Eniac Ventures Newsletter: February & March 2018
Check out our latest posts:
- Eniac goes deep into the future of tech
- Supporting Women Founders, Women Investors & the Future of VC
- Eniac is hiring an Analyst in NYC
Vence raised $2.7 million co-led by Eniac to build a virtual fencing livestock management platform
In February, Vence announced the close of their $2.7M seed round, co-led by Eniac and Kickstart Seed Fund with participation from Rabo Food & Agri Innovation Fund.
Founded by Frank Wooten, Vence’s platform is changing the entire approach by building a virtual fencing livestock management platform powered by industrial IoT, data and machine learning. They’re also building one of the most comprehensive real-time data sets of livestock globally. The data retrieved across each animal’s devices tracks all aspects of health, fertility and safety — with actionable alerts — to decrease costs and increase yields.
They are removing the barriers — physically and metaphorically — that have limited livestock and pastureland management from fully entering the digital era.
Eniac taps back in with TapCommerce Founders for Attentive
Less than two years ago, we led a seed round for Attentive, a SaaS platform for messaging-based B2C communications founded by Brian Long and Andrew Jones. This past February, they finally came out of stealth by announcing a $13M Series A, led by our friends at Bain Capital Ventures. This is the first time we’ve backed a founding team for their second venture. We led the seed for their previous company, TapCommerce, which was acquired by Twitter in 2014.
With Attentive, they’re back at it with personalized mobile messaging for ecommerce marketing, and in less than a year since market launch, they’re already working with 50+ of the top ecommerce and retail companies, including Boxed (an Eniac-invested company), Glossier and BarkBox.
We are couldn’t be more excited to be working with the team for Round Two.
Anchor 3.0 launches to be the one stop shop for creating a podcast across all platforms
On the heels of Anchor’s Series A in late 2017, the Eniac-seed funded company launched a huge product upgrade. The Anchor app now lets users on any mobile device record, edit, host, publish and distribute a podcast of any length. The platform lets you publish to Anchor’s channels, iTunes, Google Play and Pocket Casts.
We look forward to watching the company continue to grow.
M.io launches Universal Messaging Network to make chat apps interoperable
On March 7, M.io launched their Universal Messaging Network, and a $5.75 round of funding to expand its messaging federation service for large enterprises.
Users of popular workplace messaging apps — such as Slack, Cisco Spark, and Atlassian Stride — can use M.io to chat with external vendors, partners, and clients. M.io supports sending direct messages to individual contacts or joining “universal channels” which enable cross-platform group conversations across an unlimited number of organizations.
Eniac led the seed round for the Austin-based company in 2016, and to date, they’ve raised $8.25M and are currently showcasing in their hometown at SXSW.
We’re hosting dinners for the tech communities in Boston on April 4, Toronto on April 24, Raleigh-Durham on May 17, Pittsburgh on May 23, and regularly in SF and NYC.
Please reach out to caitlin@eniac.vc for more information.
