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Purchaser.ai: AI-Powered Software to Finally Fix Manufacturing Procurement

September 25, 2024

Enhancing our country’s manufacturing capabilities requires rethinking every step of the process, from what we’re building, where it’s being built, how it’s built, and who is doing the building. Fortunately there are entrepreneurs rushing in to help. The Purchaser.ai team has deep experience in this industry, now coming back together to build solutions for manufacturing procurement processes.

Now that Purchaser has announced its seed round, we’re happy to share that Homebrew is a supporting investor, alongside our friends at Ludlow Ventures and Long Journey. We’ve long believed that industries that pre-date the PC will continue to reap the benefits of software transformation. But that building these companies requires founding teams who disrupt with love, not contempt, for the customers they serve. Alongside you need a time-to-value and scale of impact that makes your product adoption a priority, otherwise there’s too much to get done to just run innovation pilots.

In addition, we’ve been investing in vertical applications of AI for years and continue to believe there is massive opportunity for category-leading companies to be created where there is no incumbent software provider because simply increasing efficiency or improving workflow is only a nice-to-have. We’re confident that recent advancements in AI enable software to not just aid the worker, but do the work. Combining existing models with needed context from the customer and first party data can allow that work to be done. Purchaser team shares this perspective and their vision is to not just improve procurement workflows but to get procurement done.

If this sounds interesting to you, they’re hiring.

Typeface Acquires Treat to Further Enterprise AI for Brands

September 23, 2024

We're happy to share the news that Treat has been acquired by Typeface, one of the leaders in bringing AI to brands for enterprise content creation. We became supporting investors in Treat’s seed funding, and have continually been impressed by the team’s foresight in how brands would use generative AI both now and in the future. Their first product uses data on customers to generate product images that incorporate elements known to perform well with certain target demographics. For example, if a fruit vendor’s data suggests that younger men prefer seeing food ads that show a person eating the product, Treat may create an ad that depicts someone biting into fruit.

It’s no wonder that Typeface wanted to bring this team and technology into their company and we’re continuing along for the ride with them. If this mission sounds interesting to you, Typeface is hiring.

Congrats to Character.ai on its Agreement With Google

August 30, 2024

Our Character.ai story begins with meeting their founder/CEO Noam Shazeer back in our early Google years together, so it seems appropriate that Google appears again in this phase of our relationship! This time in the form of a strategic licensing agreement for the Character.ai technology.

As Character investors we’re thankful for the opportunity to have shared in what Noam and team created thus far, and as (legacy) Google shareholders from our previous employment, also happy to see him and parts of the team back at the company. It’s not often you’re on both sides of a transaction like this (well kind of), even in this small way.

Thank you Noam and onwards for Character.ai!!!

Subcity Acquired By Engineered Tax Services

August 12, 2024

Subcity was founded with the belief that a strong American economy required a health manufacturing sector. And that one way to assist this industry, which often runs on tight margins and high sensitivity to cash flow, was to assist them with taking advantage of tax incentives and other government rebates. And over the last several years they did just that - finding millions of dollars for their customers that were otherwise going unclaimed while building an unparalleled database of these programs.

Industry incumbent Engineered Tax Services saw what value Subcity’s product, technology, and team could bring and decided it belonged in-house with them. We know Alex White (Subcity cofounder & CEO) will make a tremendous contribution to the ongoing success of ETS and American businesses broadly.

Adonis Raises $31 Million Because AI Is Delivering Actual Results, Not Just Hype, for Health Care Workflows

July 11, 2024

“Love in their heart, and a chip on their shoulder” is my favorite personality type for founders. In the case of Adonis, we saw these characteristics from our very first meetings with Aman and Akash. They believed that despite the multiple customer constituencies in healthcare (providers, care systems, insurers, patients, and so on), it wasn’t a zero sum game - you could actually innovate in ways which were productive for multiple groups and that gains didn’t need to come at the expense of another. The Adonis founders also believed you could build a company with strong technology DNA and maintain that culture even as you scaled other parts of business.

