• $5M seed round led by Investible; $9M in total funding raised to date
• Investment to further accelerate product development in Generative AI Coach ‘Marlee’, the powerful behavioral change app embraced by Canva, Atlassian, KPMG and Baraja
• New third party integrations to offer a ‘Grammarly-like experience’. Users will experience coaching suggestions in real-time within work and collaboration platforms

SYDNEY, Jan. 31, 2023 — Fingerprint for Success (F4S) today announce a new AU$5 million funding round led by Investible with other Australian and U.S. VCs including Five V Capital, and Salesforce Ventures. Together, they join early investor ROCeteer, and other seed investors including Google Maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen, Canva co-founders Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams, as well as former Australian Prime Minister the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull AC and noted Australian tech investor Roger Allen, bringing the total seed investment to AU$9 million.

F4S and AI Coach Marlee is world-first technology pioneering the democratization of coaching, carving a new category for technology driven human development. The Australian founded startup responds to a problem-state where traditionally just 2% of the population, typically the elite or those with the means, have access to personalized coaching.

Confidence in the startup is supported by significant 300% YoY user growth from the US, UK and India. These insights contribute to Marlee’s wider datapool, with more than 900,000 AI coaching minutes delivered, which collectively, have helped users from 194 countries work towards more than 100,000 goals.

Coupled with Founder and CEO Michelle Duval’s 25 years expertise as a pioneer in the professional coaching space, AI Coach Marlee and the F4S platform is built from decades of evidence-based research developed by a team of behavioral data scientists, coaches, and AI engineers. 

The layered technology offers a digital and scalable solution for individuals and teams to understand and bring out the best in themselves, and each other. Already embraced by more than 20,000 organizations including teams from Atlassian, Hubspot, AWS, KPMG, as well as Canva and Baraja, the cutting edge technology gives users a suite of tools to scale cohesive, high-performing teams and culture.

Michelle Duval says companies have historically held an inherited bias for ‘hard’ technical skills, adding:

“There has been a focus until now for companies to prioritize hard, technical skills deemed necessary for performance. Though, it’s actually the ‘soft’ or what we like to call human skills that have proven time and time again to make or break teams and are the most crucial in building goal-oriented, efficient and purpose-driven teams” says Duval.

Michelle speaks to the future of work, adding:

“There’s a driving need to rapidly grow resources and solutions to solve the complex problems Gen Alpha, GenZs and Millennials inherit. F4S’s scalable technology is an always ready, real time solution to optimize the otherwise untapped potential within our future problem solvers helping both individuals and teams to invent and navigate brighter futures.”

Investible cofounder Trevor Folsom shares that belief, adding that the ability to unlock, streamline and enhance soft skills at work is crucial for high-performance teams.

“Michelle and her team at F4S have managed to use technology to shape the future of work by helping businesses build a stronger, more resilient workforce,” shares Trevor.

Reshmi Buthello, VP of People and Culture at Baraja said that F4S has removed the limitations of 1:1 coaching, providing a fully automated and scalable solution that can be deployed across Baraja’s offices worldwide:

“Our team is embracing the F4S experience. With Coach Marlee, we’re seeing a significant increase in team engagement and retention. Our teams have the power of an “always-on” coach that is not only personalized to individual drivers and motivations, but as a powerful cloud-based solution it’s also scalable to support our ever-changing team dynamics.”

The capital raised will be primarily used to make F4S’ real-time personal and team insights and coaching accessible via additional third party integrations within work and collaboration platforms such as Slack and Zoom.

This approach builds on from F4S’ successful applicant tracking integration with HR software Greenhouse, designed to provide hiring managers with intel on candidate suitability and success in the culture of their potential new workplace.

As the world wakes to the power of Generative AI,  building upon F4S’s proprietary and validated Conversational AI models, F4S is uniquely poised to take advantage of ChatGPT’s accelerating momentum.

Michelle concludes, “We’re really excited to welcome investors aligned to our vision to join us in the next stage of growth. We’re looking forward to strengthening our market footprint across the US, the UK and Asia Pacific, and to ship even more value to our users and teams.”

“Coach Marlee is improving personal, team and company performance. We’re building self confidence, self esteem, and helping teams work better together. Ultimately, we’re helping people find meaning and fulfillment at work.”

