Workforce collaboration platform Zuper raises $1.1M to help companies manage field teams

Zuper CEO Anand Subbaraj. (Zuper Photo)

Seattle startup Zuper raised a $1.1 million seed round and hired a longtime Microsoft manager as its new CEO.

The 4-year-old company sells software to more than 100 clients such as IKEA India that use Zuper to help manage field workforces. It integrates with supply chain and point of sale systems, and facilitates communication between various stakeholders. The software also enables scheduling, routing, identity management, video conferencing, and chatbots. Some companies use Zuper to run COVID-19 screenings for employees.

Customers hail from industries including residential and commercial cleaning, HVAC, electrical, internet service providers, plumbing, and landscaping.

“Zuper reduces/eliminates manual mundane work and improves efficiency and productivity, enabling service businesses to optimize the entire workforce management process and offer the best customer experiences,” said CEO Anand Subbaraj.

Zuper just brought on Subbaraj to lead the company. He previously spent 13 years at Microsoft, most recently as head of product in the Azure Data Factory.

The company has 30 employees across Seattle and Chennai, India. Prime Venture Partners led the round, with participation from Gunderson Dettemer and Gemba Capital.

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Seattle startup Banzai acquires High Attendance to bolster event management platform

Banzai, a Seattle startup that sells event marketing software, today announced the acquisition of Austin-based High Attendance, a similar company that helps clients run events.

Banzai CEO Joe Davy said the deal will help support a rapidly-changing events industry that has shifted online due to the pandemic.

“The last purely offline event has already occurred,” Davy said in a statement. “The future is hybrid events. Every company in the world is now reaching their audiences through hybrid offline, online, and on-demand audience experiences.”

High Attendance will add 10 employees to Banzai’s headcount, which is now north of 80 people. High Attendance CEO Christopher Justice will join Banzai as its new vice president of engineering. Banzai raised a $7 million Series A investment round in March.

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Headset raises $3.2M to grow marijuana data platform as cannabis sales surge amid pandemic

(Headset Image)

Seattle startup Headset just raised an additional $3.2 million as the 5-year-old company expands its business intelligence platform used by customers across the growing legal cannabis industry.

Headset is similar to market data services from firms such as Nielsen and IRI. The company operates data platforms for cannabis retailers and suppliers, as well as a tool to analyze cannabis market data.

Headset CEO Cy Scott. (Headset Photo)

“Our real-time market intelligence data helps cannabis operators, CPG companies, financial services and more navigate the competitive landscape, find opportunity and understand the cannabis consumer through our aggregated point-of-sale derived data which includes sales, inventory, pricing, demographics and basket analytics,” said CEO Cy Scott.

The fresh cash will be used to help Headset expand into other states and provinces where cannabis is legal, including markets where the company expects new laws to be enacted with the upcoming election.

Headset is riding a wave of increased consumer spend on marijuana amid the pandemic. State such as Colorado and Illinois are seeing record monthly sales as more people stay at home and pot shops stay open as they are considered “essential.”

Headset’s own research shows average sales of cannabis products in adult-use markets up 25% this year.

Scott described the latest Headset financing as a “small insider bridge round” as it gears up to raise its Series B round in 2021. Total funding to date for the 45-person company is just under $18 million. Investors include Poseidon Asset Management, AFI Capital Partners, Hypur Ventures, Salveo Capital, and others.

Scott started Headset in 2015 with Brian Wansolich and Scott Vickers; the three previously co-founded Leafly, a marijuana strain and dispensary resource platform that was acquired by Seattle-based marijuana investment firm Privateer Holdings in 2011.

Other Pacific Northwest cannabis startups are also raising cash. Bend, Ore.-based Dutchie just raised $35 million from the likes of former Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz and hip-hop star Snoop Dogg. Dutchie, which helps cannabis dispensaries facilitate online orders, has seen a 700% surge in sales volume during the pandemic.

In an interview with TechCrunch this past June, investor Karan Wadhera described the cannabis industry as “non-cyclical” and signaled optimism for cannabis investing after a rocky 2019.

The global cannabis market is expected to reach $42.7 billion by 2024, according to a January report from Arcview Market Research.

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Microsoft cloud vets raise $26M for drug prescription data platform Prescryptive Health

Prescryptive CEO Chris-Blackley. (Prescryptive Photo)

Seattle startup Prescryptive Health raised $26 million for its prescription data platform software.

Founded in 2017 by Microsoft commercial cloud vets Chris Blackley and Kevin Young, the company works with employers to help inform employees about prescription drug prices and other related information. It has direct connection to more than 50,000 pharmacies in its national network. The platform integrates in real-time with benefit plans and providers at the point of care.

“Our platform reduces benefit costs without reducing benefits — that’s good for both employers and employees, especially during this time,” Blackley said.

Morningside Ventures led the round, which included participation from SeaChange Fund and Pallasite Ventures. Morningside co-founder Dr. Gerald Chan joined the board.

Total funding to date for the 30-person company is $35 million.

