PORTFOLIO NEWS

The expectation that by now we’d all be whizzing around in self-driving cars – texting, reading, or snoozing while being autonomously delivered to our destination – hasn’t really lived up to predictions. A similar hope for an automated trucking industry is also in abeyance as we wait for technology to catch up.

Birmingham founder Ian Hoppe says we’re living during a “Gold Rush” era of electrification. And that means big business for his startup Condoit, an energy management tool. Because amid this electrification gold rush, Hoppe said Condoit is “selling shovels.”

Join host Matt Sprague with guest Tom Yeshurun, Founder & CEO, to hear how Tom’s obsession with precision has placed @civrobotics on the cutting edge. CIV Robotics’ customers use automation for everything they can, including: -Automating smaller, annoying tasks that no one likes to do -Using robot-level precision to reduce waste and increase profit -Dealing with labor shortages, especially in remote job locations in the solar industry.

Marking coordinates with 3/100' (8mm) accuracy and only one operator. Its onboard speaker guides the operator with the point description (in this case, telling it to mark with Blue / White nails and whiskers). This highly precise autonomous layout tool is ideal for construction projects with tight tolerances.

Driver Technologies, Inc., an AI-based mobility tech company that delivers a safer driving experience, and Getaround (GETR), the world's first connected carsharing marketplace, today announced a pilot program that will offer drivers of shared vehicles in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle free access to dash cam technology and safety features.

Driver Technologies, Inc., an AI-based mobility tech company that delivers a safer driving experience, and TomTom(TOM2), the geolocation technology specialist, today announced a partnership to implement the premium version of the Driver app into the TomTom Digital Cockpit for OEM car makers.

"This partnership with TomTom represents Driver Technologies' expansion into the OEM market," said Rashid Galadanci, CEO and Co-Founder of Driver Technologies. "TomTom is the perfect partner as it integrates various innovative apps within its Digital Cockpit platform to help bring the automotive industry one step closer to providing video and telematics data for personal use, coaching, fleets, and insurance companies worldwide."

"This partnership with TomTom represents Driver Technologies' expansion into the OEM market," said Rashid Galadanci, CEO and Co-Founder of Driver Technologies. "TomTom is the perfect partner as it integrates various innovative apps within its Digital Cockpit platform that will help bring the automotive industry one step closer to providing video and telematics data for personal use, coaching, fleets, and insurance companies worldwide."

The travel industry appears to be banking on a more normal season this year after the pandemic sidelined a lot of travelers. “We saw spending jump pretty significantly in February,” Magellan AI CEO Cameron Hendrix says. On his company’s monthly update detailing the biggest podcast ad spenders, Hendrix said spending jumped 111% between January and February. That differs from last year, when travel industry spending on podcasting was roughly the same during the two months.

Even as 22 new travel brands were detected by Magellan AI for the first time last month.

Magellan says podcasts in the Comedy genre had the biggest share of travel industry ad dollars, followed by True Crime and Sports. Nearly a third of travel ads were also host-read – but the number for Booking Holdings and Expedia was much lower. Hendrix said those two brands spent 11% on host-read ads.

Condoit®, a modern platform for electrical design, analysis, and collaboration, today announced the raising of its series seed funding round. The fully subscribed round raised new capital to fuel the company’s next phase of growth.

The round was led by C2 Ventures, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based venture capital firm specializing in “Dirty, Dull, and Dangerous Vertical Markets”. The lead investment team was joined by Atlanta-based Overline, Birmingham-based Alabama Futures Fund, Techstars, and several angel investors. Funds will be primarily allocated across product development, sales, marketing, and customer success to accelerate market penetration and expand deployments within existing accounts.

Driver Technologies, Inc., an AI-based mobility tech company that delivers a safer driving experience, today announced new research with data from over 17,000 drivers that shows using the Driver dash cam and safety app helped coach drivers to implement safe driving behaviors and stop dangerous habits such as tailgating, blowing stop signs, hard braking and speeding.

The new research analyzed the driving patterns of 17,000 drivers after using the Driver next-gen dash cam for 20 hours and found that the users were...

Small and medium-sized trucking fleets are definitely feeling the inflationary crunch. Mike Dorfman, co-founder, and chief operating officer of Koffie Financial, describes what they must do to deal with those pressures. Trucking is a margin-sensitive business, and right now, small and medium-sized fleets are feeling skyrocketing fuel costs, maintenance and labor costs, and the expense of maintaining insurance. “Using technology is a great way to mitigate some of the inflationary increases,” Dorfman says. “There is lots of technology to find the best fuel rates, find credit facilities, retain drivers, use safety technology to increase fuel efficiency, and reduce idle time. But it’s tough out there right now.”

The auto industry has embraced artificial intelligence as a key tool in achieving autonomous driving. However, we've also got innovative startups tapping into AI to further improve the safety and quality of the driver experience.