Two years ago these were statements of intent. Now in 2024, they’re well on their way to proving their beliefs true at scale. As of this fundraise, Adonis “works with over 10,000 providers and has processed tens of millions of claims, totaling over $13.3 billion in charges. Adonis works with over 3,000 different payers, equating to nearly all of the payers in the United States, and integrates with over 35 different EHRs and Clearinghouses.” There’s no ceiling on this startup’s future with ambitious expansion plans across the billing and financial stack. If you’d like to consider continuing your career at Adonis, they are hiring.

Clarity Pediatrics Raises $10m for Chronic Condition Care, Starting with ADHD

April 23, 2024

We believe startups and software can be incredible drivers of positive change, but not without deliberate focus on ‘how’ you are building, in addition to the speed and success of outcomes. This is especially true when the company serves vulnerable populations such as children, and why when it comes to pediatric health care, Homebrew has searched for combinations of founding teams and missions that we’re proud to put our reputation behind, not just our capital. Clarity, which this week announced its initial $10 million funding, is an A+ example of what we seek.

WHO: Cofounders Christina LaMontagne, CEO, and Alessandro Larrazabal, CMO, combine years of operational and medical experience that informs the product, team and strategy behind Clarity. The cap table includes Homebrew, Rethink Impact, and Maverick Ventures.

WHAT: Chronic conditions in children (such as ADHD, Obesity, and Asthma) are sadly common but often undertreated due to cost and specialist limitations in the American health care system. For example, 47% of kids in the US are enrolled in Medicaid and 1 in 3 has a common chronic condition.

HOW: The cornerstone of Clarity Pediatrics’ approach to ADHD care is Behavioral Parent Training (BPT), recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics for families of children ages 5 to 12 with mild-moderate ADHD. Unfortunately, 80% of children with ADHD don’t have access to BPT, and most families wait over a year and pay $3,000 or more out of pocket to get access to ADHD treatment. Clarity Pediatrics makes pediatric ADHD care 10x more accessible and 20x more affordable: families have access to next-day appointments, including for ADHD diagnostic screening and medication-related services, and pay an average co-pay of $15 per session.

While ADHD is the current focus, Clarity plans to expand into other care areas where there are high percentages of comorbidity and similar provider shortages.

WHY: Because healthy childhoods set kids on the path to happier, more successful lives while eliminating stress from family and caregivers. The pediatric chronic care market is huge but underserved and fragmented. We believe the startup which helps solve these challenges in a software-driven, non-incremental model will be both valuable and impactful. We believe that Clarity will be that company.

If you care for a child who could benefit from Clarity’s ADHD product they’d be happy to hear from you. And if you are interested in joining an early stage startup building the future of pediatric chronic care, they’re hiring.

Intellimize Acquired By Webflow to Bring AI-Driven Personalization to Its Platform

April 19, 2024

In 2016, Intellimize began with an idea that the most effective web experiences would be personalized to the visitor. For example, when a potential customer from a Fortune 500 company visits your Accounting SaaS startup website they should automagically see case studies tuned to their persona, not the latest SMB customer logos. They were absolutely correct and one of the largest website builder tools agreed as well. That’s why we’re excited by Webflow’s recent acquisition of Intellimize - it gives the team and product a chance to reach scale impact very quickly.

Congrats to the Intellimize founders - you were a joy to work with - and to their new Webflow colleagues, who are getting a seasoned, smart, and hardworking team.

Reken Raises $10 Million to Fight Generative AI Security Threats

February 2, 2024

If you hang around the tech community long enough one thing becomes clear: it’s all about the people. Homebrew exists today because its founding partners worked a few feet from one another at Google. And that same backstory explains our participation in Reken’s $10 million seed fundraise.

Shuman Ghosemajumder, Reken’s cofounder and CEO, also sat within that small group of AdSense product managers, and as a result we’ve know him for just about 21 years. When he and Rich Griffiths let us know they were starting a new company together it was an easy “Yes”. Not surprisingly, we weren’t the only former colleagues to sign on and perhaps a little bit of that Google magic will bless this startup as well.

Reken sits at the intersection of what the team learned at Shape Security (where Shuman was CTO and Rich was VP Product) and their investigations into how generative AI was creating new threats that individuals and companies would need to address.

While the company is still being quiet about their product, they are hiring, so if the overview intrigues you, let them know.