For more information visit www.f4s.com

PR Contact:
Isabella Donato, PR Manager – Fingerprint for Success (F4S)
+61 (0) 448 002 962 | [email protected] 

About Fingerprint for Success (F4S)
Fingerprint For Success (F4S) is a web-app that uses layered technology, data and conversational AI to empower individuals and teams to achieve amazing things in work, business and life. Based on over 20 years of research, F4S’s revolutionary predictive analytics have achieved over 90% reliability in forecasting personal and team motivations, behaviors, and performance. In 2021, F4S launched the world’s first AI Coach ‘Marlee’ to help users to optimize their talents and bring out the best in themselves and their teammates. For more information visit www.f4s.com 

About Investible
Investible is a global early-stage venture capital firm backing the visionaries advancing humanity through technology. Its mission is to connect ground-breaking companies with the capital, expertise, and networks they need to realize their potential on a global scale.

Founded in 2014 and with offices in Sydney and Singapore, its unique approach to early-stage tech investment sees its VC Funds co-investing alongside members of Club Investible: an active, global investor community. Its group portfolio includes more than 100 early-stage companies across 9 countries and 20 sectors. https://investible.com 

About Five V Capital
Five V Capital is a leading private company investor in the Australian and New Zealand markets. Five V invests across Venture Capital, Growth Equity and Private Equity, with over A$1.4 billion in funds under management (FUM). Five V has made over 40 venture capital investments over the past ten years, investing in the likes of Canva, Siteminder, ROKT, Grow and Cascade. Five V believes in balancing profit with purpose and is B Corp certified. For more information, please visit www.fivevcapital.com 

About Salesforce Ventures
Salesforce Ventures helps enterprising founders build companies that reinvent the way the world works. Since 2009, we’ve invested in and partnered with more than 400 of the world’s most tenacious enterprise software companies from seed to IPO, including Airtable, Databricks, DocuSign, Guild Education, Hopin, monday.com, nCino, Snowflake, Snyk, Stripe, Tanium, and Zoom. Salesforce Ventures leverages our decades of expertise in the cloud and our long-term relationships with key decision-makers at thousands of businesses around the world to give our portfolio companies an unfair advantage, help them build credibility, and accelerate growth. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 25 countries with offices all over the world including in San Francisco, Irvine, New York, London, Tokyo, and Sydney. Follow @SalesforceVC and learn more at http://www.salesforceventures.com.

SOURCE Fingerprint For Success

Led by MK Capital, New Funding Will Accelerate Further Research and Development of Optilogic’s Cloud-Native SaaS Solution

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Jan. 31, 2023 — Supply chain design software innovator Optilogic has secured $13 million in financing, led by MK Capital, a venture capital firm focused on supporting innovative B2B software companies. The funding will allow Optilogic to help any enterprise with a physical supply chain get full visibility into the cost, service, and risk of different supply chain design scenarios. With this investment, Optilogic will continue to expand go-to-market programs in consumer goods, retail, logistics, manufacturing, and distribution industries, as well as further development of its Cosmic Frog supply chain design platform.

“Don Hicks and his founding team are pioneers in the field of supply chain design with unparalleled industry experience,” said Mark Koulogeorge, managing partner at MK Capital. “By empowering organizations of all sizes and maturity levels to make smarter, faster supply chain decisions that consider risk, Optilogic is poised to transform the field of supply chain design and dramatically expand the addressable market.”

Traditional supply chain design technologies have complex user interfaces, require costly capital and IT investment, and have lengthy implementation processes. Cosmic Frog, launched in November 2022, was purpose-built to be easy to use and implement. Its unique three-in-one design includes optimization, simulation, and risk engines. It can run even the largest models in a fraction of the time required by traditional design software, and automatically converts legacy supply chain design models.

In addition to major solution enhancements, Optilogic expanded its global research and development, customer success and executive leadership team. The company recently appointed Jennifer Randall as vice president of marketing and promoted Rebecca Janowiak to vice president of product management and Renee Thiesing to vice president of strategy and risk solutions.

“Optilogic is harnessing the most advanced technologies to drive a new and better way to design supply chains—by understanding and balancing cost considerations with service levels and systemic risk to predict the best, most resilient designs,” said Optilogic CEO and Founder Donald A. Hicks. “This latest round of investment will help us on our mission to rethink and rebuild supply chains.”

