We are excited to announce that The Detection Group (January 2015 Dinner) is now officially part of the Watts Water Technologies family of brands. The Detection Group offers a wireless remote water leak detection system for commercial and residential buildings and campuses.
Welcome to the Portfolio: Wordly - Language on Demand
Everything you say, translated on the fly. Powered by AI.
Communicate in Any Language: In-Person & Virtual Meetings, Webinars & Recorded Training, Large Conferences to 1-on-1.
With Wordly language on demand (https://wordly.ai), you can enhance mutual understanding during conferences, events, meetings or interviews with the content available in real-time, in multiple languages, by reading along or listening to the presentation or conversation. With Wordly, language is no longer a barrier to communication.
Portfolio Exit: ON24 Starts Trading As One Of The Oldest VC-Backed IPOs Of The Year
Our 16th Band IPO is ON24, Inc., called “News Direct” when we invested (June 1998 Dinner).
Shares of webcasting and virtual events platform ON24 began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, with its stock closing at $70.45, or nearly 41 percent above its IPO price. ON24 isn’t like many of the VC-backed companies going public nowadays: it’s been around for more than 20 years. The company was founded in 1998 and raised its Series A, which was led by Canaan Partners, in August 1999. Read the TechCrunch article
Welcome to the Portfolio: C. Light Technologies raises $2.5M seed round to commercialize first ever retinal eye-tracking device for neurodegenerative disease
C. Light Technologies, a Berkeley-based neurotech company pioneering the next generation of neurological health assessment tools using the first ever 10-second retinal eye-tracking scan for neurological disease, today announced the closing of their $2.5 million seed round. Their proprietary tracking technology, paired with advanced analytics, is poised to redefine the neurodegenerative space - providing new hope for millions of people worldwide. Read the press release
Happy New Year from Band of Angels
2020 was a challenging year for everyone. We are so pleased that through it all the Band has remained a source of constancy and comfort. We continued to meet weekly in our SiGs and monthly at our dinners, invested in many new startups, supported our existing portfolio companies, and collaborated convivially with one another.
We start the year celebrating our 15th Band IPO. Airbnb went public on December 10th at $68/share and closed the day at $144. As of press time, it is trading at $170 and a market cap in excess of $100B. We got Airbnb shares by investing in Localmind, a location-based Q&A platform, in 2011. The company was acquired by Airbnb in 2012.
During 2020 we made 17 investments: 14 initial investments from the Band Deal Dinner and 3 follow-ons from the Second Look portfolio update. The Software category leads in the number of deals funded with seven (41%), followed by Life Sciences/MedTech with five (29%), HardTech with two (12%), Other with two (12%), and AgFoodHealthspan with one (6%). New funded deals include: RoboTire and Xpan Medical (January 2020 Dinner), Perceive (February 2020 Dinner), EternaTear (April 2020 Dinner), Butlr (May 2020 Dinner), Inhalon Bio and MilkRun (June 2020 Dinner), Journey (July 2020 Dinner), C. Light Technologies and Virtanza (August 2020 Dinner), CapConnect+, Champions Round, and Lingrove (September 2020 Dinner), and OpsCruise (October 2020 Dinner). Second Look portfolio follow-on investments were: Strategikon Pharma (January 2020 Second Look), VisgenX (June 2020 Second Look), and IrriGreen (September 2020 Second Look).
2020 set a low bar to exceed but we hope that 2021 is the best year yet for all of us. Happy new year!