Prescryptive is one of many digital health startups attracting investor interest this year. Venture funding for the U.S. digital health sector is expected to break a new record in 2020; companies already raised $5.4 billion through June, according to RockHealth.

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Life-and-career path platform OwnTrail raises $250K, builds ‘work from garage’ office space

The OwnTrail crew working on their garage-based office, from left to right: Carolyn Dunn, vice president of engineering, Rebekah Bastian, co-founder and CEO, and Kt McBratney, co-founder and chief brand officer. (Photos courtesy of Max Bastian)

Seattle-based OwnTrail launched in February, just before COVID-19 turned the world upside down — but the startup is weathering the pandemic largely unscathed.

“We’re about helping women make it through hard things,” said co-founder and CEO Rebekah Bastian.

The platform allows women to plot their career and life paths, calling out milestones in their careers, personal relationships and health, while sharing the routes pursued by other women to provide insights and lessons from their journeys. The underlying message is that there is no right way to find happiness.

OwnTrail has grown to include 1,000 registered users and more than 350 profiles in which users share their career and life paths. The business is partnering with organizations including Future For Us, Built By Girls, Women In Product and others to help the groups provide activities and a space for their members to connect.

The OwnTrail team works together in a reimagined garage that is now an office space.

The startup recently closed a $250,000 fundraising round and initiated a crowdfunding campaign that runs through late August to raise an additional $20,000. Bastian said the company opted for crowdfunding “to build awareness and test out demand for our business models.” It is more than 70% toward its funding goal.

The OwnTrail team recently moved into a converted garage at Bastian’s Seattle home. The office plan was in the works as a way to keep costs down before COVID struck. The three full-time employees— Bastian; Kt McBratney, co-founder and chief brand officer; and Carolyn Dunn, vice president of engineering — have created an inner circle of safe contact and work together in person.

Bastian was previously at Zillow for 14 years, leaving her role as vice president of community and culture to start OwnTrail, whose concepts she explores in a book called “Blaze Your Own Trail.”

OwnTrail is one of 26 tech startups joining the Washington Technology Industry Association’s latest Founder Cohort Program. The entrepreneurial cohort was announced last month.

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Air Force goes with BlackSky’s Spectra AI platform to track impact of COVID-19

A satellite image of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport reveals an unusually high number of parked airplanes (identified in yellow boxes) and an unusually low number of parked cars. That’s consistent with what would be expected during the COVID-19 pandemic. (BlackSky Photo)

BlackSky, a satellite data venture with offices in Seattle, says it’s won a U.S. Air Force contract to track the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on military interests worldwide. The contract calls for BlackSky to monitor U.S. military bases overseas and assess the status of supply chains, using its AI-enabled Spectra geospatial data analysis platform.

Spectra can analyze satellite data as well as news feeds and social media postings to identify anomalies worth following up on with additional imagery or investigation. The data inputs include imagery from BlackSky’s own satellite constellation as well as from other sources.

BlackSky has benefited from Pentagon contracts for years, but this latest project focuses on impacts related to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The approach was demonstrated for GeekWire back in May, when BlackSky executives showed how satellite images could be compared to detect an unusual rise or fall in, say, the number of cars parked in a lot outside a given installation. That could point to places where social distancing is decreasing or increasing.

Spectra can also analyze activity at airports, loading docks, maintenance facilities, fuel storage depots and other key installations to assess how supply chains might be affected by pandemic-related bottlenecks.

Such analyses can be compared with reported infection numbers coming from local governments, and integrated into computer models to predict the risk to deployed Air Force personnel and the surrounding communities.

“BlackSky is giving decision makers the crucial information they need to protect U.S. interests at home and overseas amid today’s rapidly shifting threat landscape,” BlackSky CEO Brian O’Toole said today in a news release.

“By combining global geospatial data sources with satellite remote sensing data, Spectra provides a near-real time look at the evolving pandemic and provides critical insights to inform national security,” he said.

The contract was awarded through AFWERX, the Air Force’s small-business innovation program, and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Although the financial terms of the contract were not announced, AFWERX’s solicitation called for providing Direct to Phase 2 grants worth as much as $1 million over the course of 27 months. AFWERX added the emphasis on responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the course of the solicitation.

O’Toole said Spectra will help the Air Force “maintain a watchful eye over its supply chain” amid the pandemic.

“Spectra will provide the Air Force an easy-to-use outbreak monitoring and decision support tool,” he said. “The platform will help us combat the spread of COVID-19, manage risk and ensure the protection of personnel around the globe.”

BlackSky, a subsidiary of Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries, has offices in Seattle as well as Herndon, Va.

Celebrate the leading innovators, entrepreneurs, and technologists at the 2020 GeekWire Awards, livestreaming on GeekWire.com starting at 4 p.m. on Thursday, July 23. 

Don’t miss one of the region’s most-anticipated and hotly-contested tech events. 

Thanks to presenting sponsor Wave Business for supporting us as we’ve transitioned to a virtual event. 

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