Pika, Both a Creative Video Technology and Creative Video Community, Announces $55m Funding

November 29, 2023

We’re believers that software helps people be creative and that everyone has creative abilities. This informed our work at YouTube, Twitter, and Second Life, as well as our prior investments in companies like Anchor. And it drives our investment in Pika, an idea-to-video platform powered by AI.

When we met Demi Guo, Pika’s CEO and Cofounder, we were struck both by her technical accomplishments and her interest in building a community, not just software. Sign us up - for the product and for the investment, which Pika announced this week as the latest addition to what now totals $55 million in cumulative funding.

Earlier we mentioned Anchor, and it was their CEO Mike Mignano, who now as a Partner with Lightspeed, led this round (and introduced us to Demi). It’s a joy to work alongside him again!

If you are interested in joining Pika (the product), sign up here.

If you are interested in joining Pika (the company), they are of course hiring.

Ride Report Acquired By Inrix to Help Cities Managed Mobility and Public Space Usage

November 21, 2023

When shared bikes, scooters and other urban mobility offerings started multiplying, most of the startups in the market were focused on *putting* these devices into cities. Less common were founders thinking about the implications of all these new transportation options and how local governments could constructively manage their usage. As long-time advocates for public good, the Ride Report team sprang into action and built a platform which helped bring all the constituents together - from commercial companies to the public sector.

Now having been adopted by more than 75 customers across three continents, the Ride Report team will be continuing its growth as part of INRIX, the leading intelligent mobility software platform. We know they’ll continue to do mission-driven high impact work!

Sitka Joins Forces With AristaMD to Solve for the Future of Medical Specialty Care

November 20, 2023

ALL entrepreneurship is difficult, but sometimes it feels like those working in the health care markets have it especially hard. The health care market is in need of massive change in the US but it has so many impediments to moving quickly, even when in the hands of the most responsible founders. We’ve had a front seat to this reality as CEO Kelsey Mellard and her company Sitka built their remote specialty consult product.

Sitka has become a trusted partner to a variety of customers, including some of the most prestigious and innovative hospital systems. It allows doctors to get specialist consults virtually and from outside of their institutions, meaning patients can have access needed expertise while care providers have more flexibility in staffing. Sitka just combined forces with AristaMD to continue scaling to a future where software can help bridge cost and quality gaps in care, no matter where you reside. And that’s good for everyone.

Gatheround Raises $8 Million Series A For Software That Powers High Impact Video Meetings

November 6, 2023

If you think that every work conversation you will ever have in your lifetime will be IRL then stop reading now.

If you think that Zoom is the perfect tool for any type of virtual experience among teams then stop reading now.

Ok, if you made it this far let us tell you about Gatheround, a modern software product that helps teams, companies and organizations conduct high quality meetings that matter - such as All Hands, Employee Onboardings, and anything that requires talented, creative humans to interact.

Trusted and loved by customers such as Gusto, Salesforce, Lyft and Cisco, Gatheround just announced its $8 million Series A to continue development and deployment of its unique, opinionated and effective platform. We’re excited to continue our support in this round after leading the seed earlier.

As CEO Lisa Conn writes, “We’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of what distributed teams can do with the right tools. Remote and hybrid teams are already more engaged and more equitable. Gatheround is the final piece of the puzzle: a meeting platform that reflects the social dynamics that give in-person interactions their collaborative magic. Not only are engaging meetings a good business practice, they’re also essential to shared team culture and norms. Teams and companies equipped with those strong, healthy social ties are unstoppable.”

If breaking out of the tiled gray video wall for your work sounds appealing, try Gatheround. Oh and also, they’re hiring.

Shield AI Raises $200 Million to Further Development of the World’s Best AI Pilot

November 1, 2023

There are a number of financial benchmarks that validate the growth of a startup, and as venture investors, these are all of course important to our firm. But from the earliest days of Homebrew we’ve aspired to back entrepreneurs who think not just about the impact success has on their bank accounts and their speaker bios, but on the world as a whole. ShieldAI has always been a company which overflows the “mission-driven” bucket, since its founding days when one brother, returning from military deployment, asked his sibling a tear-producing question. “Can we use technology to gather information instead of putting our soldiers and civilians in danger?”