About MK Capital 

MK Capital is an early-stage lead investor in the software and cloud services industries. The firm’s partners, who average more than 20 years of venture capital experience, actively partner with entrepreneurial management teams to build leading companies that accelerate the digital transformation of the world economy. MK Capital manages more than $300 million in capital and is actively seeking new investment opportunities. For more information, visit mkcapital.com.

About Optilogic

Optilogic was founded in 2018 and has now grown into a global software company with one of the most experienced teams in the industry. Optilogic’s supply chain experts have over 185+ years of experience in the end-to-end supply chain. Together, we’re empowering organizations to rethink supply chain design. By incorporating optimization, simulation, and risk into their strategy, businesses can have visibility into the cost, service and risk of different supply chain design scenarios. Optilogic’s 100% SaaS solution reduces time to value with its next generation technology and intuitive, purpose built interface. Learn more about Optilogic’s innovations at https://www.optilogic.com/product

Press Contact:

Jennifer Randall
218-341-1318
http://www.optilogic.com

SOURCE Optilogic

BURLINGAME, Calif., Jan. 31, 2023 — San Francisco Bay Area-based tech-enabled home renovation company Freemodel today announced it has secured a $19.5 million series A investment led by QED Investors, a leading venture capital firm in the fintech and proptech sector, in partnership with LL Funds, a leading provider of both growth equity and asset-backed debt. Other participants in the most recent round of funding include RWT Horizons, FJ Labs, 1984 Ventures, 1Sharpe Ventures, and Crossbeam Venture Partners. With this latest investment, Freemodel has now raised over $23 million since launching in 2020.

Freemodel, which already covers 90% of the California real estate market, will use the newly secured investment to expand its service to additional states, starting with Texas and Florida in Q1 2023.  They also plan to use the funds to continue developing the proprietary technology platform that empowers their team of local Project Directors to manage home renovations more effectively and efficiently.

“With the increase in interest rates and the slowing real estate market, agents have to go the extra mile to get the best results for their sellers,” says Freemodel CEO and co-founder John Garner.  “Freemodel empowers our agent partners to sell a client’s home more quickly and at a higher price without the hassle or upfront cost of managing the renovations themselves.”

“It’s rare to find a business model in real estate that offers such clear value to its customers in a variety of market conditions”, says Lauren Morton, Partner at QED. “The combined power of ‘easy button’ renovations with a local designer, project management and financing is helping homeowners sell their homes quickly, even in a tough market. QED is proud to back an experienced team with strong founder-market fit. John’s deep background in proptech and keen sales acumen set him apart from other founders we’ve met.”

Since its debut, Freemodel has achieved 500% revenue growth year over year. Freemodel works with over 60 leading real estate brokerages and has helped their agent partners earn their clients over $33M in additional profit. Freemodel delivers a superior customer experience compared to other pre-sale home renovation services by using local, in-person design and project management in every market to deliver high-quality, custom renovations.

“Freemodel has solved for the high financial barrier homeowners face when considering renovations.  Everybody wins with Freemodel.  Real estate agents win more listings, home sellers earn more profit, and home buyers get a beautiful move-in ready home,” says LL Funds Partner Jim Morrissey.  “We’re proud to back a platform that directly delivers value to every stakeholder in a real estate transaction and we are excited to support Freemodel’s expansion to Texas, Florida and beyond.”

To learn more about Freemodel’s services, visit http://www.freemodel.com.

About Freemodel
Freemodel was founded in 2020 with a mission to streamline and improve the residential real estate sale process while giving homeowners a chance to get the maximum possible upside from the sale of their homes. The company partners with real estate agents to design, manage and pre-pay for their clients’ home renovations, then the homeowner pays Freemodel out of escrow once the home sells. Founded by two Silicon Valley veterans with software and residential real estate backgrounds, Freemodel differentiates itself by offering a team of local designers and project managers who act as the main on-site point of contact for agents and clients. Their Project Directors bring deep expertise and local knowledge of the regions they service, making the process easier and more turnkey for realtors and sellers. In addition, Freemodel requires no credit checks and has no pre-determined project budget caps, allowing more flexibility for homeowners to reap the maximum possible profit from their investment. For more information, visit http://www.freemodel.com.

About QED Investors
QED Investors is a global leading venture capital firm based in Alexandria, Va. Founded by Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman in 2007, QED Investors is focused on investing in disruptive financial services companies worldwide. QED Investors is dedicated to building great businesses and uses a unique, hands-on approach that leverages its partners’ decades of entrepreneurial and operational experience, helping companies achieve breakthrough growth. Notable investments include AvidXchange, Bitso, ClearScore, Current, Creditas, Credit Karma, Kavak, Klarna, Konfio, Loft, Mission Lane, Nubank, QuintoAndar, Remitly and SoFi. For more information, visit www.qedinvestors.com.

