recovery from COVID-19.1
It takes a village
“With the right team and technology, what seems impossible is achievable. With Lilly, we broke the mold for the fastest discovery through IND for any drug, challenging the current drug development process,” Falconer said. “It does not need to take years and years. Nearly six million cells were screened in three days, antibody genes were sequenced in an additional two days, and antibodies were generated and tested a week later—an incredible feat.”
“There really was not a tremendous difference in the workflow of discovery, clinical development, and manufacturing, except that everyone was singularly focused,” Jones added. “But a key difference was partnership with the FDA to identify innovative approaches to get treatments to patients as quickly as possible. We learned that a large and committed group of people concentrated on a sole objective can do amazing things.”
Pandemics are unpredictable
Bamlanivimab proceeded from sample to Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in just over eight months, a groundbreaking achievement in the development of antibody therapeutics. In November 2020, the FDA granted an EUA for bamlanivimab alone, and subsequently granted an EUA in February 2021 for bamlanivimab together with etesevimab (LY-CoV016), for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 in adults and pediatric patients (12 years of age and older weighing at least 40 kg) with positive results of direct SARS-CoV-2 viral testing, and who are at high risk for progressing to severe COVID-19 and/or hospitalization.
Due to the sustained increase of SARS-CoV-2 variants that are resistant to bamlanivimab alone, Lilly requested and received in April 2021 a revocation of the EUA for bamlanivimab used alone. The EUA remains in effect for the combined use of bamlanivimab and etesevimab.
Enabling technology
The Carterra LSA facilitated the rapid kinetic characterization of the selected recombinantly expressed antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and the RBD.
Spike protein–dependent viral entry is initiated by upward movement of the RBD at the apex of the protein, allowing access to bind the ACE2 cellular receptor. Upon receptor engagement, coordinated proteolytic cleavage and shedding of the S1 subunit occur, and conformational rearrangement of the S2 subunit leads to viral fusion with the cell and transfer of genetic material.1
“The LSA allowed for an extensive epitope analysis to be performed on the antibody panel which demonstrated broad epitope coverage, distinct classification into known binder categories such as S1 and S2, and the determination of neutralization of ACE2 binding,” said Dan Bedinger, PhD, applications scientist team lead at Carterra.
These assessments were key elements in the ranking and selection of the subset of leads for further characterization.
The ability to rapidly complete these analyses in a parallel, unattended fashion with minute amounts of recombinant antigen—a scarce and valuable resource—made it possible to characterize the full candidate panel in an extremely accelerated development timeline, 90 days from initiation to first in human.
According to Bedinger, no other bioanalytical platform could have provided this rich picture of epitope binning classification, a picture that delivered a deep understanding of the interaction between sequence diversity and epitope recognition.
Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium
As variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerge, Carterra is collaborating with the Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC), a Gates Foundation–sponsored program. CoVIC has collected nearly 300 antibodies from a wide variety of sources that target the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
In a highly interdisciplinary effort across many institutions, these antibodies are being evaluated for a variety of properties including viral neutralization and escape, effector function, epitope recognition, and binding specificity. The LSA is being utilized to characterize the relative binding of each antibody to a variety of spike mutants and to create a comprehensive epitope binning profile.
“Data show that these antibodies can be clustered into epitope communities which map to various regions or faces of the spike protein when analyzed by cryo-EM,” said Bedinger. “Clones within these communities often share properties like neutralization and binding sensitivities to certain types of mutations.”
With a high-throughput approach, new antibodies can be rapidly binned into relevant communities and compared against the existing antibody population to understand their novelty and to predict their behavior.
Why entrepreneurs find Tampa Bay the right place to grow and realize their dreams
Source: Visit Tampa Bay
As with many entrepreneurs, Founder and CEO Jorge Brea’s dreams took root in his childhood home. He started Symphonic Distribution in a spare bedroom of his parents’ house in 2006.
Symphonic helps independent artists and record labels get their music on streaming platforms and into the ears of listeners around the world.
In addition to being named to the Billboard magazine Indie Power Players list in 2018 and 2019, Brea has now grown his digital music services company to a team of over 50 passionate people in Tampa, Brooklyn, Denver, Nashville and Bogota, Colombia.
And while Brea’s vision and drive paved his way, Tampa Bay provided a supportive and thriving location in which to make his dreams a reality — and give them ample room to grow.
“I think Tampa is getting more creative and becoming a technology hub. It’s great to see new entrepreneurs and different types of business come into the area,” Brea says.
Ranked a best place to live
Tampa Bay’s quality of life earned it a spot on the 2019 U.S. News & World Report’s Best Places to Live list, and it was named a community where it’s cheaper to buy a home than to rent. Plus, Money magazine named Tampa Bay the Best Big City in the Southeast in 2015, and in 2018, WalletHub ranked Tampa Bay one of the top communities in Florida to start a business.
“Billions of dollars in public and private investment are transforming the way Tampa Bay works, lives and plays. Coming over the horizon, we have the building of new office space, major funding for tech incubators and loads of new options for urban living,” says Santiago C. Corrada, president and CEO of Visit Tampa Bay.
Millions in venture capital
“Tampa Bay combines a welcoming, small-town feel with the amenities of a major American city,” Corrada says. “It’s easy for newcomers to find their niche here. Tech startups, nonprofits, restaurants and entertainment — entrepreneurs from nearly every industry sector quickly discover that Tampa Bay residents reward creativity and vision with time and money — including millions in venture capital.”