In this episode, we sit with Rashid Galadanci, the CEO, and co-founder of Driver Technologies, an AI-based mobility tech startup that delivers a safer driving experience. 

Jeremy Crane, the founder of Retrievables, thinks there may be another way to collect on delinquent accounts. The New York-based entrepreneur has developed a marketplace connecting collections attorneys with businesses who desire to collect on delinquent accounts.

We're excited to announce Blutag's newest feature, where your customers can now manage their subscription using their voice!

Blutag is now integrated with Recharge. All merchants utilizing Recharge can enable this feature into their Alexa skill. Customers will be able to hear updates on their next shipment, pause and change the frequency of their subscriptions.

Nigerian American best friends David Iya and Joshua Nzewi launched Eze in 2020 as a B2B wholesale marketplace for used smartphones and other electronics. The startup validates the quality of products for buyers, countering the common issue of fraud in used electronics. Eze has been used in 10 countries and is on track to make $2.3 million in 2022.

Magellan AI, the podcast analytics platform with the world’s largest database of podcast advertising data, announced a new collaboration with Experian, the world’s leading information services company. Experian’s Identity Graph will power Attribution by Magellan AI.

Koffie Financial, an insurtech providing innovative financial services for the trucking and transportation sectors, announced a first-of-its-kind credit card explicitly built for fleets. The launch is Koffie's latest innovative financial solution in their mission to help their trucking fleets scale profitably and safely. The Koffie Card will complement their best-in-class insurance products to fill a vast credit need in trucking.

The genesis of Hank came from a sort of conflation between two different parts of my life: the professional, and the personal. At the time I started thinking about Hank, I had spent over a decade working in the tech industry, where a common rule of thumb is to "design for yourself" — meaning someone under the age of forty. There's this very ingrained misconception in tech that older generations don't understand or want new technology, so very rarely do we design solutions with older people in mind.

Let’s talk humanoids for a minute, shall we? Why do so many roboticists insist on creating robots that look like us? Get ready to see plenty more humanoid robots.

Visibility is the first step in effectively managing cyber risk. This principle applies to risk across all domains, and yet we expect security professionals to accurately assess and mitigate risk without being able to track access and exposure of unstructured data, such as files, across an organization. And, with the rise of remote work, bring-your-own-devices (BYOD), and storing data in the cloud, it becomes increasingly challenging to know what data exists let alone where it exists or who is accessing it.

Driver Technologies, Inc., an AI-based mobility tech company that delivers a safer driving experience, and Stable Insurance (Stable), a new insurtech company built specifically for rideshare drivers and fleets, today announced a partnership to help more rideshare drivers get the commercial-grade auto insurance they need while providing them with the technology to better protect their passengers and themselves while on the roads.

As a busy New Yorker, you are used to having friends that have insomnia. After referring them to Dream CBD, they have never slept better. Made up of nano hemp, melatonin, L-Theanine, magnesium, and Reishi, it tastes like a comforting hot chocolate but is dairy-free, keto-friendly, and gluten-free. The results? Deep, restful sleep.

Noteworthy AI announced this week that it has closed $3 million in new funding to accelerate its growth as a provider of electric distribution asset inspection solutions. Investors that joined this latest round include: Earthshot Ventures, Techstars, Connecticut Innovations, Susquehanna Foundation, Keiki Capital, Boro Capital, C2 Ventures, Avesta Fund, Asymmetry Ventures, City Light Capital, and Climate Capital.

This 14 page pitch deck from Koffie raised $11 million to use alternative data to reward truck drivers for safe driving by lowering premiums. 

Steelhead Technologies, a platform for processed-based manufacturers, today announced a $2.2 million seed funding round to expand sales and marketing, technology development and growth of its team. The seed round includes investment from C2 Ventures, among other investors.

Phalanx AI Inc. (Phalanx), a Techstars-portfolio startup company operating in the greater Washington, D.C. area, announced the official launch of MUZE (Monitoring Unstructured data with Zero trust Encryption) which reduces the risk of data breaches, reduces the cost of incident response if a breach occurs, and provides data security through automatic, productivity-centric file-level encryption.

Paladin, a legal technology company whose platform enables law firms and legal services organizations to manage their pro bono programs and opportunities, has raised $8 million in Series A funding, which it plans to use to further develop its product and expand its market internationally.

Nathalie Walton, the chief executive of Expectful, said that restriction “to women’s access to safe abortion services will lead to adverse health implications for countless women.” Walton took her post at the helm of Expectful after herself going through a pregnancy that almost killed her. 

The AI-based mobility tech company that delivers a safer driving experience, announced that they were selected as the “judges’ all-around favorite” at the InsurTech Hartford Symposium’s pitch contest.