Now a decade later, Shield produces smart autonomous devices and aircraft which are deployed by our country, and other nations, in combat zones, on critical life saving missions, and for disrupting large scale criminal activity. Shield is even currently in Gaza. The company's platform has saved lives, intercepted illegal goods, and performed a host of other flight missions that will quietly stay out of headlines. Shield's board decks produce gasps, tears, and applause. And it’s still just the beginning.

Shield announced a raise of $200 million additional dollars to further the development of this industry-leading software, at an increased valuation over its previous round. There is no ceiling on where Shield can go from here, and we’re proud to be early investors and ongoing supporters.

If a responsible startup at the intersection of compelling technology and global-relevance interests you, they’re hiring.

Data Pipeline Startup Satsuma Acquired by Alchemy to Power Subgraph Product

September 26, 2023

The headline kind of says it all, but here’s more. It was clear from the earliest meetings with the Satsuma team that they were focused on building a tool that could bring value quickly to the blockchain developer community. So it’s not a total surprise that in addition to revenues coming early, so did the acquisition interest! Ultimately, the founders believed that Alchemy’s reach would help accelerate the adoption of Satsuma’s product so it made sense to bring the team and tech in-house. Best of luck to them!

With Ello, AI Becomes a Personalized Reading Coach for Kids

September 7, 2023

We’ve always believed that magic occurs at the intersection of mission-driven founders and amazing technology. And when we find these combinations, it’s our job as venture capitalists to support these startups to our fullest abilities, hoping that the resulting company is one which delivers outsized impact to the world. AI-powered reading coach Ello is one such example, and we’re thrilled to meaningfully increase our investment in their $15 million Series A. The funding comes at a time where urgency for Ello’s product is particularly timely. Via TechCrunch, “According to a 2021 study from Stanford University, reading fluency among second- and third-graders in the U.S. was about 30% behind what would be anticipated in a typical year at the time.”

The Ello team is multidisciplinary, combining technologists with educators, to build a powerful and responsible approach to AI learning. Giving children confidence and capability in their reading is an important component of lifelong capacity building and helping anyone reach their fullest potential. Our interest in this goal transcends Homebrew, as Hunter’s first job was working in a children’s bookstore and Satya was a long-time Board member of KIPP.

Ello uses an AI-powered coach alongside books to meet your child where they are - in abilities and interests - and then bring them along to grow skills and enthusiasm for reading. And this is just the beginning of what Ello has planned.

If working at a well-funded, high quality, ethical AI consumer startup appeals to you, Ello is hiring.

MatX: Faster chips for LLMs

August 7, 2023

Chips make AI work at scale but their performance is also a bottleneck to unleashing the full potential of AI. So it makes sense that one of the most important moonshots is to design new chips that are optimized for AI, especially LLMs. Today MatX, a startup focused on exactly this goal, shared just a bit more about its team and mission. The cofounders worked together at Google and we’re excited to be amongst their backers.

MatX is hiring in a number of technical roles.

Slang: Helping Small Businesses Answer Every Call Intelligently

June 29, 2023

The hype around generative AI is palpable. But while there is tremendous potential, there still aren’t many clear examples of true business value being created with the technology, especially for consumers and small businesses. That’s why we were so excited to meet the team at Slang and lead their recently announced Series A financing.

WHO: Alex Sambvani and Gabe Duncan met when they were implementing personalized voice AI as members of the data science team at Spotify. That experience taught them that the power of voice AI could be applied to help businesses of all types, but that the technical hurdles would be too challenging for many of them. They conceived of Slang to bring this transformative technology to small businesses via a simple, fast and highly performant voice AI platform.

WHAT: Slang has built an AI-powered, 24/7 phone concierge that intelligently answers customer calls for small businesses, starting with restaurants. Slang enables customers to implement voice AI with a simple, no-code solution that is up and running in 30 minutes and offers powerful data intelligence that helps drive customer engagement and revenue. Quickly and easily, Slang automatically handles tasks like booking appointments, making reservations, placing food orders, and more, resulting in higher conversion and happier customers.

HOW: Available voice solutions deliver a terrible customer experience (phone directories anyone?), cost exorbitant amounts of money, take months to implement and rarely integrate into other systems that small businesses rely upon (like reservation systems for restaurants). Having staff answer calls distracts them from their core job responsibilities and creates an inconsistent customer experience. Slang stitches together a number of technologies, including natural language processing, text to speech, dialogue management and reservation system APIs, to taking an often troublesome customer touchpoint (answering customer phone calls) for location-based businesses and turning it into a scalable, affordable and actionable revenue channel.