SOURCE Freemodel

BOSTON, Jan. 31, 2023 — Dalia, a recruitment marketing automation platform that helps employers get more qualified applicants for less, today announced the completion of a $5 million Series A round. The round was led by Lewis & Clark Ventures with participation from the family office of Paul Forster, the co-founder and former CEO of Indeed, SaaS Ventures, FJ Labs, Remarkable Ventures, and others. The capital will be used to expand its product suite, which maximizes career site conversion rates to make recruitment marketing budgets more efficient and invest further in sales and marketing.

Since its founding in 2019, Dalia has streamlined recruitment marketing by helping employers reach and convert their lost job seeker traffic with hyper-personalized engagement at scale. It is now the preferred recruitment marketing automation solution for mid-market and enterprise companies including Compass Group, Ryder, Valvoline, Brink’s, Baptist Health South Florida, PeopleReady, and many others.

“Dalia’s growth is the result of a tight labor market where talent acquisition teams are being asked to be more efficient with their spend and only invest in solutions that drive measurable results,” said Sam Fitzroy, co-founder and CEO of Dalia. “Our fully-automated approach is the most time and cost-effective way to drive qualified applicants. Support from Lewis & Clark, along with the other investors in this round, will allow us to continue building products that increase job advertising efficiency for our customers.”

With Dalia, employers capture job seekers who visit their career sites but don’t apply and bring them back through highly-relevant email and text job alerts to maximize apply rates. Dalia is fully automated, works seamlessly with existing ATS and CRM platforms, and can be implemented in just a few days.

“We are thrilled to partner with the exceptional team at Dalia,” said Brian Hopcraft, Partner at Lewis and Clark Ventures. “The team has a unique understanding of the challenges that frontline and hourly job seekers experience and is taking a data-driven approach to help its customers eliminate friction in their recruiting process.”

“Dalia creates an experience that’s similar to what you might encounter if you were shopping online or engaging with an e-commerce business,” said Jason Whitman, COO of Dalia. “We’re helping companies improve the way job seekers connect, learn about, and apply for their jobs. As a result, they’re getting more qualified applicants with less spend on traditional job advertising.”

About Dalia

Dalia helps employers get more qualified applicants for less. Its recruitment marketing automation platform converts lost job seeker traffic to give talent acquisition teams more qualified applicants and lower their job advertising spend. Learn more at dalia.co.

About Lewis and Clark Ventures

Lewis & Clark Ventures was founded by former operators with the conviction that innovation and entrepreneurial talent are plentiful outside of traditional capital centers. Lewis & Clark invests in the highest potential late Seed and Series A stage B2B software companies. Their vision for success is to become a trusted partner to every entrepreneur that they back and assist in their journey towards scale and significance. Learn more at lewisandclarkventures.com.

SOURCE Dalia

Squid, built on Axelar, has built the first native-to-native cross-chain solution, replacing bridges with 1-click cross-chain swaps

ZUG, Switzerland , Jan. 31, 2023 — Squid, a routing protocol that enables users and developers to easily access cross-chain liquidity, has raised a $3.5m seed round led by North Island Ventures.

Leading crypto investment firms Distributed Global, Fabric Ventures, Galileo, Chapter One, and Node Capital also participated in the round. Angels included Waikit Lau, Stani Kulechov, Zaki Manian, Dean Eigenmann, 7, Ashleigh Schap and others. Axelar is also participating in the round as a strategic investment. In addition to this seed funding, Squid was one of the first projects to receive funding following the Axelar Developer Grants cohort.

Sergey Gorbunov, co-founder of Axelar, said: “Failure of centralized trading platforms has highlighted the need for secure decentralized alternatives. Squid powers this future by enabling decentralized, secure, and simple to use cross-chain swaps. The Squid team has extensive experience in the space and we’re excited to see them build on the Axelar Network.”

Squid inherits its speed and security from Axelar’s secure cross-chain communication platform alongside General Message Passing, meaning that Squid’s contracts enable further cross-chain logic. Squid can be used to buy NFTs on any chain with any asset, deposit into a margin account on a decentralized derivatives exchange, build payments to any chain, or to turn wallets chain-agnostic.

