Active portfolio of B2B SaaS startup investments sees tremendous growth
(Manchester, N.H., Aug. 17, 2021) — York IE™, a vertically integrated strategic growth and investment firm, today announced its fourth cohort of investments.
The cohort includes nine total investments: seven new companies and two follow-ons to previous investments. York IE also saw significant growth and progress from prior investments within its portfolio.
“This new cohort has already hit the ground running,” said Kyle York, CEO and co-founder, York IE. “These founders and their teams are bringing new perspectives, innovations and solutions to their respective industries, completely revolutionizing the way businesses will operate. The future is bright for these companies.”
Fourth York IE Cohort
With this six-month cohort, York IE has now completed 29 investments in 25 companies, including its first international investments.
The new companies within the fourth York IE cohort are:
- BedRock Systems, which delivers a Provably Unbreakable and Adaptable Hypervisor platform with Active Security™ from edge to cloud, where safety and security isn’t just a perception, it’s a formally proven reality. (San Mateo, Calif.)
- CloudTruth, a unified configuration management company that unifies access and visibility into companies’ infrastructure, application and secrets configuration data. (Boston)
- MedStack, which brings application ecosystems and the power of developer communities to healthcare. (Toronto)
- Pixaera, an immersive learning platform that transforms global mandatory training with scalable and measurable simulations. (London)
- Serenity Engage, a secure group messaging platform that connects everyone providing care to older adults through a mobile and web collaboration platform. (Denver)
- SplitSpot, which simplifies renting for both tenants and landlords. (Boston)
- StackShare, a tech stack collaboration platform used by over half a million developers. (San Francisco)
The follow-on investments include:
- Canvs, which transforms open-ended survey responses, transcripts, social comments and product reviews into insights and visualizations to get line of sight to consumer emotions and intent. (New York)
- Datazoom, an enterprise video data platform technology company that captures, standardizes and delivers data to help streaming video teams and their technology partners make operations, engineering, product and business decisions with confidence. (New York)
“York IE has been more than an investor,” said Katherine Wells, founder and CEO, Serenity Engage. “They have been like an extension of my team. Working with them has offered me access to a suite of resources that are helping us accelerate our growth.”
“The dynamic of early-stage funding continues to change,” said Joe Raczka, COO, York IE. “Global venture funding hit an all-time high in the first half of 2021. Despite this huge influx of capital into early-stage private technology companies, we are still seeing more and more quality opportunities. York IE continues to attract great deal flow as former operators who are founder friendly.”
Earlier Investments Grow and Succeed
Many companies within York IE’s first, second and third cohorts have seen growth and success within their respective businesses and industries.
“The hard work and determination displayed by the founders and their companies in our first three cohorts has paid off immensely,” York said.
WEVO, which provides the fastest and most accurate insights to optimize digital experiences, experienced 290% growth in Q1 of this year as the need for on-demand access to customer insights became critical to success in digital marketing.
Defendify, a holistic cybersecurity platform for small and medium-size businesses, won the 2021 Global InfoSec Award for Best Product in SMB Cybersecurity.
VETRO, which provides a cloud-native GIS mapping and fiber management platform for communication service providers, announced a $12 million growth investment.
Metadata.io, the first demand-generation platform for B2B marketers, received LinkedIn’s Innovator of the Year award and ranked No. 56 on The Financial Times’ 2021 list of The Americas’ 500 Fastest Growing Companies.
York IE Momentum
York IE has also grown tremendously in recent months, with new hires, investment partners and strategic initiatives.
The company launched Fuel, its market and competitive intelligence SaaS platform that provides busy entrepreneurs, operators and investors with digestible data and insights to enhance their strategic growth. To support the launch and growth of Fuel, York IE hired Colin Steele as head of content and editor-in-chief of Fuel News, Mike Taylor as the new customer support and documentation analyst and Elisa Chen as the new data engineer.
York IE’s advisory service practice grew 546% in its first year. To continue successfully delivering these services, the company hired Mark Nolan, Luke Benfield, Cassandra Cattabriga and Kate Forte as account managers and Mackenzie O’Brien as a marketing specialist.
And to address its maturing business, York IE expanded its C-suite with the promotions of key members of the executive team and the hire of Janelle Gorman as chief financial officer.
Additionally, the company brought on board several new advisory services and investment advisors. Kara Banosian, CMO of Stavvy, joined York IE as a new investment partner and advisor for digital marketing within the portfolio. Henry Ristuccia, former partner at Deloitte, joined as an investment partner and advisor focusing on governance, risk and compliance. And Curtis Charles, managing partner and CEO of FFB Collaboration, is a portfolio advisor focusing on go-to-market and business development into large consumer and consumer packaged goods companies.
York IE also announced two new partnerships with companies offering complementary software and services. Its partnership with MentorPass offers MentorPass members low-cost access to York IE’s B2B SaaS growth experience. And with the growing importance of demand generation for B2B companies, the partnership with 4AM Demand simplifies the complexity of demand gen and makes it more accessible to marketing teams.
To learn more about York IE and how it is reshaping how companies are built, scaled and monetized, visit: https://york.ie/
ABOUT YORK IE
York IE™ is a vertically integrated strategic growth and investment firm helping reshape the way companies are built, scaled and monetized. Through Fuel™, its SaaS platform for market and competitive intelligence, hands-on advisory services and selective early stage B2B SaaS investments, York IE supports ambitious entrepreneurs, operators and investors on their quest to scale startups and disrupt markets. Play the long game at York.IE.