WHY: Small businesses are facing an unprecedented staffing shortage and all-time-high wages — this means it's no longer affordable to answer the phone, resulting in missed calls and lost business. Slang helps SMBs capture more opportunities over the phone and elevate the

customer experience. Over time, Slang will become the conversational AI layer for business — an entirely new channel for businesses to transact, market, and serve their customers.

If being on the cutting edge of technology and helping small businesses thrive sounds exciting to you, join the team at Slang. They are hiring for positions in New York and remotely.

Albert Invent Raises $7.5 Million Seed Round Because The Nearly $5 Trillion Chemicals and Manufacturing Science Industry Needs Modern Software

June 14, 2023

At Homebrew, we believe Software Enables the World (our slightly less carnivorous version of ‘software eats the world’). As a result, we’ve always been interested in tools and platforms which build not just new industries, but aid those markets which existed way before the PC. And we’ve been fortunate enough to back many SaaS companies that have found success in construction, agriculture, health care, to name a few “mainline” industries.

When we met the Albert team and learned about their experience building a modern collaboration, data, and productivity stack for the chemical and material science industry it was clear this felt like a Homebrew opportunity. Committed mission-driven entrepreneurs in a vertical that the average startup may never have considered. So when the founders invited us into their seed financing alongside their lead (and our frequent co-investor) Index Ventures, we lept at the opportunity, backing them with our personal capital and bringing along some notable individuals with us.

It’s been a joy working with this strong team and if you’d like to build with them too, Albert is hiring.

Manifest Raises $6 Million Seed to Address Software Supply Chain Visibility Through Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs)

May 19, 2023

So what’s a software bill of materials (SBOM)? The simplest way is to think of it as an ingredients label, making sure that the underlying software components (especially open source pieces) are known to anyone using a software product. Without an SBOM, you’re flying blind as to the security and performance risks in a tech stack. That’s why both the public and private sector are pushing for standardization and availability of this data. Enter Manifest.

Manifest allows organizations to generate, collect, and operationalize software bill of materials (SBOMs) to achieve insight into the hidden risks of their software, respond faster to vulnerabilities, and procure more secure products. The company recently announced Department of Homeland Security and Air Force contracts, among a number of other commercial customers. Alongside these new relationships is a $6 million seed round, which we were thrilled to participate in (thanks to our friend and coinvestor Ross Fubini for the introduction).

As the Manifest team writes,

Software supply chain vulnerabilities are escalating rapidly. Software supply chain attacks have grown 300% since 2020, and an astonishing 62% of enterprises say they were hit with software supply chain attacks in 2021. Cybersecurity is often referred to as the “horizontal vertical,” touching every industry and every enterprise. The problem of understanding what’s in the software we build and buy is something that has been overlooked for too long, and in recent years, headline-making and business-disrupting cybersecurity vulnerabilities such as Log4shell, Solarwinds, and Apache Struts have brought it front and center.

If Manifest’s mission sounds exciting to you, they are hiring!

Adonis Raises $17.3 Million Series A to Help Health Care Providers Manage Revenue

May 18, 2023

Every startup financing has something unique to its story, even if a lot of the same patterns emerge. In the case of Adonis’ Series A (led by General Catalyst), much is familiar to those who evaluate new companies: repeat founders with deep insights into the problem they’re solving; quick out of the gate to revenue; building out a team of both former colleagues and new talented members. Much of this was what drew us to them originally, in addition to seeing the opportunity to help increasingly large health care clinic networks use software to improve their revenue management processes.

But when the round completed, it occupied one specific new spot in our own history: the first follow-on round in a Homebrew♾️company, where instead of investing money on behalf of others, we’re using our own capital. But the core of what we do isn’t new at all. Still putting in the work, still looking for venture outcomes, still operating as a team alongside founders. And knowing that we have to earn any ongoing opportunities to follow-on in future funding events. So when the Adonis founders extended the offer to us, in an oversubscribed situation, we were thrilled and eager to deepen our participation.

If Adonis’ mission sounds exciting to you they are most definitely hiring.

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