Squid supports 25 blockchains, including EVM and Cosmos chains. Since its app chain thesis became a reality, Cosmos has experienced immense growth and adoption. Squid offers the easiest path for onboarding to new Cosmos chains from any ecosystem. Squid has received four audits from Ackee Blockchain and Consensys Diligence.

Travis Scher of North Island Ventures said: “We believe the future of crypto is multi-chain and cross-chain, and are extremely excited to back the great team at Squid, which is building critical infrastructure to bring this vision to fruition.”

DEXs including QuickSwap, Pangolin, SpookySwap, StellaSwap, and Trisolaris and wallets such as Ledger and BitKeep are the first projects who have announced their integration with Squid to give users access to native tokens on a wide range of other chains.

Recent events highlight the importance of decentralized applications as a secure, transparent alternative to centralized systems. Squid’s mission is to help build a future that ensures the integrity of financial transactions and allows users control over their assets.

Twitter: @squidrouter
Medium: https://medium.com/@squidrouter
Discord: http://discord.0xsquid.com/ 
Website: https://0xsquid.com
App: app.squidrouter.com
Christina Rud | +44 (0)7598 988 212

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1993095/Squid_Investors.jpg
Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1993096/Squid_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Squid

• The Be Kind Tech Fund’s investment will support Polemix in its goal to build and scale the first Web3-based platform facilitating discussion of important causes
• The Be Kind Tech Fund also announced that Spanish venture capital firm Seaya and London-based entrepreneurial organization E2E have joined the Fund’s partner ecosystem

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 31, 2023 — Globant (NYSE: GLOB), a digitally native company focused on reinventing businesses through innovative technology solutions, announced today that its Be Kind Tech Fund has invested $1 million in Polemix, the first platform to introduce Web3 technology to the world of ideas and opinions. The startup’s mission is to upgrade how people support and oppose opinion leaders, disrupting the echo chambers cultivated by traditional social media platforms.

The Polemix platform enables influential opinion leaders across subject matter areas (including human rights, freedom of speech, feminism, animal rights, populism, and more) to create short videos sharing their opinion on hot-button issues. Supporters can buy Proof of Support tokens (POSU) of the opinion leader’s idea, which can also provide benefits such as special access to the leader. Proceeds of the POSU sales can be used to fund the opinion leader’s work or support a foundation promoting the leader’s cause, but portions of the sales can also be used to reward users who disagree respectfully on the platform’s comment section.

Polemix disrupts echo chambers by automatically showing fans different viewpoints on their leader’s opinion, and financially rewarding detractors who engage in smart and civilized debate. These kinds of interactions foster respect for opposing views and facilitate educated discussion of essential topics, while creating monetary benefits for opinion leaders and generating support for important causes.

“At a time when access to information and misinformation has become continuous and widespread, Polemix offers users a wide range of opinions on important topics, supported by reputable leaders and influencers,” said Guibert Englebienne, Globant Co-Founder and President for Globant X. “NFTs benefit artists, musicians, and other celebrities; however, most key opinion leaders today are not being compensated for sharing their opinions, educating audiences, and generating critical debates. Polemix offers a way to promote a respectful discussion encouraging users to consider both sides of an argument.”

“History happens when technology evolutions are harnessed to change behaviors. Today, Web3 is the new frontier of technology, and Polemix will leverage its innovations to change how people connect with the world’s most influential opinion leaders. Our platform will change how people support a leader’s ideas – instead of just liking a post, they can go further by owning and collecting those ideas, and be rewarded for their support. Polemix will also change how people oppose a leader’s ideas by creating financial incentives for respectful, intelligent replies,” said Ian Sielecki, Founder of Polemix. “For the opinion leaders themselves, it will be a game-changing tool to gather support for their work and channel the passion they generate into a new value proposition.”

Iconic opinion leaders who will be creating tokens of their main ideas on the Polemix platform initially include: Cornel West, bestselling author of “Race Matters” and social justice icon; Steven Pinker, celebrity experimental psychologist and bestselling author of books about human progress; Kishore Mahbubani, former president of UN Security Council and author of “Has China Won?”; Peter Singer, animal rights activist and Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University; and Shashi Tharoor, prominent Indian politician and former under-Secretary General of the United Nations.