Brea of Symphonic Distribution knows that firsthand. In 2017, equity firm Ballast Point Ventures put $4 million into the Tampa Bay-based firm, which also offers design, audio mastering, marketing, merchandising and licensing services. Brea says that funding has helped him hire senior staff the company needs to become increasingly competitive, and raise Symphonic’s profile even further, around the world.
“To say that we’re headquartered here and that we have global presence and global clients, including real superstars that are platinum artists, I think really does help shine a big light into what’s happening with Tampa and its development,” Brea says.
PaceMate™ Closes Series A Financing to Accelerate Growth
Source: BuisinessWire
PaceMate™, the leading digital healthcare company in compliant cardiac data management, is pleased to announce a recent $8 million Series A investment led by Ballast Point Ventures. PaceMate™’s fully automated, bidirectional EHR-integrated platform—PaceMate™LIVE—is a comprehensive, cloud-native cardiac data management solution, delivering round-the-clock remote monitoring service, customized alerts and automated billing codes. PaceMate™ will use this investment from Ballast Point to expand market reach for PaceMate™LIVE and enable more cardiac device clinics to care for their patients efficiently with better outcomes.
“Ballast Point’s funding propels PaceMate™’s presence in the cardiac data space, making it possible to extend our reach in the cardiac monitoring market and offer our platform to additional hospital systems and device clinics”
Ballast Point Ventures, headquartered in Tampa, Florida, is a later-stage venture capital and growth equity fund founded in 2002 to provide expansion capital for rapidly growing, privately owned companies in the healthcare, software and technology-enabled business services industries. PaceMate™ is the first investment out of Ballast Point Ventures IV. “PaceMate™’s proprietary technology platform and monitoring services allow clients to improve the quality of care while leveraging existing technology infrastructure and seamlessly fitting into clinic workflows,” said Matt Rice, Partner at Ballast Point Ventures. “We’re excited to partner with Tripp Higgins and his team as they continue to expand the reach of this unique and innovative solution.”
“Ballast Point’s funding propels PaceMate™’s presence in the cardiac data space, making it possible to extend our reach in the cardiac monitoring market and offer our platform to additional hospital systems and device clinics,” said Tripp Higgins, CEO of PaceMate™. “We give our customers unique digital healthcare opportunities and connect them with the most essential clinical information from their patients’ EHRs in real time. With this investment, implementation of our platform can happen faster, and more cardiology clients can take advantage of our unmatched data capabilities.”
About PaceMate™
PaceMate™ was founded in 2015 by cardiac rhythm management industry professionals who experienced firsthand the overwhelming amount of device data inundating clinicians on a daily basis. In answer to this ever-increasing health data problem, the PaceMate™ team developed innovative technology to streamline the device clinic, improve workflow, reduce medical errors and take better care of patients. Today, PaceMate™LIVE is a best-in-class, cloud-native software+service solution for real-time cardiac device management—supporting clinics 24.7.365. Device-generated data automatically uploads to our vendor-neutral platform for immediate review—reporting clinically actionable alerts with complete, bi-directional EHR integration. Meet us at the intersection of human intelligence, innovative data management and compassionate healthcare—where we never miss a beat.™
PowerChord named winner of the Tampa Bay Top Workplaces in 2021
Thank you Tampa Bay Times – Times Publishing Co for naming PowerChord as a winner of the Tampa Bay Top Workplaces in 2021, as well as awarding us with the top work/life flexibility title! Creating a collaborative, supportive, and safe environment for our employees to learn and grow is our top priority and we couldn’t be more proud of our growth this past year!
Relentlessly (if quietly) preparing the future
The Convair Model 118, from 1947
In 2011 Peter Thiel famously quipped, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” His comment was taken by some to suggest that entrepreneurs and their backers had shifted away from transformational technologies.
One year later Moderna Theraputics was founded, and one year after that Lucira Health was. Both received backing from venture firms, and both are now transforming the COVID-ravaged world: the former by creating a vaccine to battle the most devastating health crisis the world has experienced in over 100 years, and the latter by creating the first at-home (self administered) test for the same.
In our little corner of the world two of our own portfolio companies, Carterra and Y-Prime, are involved in important COVID-related work on vaccines, testing, and therapeutic trials.
- Carterra is playing a meaningful role in the fight against COVID, continuing their work with the Gates Foundation and the La Jolla Institute of Immunology. The Carterra LSA platform for accelerating the discovery of therapeutic antibodies is being used to screen therapies and to investigate virus mutations that will make COVID-19 more difficult to treat or vaccinate against. Eli Lilly and AbCellera used the LSA platform, which enables 100 times the binding data to be collected in 10% of the time with 1% of the sample (vs. competing platforms), to bring an antibody from concept to clinical trials in 90 days – a process that normally takes years.
- COVID has altered the landscape of clinical outcome assessments (COAs), creating significant new challenges in patient participation and data collection. Most sponsors have no experience with virtual trials and have seen delays and cancellations in their urgent work. In this interview, Y-Prime’s Vice President of Strategic Solutions Donna Mongiello discusses trends in the “virtualization” of clinical trials. Y-Prime is helping to transform how eCOAs recruit patients, distribute devices, train sites and patients, and gather data.
While it is true that not every start-up may be as historically meaningful as the aforementioned, and technological innovation doesn’t always move as linearly or breezily as imagined in the movies, more than a few of them are always laying the groundwork for a future that is healthier and happier for us all.
