Fueling the Future: Seed rounds, acquisitions, grants, and other investments.
October 22, 2020
The pandemic has hit musicians hard, but Indy startup Mandolin offers a livestreaming platform that could bring some relief to performers and to the industry. The High Alpha portfolio company has just raised $5 million in a seed round to help it grow. Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce, also participated in the round, along with some leading SaaS angel investors.
Data lake platform Zaloni, based in Durham, has recently closed on roughly $9.6 million in equity. The round launched in March and five investors participated. Zaloni previously raised $1.5 million in debt and $7.49 million in equity.
St. Louis real estate tech startup Transactly has acquired Colorado-based On Target Transactions, which coordinates real estate transactions in several states. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the merger is expected to be complete on November 1.
Columbus-based Bold Penguin (which is not afraid to say it’s the “largest commercial insurance exchange in the known universe”) has acquired InsurTech company RiskGenius, headquartered in Overland Park, KS. Bold Penguin says the RiskGenius team and AI-driven tech will “supercharge” its own SaaS platform.
HabitAware, a Minneapolis startup that makes Keen—a bracelet to help users combat body-focused repetitive behaviors (like nail biting)—announced that it has received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation for two more years of research to develop the device.
TitletownTech, a Green Bay Packers/Microsoft partnership, is investing in mobile-first content creation platform Slate. The investment was co-led by WISE Ventures.