Polemix is now available upon sign-up for all users, and membership levels are available in two tiers: standard-tier makes you an official supporter of the cause and gives you passive access to exclusive Zoom calls with the leader; gold-tier makes you the unique digital sponsor to that idea, provides access to intimate calls and the right to speak, ask questions and actively interact with the leader during those calls.

The Fund also announced new partners joining its ecosystem, including Seaya, the leading European and Latin American venture capital fund behind unicorns such as Wallbox, Glovo, and Cabify, and E2E, an ecosystem of groundbreaking entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, and entrepreneurial non-execs.

In 2021, Globant founded the Be Kind Tech Fund, the first and only corporate venture fund focused on supporting startups that seek to mitigate the misuse of technology. Since its launch, the Be Kind Tech Fund has invested in ping, a U.S.-based voice platform company that helps enterprises eliminate distracted driving, and established partnerships with The George Washington University and MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund, as well as investors including Riverwood Capital, IDB Lab, Nazca, and entrepreneurial organizations such as Endeavor, LAVCA, and Newlab. The Center for Humane Technology also joined the Fund as an advisor.

For more information about the Be Kind Tech Fund or to join the ecosystem, please visit www.bekindtechfund.com. For more information about Polemix, please visit www.polemix.io

About Globant 
We are a digitally native company that helps organizations reinvent themselves and unleash their potential. We are the place where innovation, design and engineering meet scale.

• We have more than 26,500 employees and we are present in more than 20 countries working for companies like Google, Electronic Arts and Santander, among others.
• We were named a Worldwide Leader in CX Improvement Services by IDC MarketScape report.
• We were also featured as a business case study at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. 
• We are a member of The Green Software Foundation (GSF) and the Cybersecurity Tech Accord.

For more information, visit www.globant.com.

About Be Kind Tech Fund 
Launched in 2021, the Be Kind Tech Fund is a $10 million USD corporate venture fund administered by Globant Ventures. The fund seeks to assist global startups looking for support in developing apps, products, and platforms that are focused on mitigating the negative effects of technology, such as online harassment and abuse, data privacy and security, AI bias, screen time abuse, and information bubbles and polarization.

If you are an entrepreneur or startup focused on mitigating the negative impacts of tech, or are interested in knowing more about the Be Kind Tech Fund, please visit www.bekindtechfund.com and join the revolution.

Contact: Morena Monteiro, [email protected]

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1993010/news.jpg
Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/959011/Globant_logo_actualizado.jpg 

SOURCE Globant

The Singapore-based company also announces the appointment of two strategic advisors

SINGAPORE , Jan. 31, 2023 — Kempus, an online community where students can connect and share reviews anonymously, has raised a seed round investment pre-launch from Bithumb Korea, to encourage verified students to anonymously share reviews with full transparency, to strengthen the student body without fear of reprisal.

Students in the United States, especially in the post-pandemic world, are falling victim to censorship, and find themselves silenced as they try to express themselves and their concerns. The extent of free speech is also being questioned, as the impact of civic education has lessened. This plants the seeds of doubt, confusion, tension, and a pervasively hostile environment for students who are eager to connect and improve their university experience.

The Singapore-based Kempus, today has launched its online community, starting with students based in the United States, to help bridge these gaps. This is done by encouraging communication in a secure digital environment, with moderators to ensure that it is free of toxicity, with a familiar and easy-to-use interface. The company aims to become the go-to online community for all students  attending universities and colleges worldwide.

Additionally, Kempus has appointed two world class strategic advisors to their board of advisors: Hillel Fuld, and Andrew Nystrom.

Fuld is an American Israeli technology tech blogger/vlogger/podcaster, startup marketer, leading online influencer, and public speaker. His work and insights have been featured on CNBC, Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, and other respected tech publications. He collaborates with companies such as Google, Oracle, and Microsoft to help entrepreneurs and their products scale. He also does keynotes on tech and marketing to audiences worldwide.

Nystrom is an American entrepreneur who led digital for Nike’s most successful brand campaign during the World Cup, boosted Red Bull Media House virality to stratospheric levels, and crafted digital strategy for USA’s fastest growing news brand. Most recently, he was Chief of Staff to the CMO at ŌURA, a leading direct-to-consumer growth brand.

On the seed round and strategic appointments, Jae Lee, the CEO of Kempus says, “We have raised a total of $3M USD from Bithumb Korea to fulfill our mission to inspire positive change by empowering students to truly use their voice, and openly engage with their peers anonymously in a safe environment. We are also thrilled to have onboarded two strategic advisors to support Kempus’ go-to-market strategy, and marketing initiatives in the United States. There is so much in store!”

