While February may have lacked the larger rounds we saw earlier in the year, this month, a number of newer startups took in their first serious chunks of change. The startups listed here tend to be smaller than what we usually see in any given month’s top five funding rounds, opening a window to an often-overlooked period between seed rounds and the big VC pile-ons that come a little later.
Having raised these latest rounds of funding, these five Seattle tech companies are poised to enter yet another crucial period of innovation — and prove if they can make it to the big leagues.
How much: $7 million
When: February 13
Lead investors: Madrona Venture Group
What they’re up to: Tracking workflows in Slack and other collaboration platforms
In the news: Polly raised $7 million this month to expand its go-to-market and product teams, as it develops a survey integration for Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts. The technology is designed to help businesses track workflows and pain points as increasingly dispersed teams begin to use those platforms for day-to-day communication. The Slack Fund, Amplify Partners and Fathom capital also participated in the round, which comes at a busy time for the startup. Polly said it tripled its user base and added an enterprise version of its service in 2018.
Quotable quotes: “Polly fills a need that teams across an entire organization have,” co-founder and CEO Samir Diwan said in a statement. “They want to understand how employees are working together, what they think the right direction for a product or process is, and how well the company is working as a whole.”
How much: $7.5 million
When: February 15
Lead investors: BootstrapLabs and NCT Ventures
What they’re up to: AI tracks crop health in commercial greenhouses
In the news: Named after the ancient Egyptian city of light (it’s pronounced “you knew”), iUNU’s LUNA platform monitors crops through cameras positioned throughout a greenhouse. LUNA’s computer vision technology can then provide real-time data on the health and growth rates of individual plants, leaves, fruits and vegetables, highlighting problems which growers usually identify manually. The company plans to use this $7.5 million investment to work on the scalability of its processes and grow its team.
Quotable quotes: “The metabolic rate of plants and leaves tells you almost everything you need to know about the health of the plant,” co-founder and CEO Adam Greenberg told Built In Seattle. “When you get multiple pixels per millimeter, you can measure growth rate and you can give a grower a day-over-day analysis. That used to be crop cycle-over-crop cycle. You had to make one change in your recipe and then wait three to six months to figure out if it worked. Now, we can tell you in 12 hours.”
How much: $10 million
When: February 12
Lead investor: FTV Capital
What they’re up to: Taking over the e-gift card and digital rewards industry
In the news: Hot on the heels of a $35 million investment last May, Tango Card raised an additional $10 million to help finance its acquisition of Omaha, Nebraska-based GiftCertificates.com. The company announced that deal on the same day as the funding. Tango Card helps companies dish out rewards for employees through digital reward card programs. GiftCertificates.com was originally founded in Seattle in 1997 before moving to Omaha in 2005, according to reporting by SeattlePI.com. With this acquisition, Tango Card adds a third office in Omaha, along with its West Seattle headquarters and second office in Boise, Idaho.
Quotable quote: “With this acquisition, Tango Card will add hundreds of customers and strategic merchant relationships as well as an incredibly experienced and passionate team based in Omaha, Nebraska,” Chief Commercial Officer Nat Salvione wrote in a blog post.
How much: $15 million
When: February 18
Lead investor: Unknown
What they’re up to: Developing new games and franchises
In the news: Having identified its strengths in developing successful horror games, innovative gameplay and mod-based games, Bellevue-based indie game developer and publisher tinyBuild raised a tidy $15 million this month to double down in those arenas. The company, which has a secondary office in Amsterdam, is also building on the success of its first franchise, a horror game called “Hello Neighbor,” where players must stealthily infiltrate their neighbor’s basement. A “Hello Neighbor” prequel was released in December, along with a couple of books, and the team is currently at work on a multiplayer spinoff.
Quotable quote: “I strongly believe that the modding community is one of the most innovative communities out there,” co-founder and CEO Alex Nichiporchik told Built In Seattle. “We’re working on a few of these kinds of projects where we take a popular game mod and experiment to turn them into full-on games.”
How much: $22 million
When: February 7
Lead investor: Polaris Partners
What they’re up to: Machine learning creates a “Netflix for healthcare.”
In the news: University of Washington spinout KenSci raised a big round this month to chase new clients for its machine learning platform. The company’s predictive software sifts through medical system data to help doctors identify and head off health risks for individual patients and the population at large. Founded in 2015, the company already has an impressive roster of clients, including the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, Singapore’s Health Promotion Board and the US Army.
Quotable quote: “We’re essentially a Netflix for healthcare,” Chief Growth Officer Sunny Neogi told Built In Seattle. “In the same way that Netflix gathers data and uses artificial intelligence to present you with curated recommendations for what you might like to watch, KenSci looks at data from millions of patients and uses that to predict risks and prescribe treatments for individual patients.”