About Kempus

Kempus (Be Unbound Pte. Ltd.) is an online community for verified students to anonymously connect and share reviews on their course and university experience—without fear of reprisal. With Kempus, students can access up-to-date reports on components of the university experience at a glance, and are further encouraged to dive into deeper discussions within Kempus’ platform. The Kempus community is one that strengthens its members at the individual level, to facilitate the most optimal and delightful university experience that is as unique as the students themselves. For more information about Kempus, visit www.kempus.com

Contact
[email protected]

SOURCE Kempus (Be Unbound Pte Ltd)

KIHEI, Hawaii and LOS ANGELES, Feb. 1, 2023 — Orthogonal Thinker Inc., a socially conscious holding company, is pleased to announce the opening of its latest Regulation D fundraising round to raise up to $10 million USD to expand its exposure into new and existing verticals and to accelerate its liquidity pathway.

Orthogonal plans to use the funds to continue to scale its operations and strategic partnerships into its main verticals: Wellness, Web 3.0, FinTech, and Space.

“Since founding the company, we’ve built Orthogonal’s interests into over three dozen companies—each with a unique team and offering,” explains cofounder and CEO David Nikzad. “The crazy thing is, we’re just getting started. Thanks to depressed market conditions, we see more opportunity now than ever to continue building our global Ohana (family).”

Orthogonal Thinker was founded on the shores of Hawaii and has since expanded into the U.S. mainland and abroad. “Orthogonal has always been a socially conscious holding company. We accelerate the growth of our companies through strategic capital infusion, mentorship, and access to our community as well as other business resources,” explains co-founder and COO Jason Hobson. “This Regulation D offering is another way for us to continue to build from a position of strength and to allow our investors diversified exposure to our current and future holdings.”

Orthogonal plans to continue exploring various paths to liquidity for shareholders. “Some of our shareholders have been part of our ohana since the early days. As the business continues to grow and evolve, we want to explore various pathways to liquidity options for those that have supported our mission,” Nikzad concludes.

For investors in previous financing rounds, those investments have been converted into shares of Orthogonal Thinker at a share price of $23.27.

Powered by the industry leading funding platform, KoreConX, this Regulation D financing round is only open to accredited U.S. investors. The raise is being done at a $222 million valuation via a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity).

To be considered an accredited investor, one must meet one of the following criteria:

• An annual income exceeding $200,000 ($300,000 for joint income) for the last two years.
• A net worth exceeding $1 million either individually, or jointly with their spouse

Interested parties can find more information at https://www.orthogonalthinker.com.

About Orthogonal Thinker

Orthogonal Thinker Inc. is a socially conscious holding company that creates strategic alliances with companies in verticals it feels strongly about. These verticals include Wellness, Web 3.0, Fintech and Space. The current Orthogonal Thinker portfolio includes more than three dozen strategic partnerships as Orthogonal continues to embrace its ethos of becoming the leading socially conscious holding company in the world.

Forward-Looking Statements Disclaimer

The offering materials may contain forward-looking statements and information relating to, among other things, Orthogonal Thinker, its business plan and strategy, and its industry. These forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of, assumptions made by, and information currently available to the company’s management. When used in the offering materials, the words “estimate”, “project”, “believe”, “anticipate”, “intend”, “expect” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, which constitute forward looking statements. These statements reflect management’s current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause Orthogonal Thinker actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made. Orthogonal Thinker does not undertake any obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after such date or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Contact:
Sevag Manoukian
808-210-6988
[email protected]

SOURCE Orthogonal Thinker Inc.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 31, 2023 — Today, Teal Health announces its seed round, raised to build a women’s health platform focused on solving some of the most pressing issues in women’s health – starting with cervical cancer.

Teal Health’s at-home cervical cancer screening includes a novel self-collection device that will make it simple for a woman to collect a cervical cancer screening sample from the comfort, convenience, and privacy of her home. It’s designed to increase a woman’s confidence and adherence to screen for primary HPV and Pap cytology triage. The Teal Health platform will enable conversation and engagement with medical professionals to support users, from collecting a sample to understanding results, including any follow-up actions.

“The current cervical cancer screening, a critical piece of women’s health, is notoriously unpleasant and uses a speculum. Despite medical and technological advancements, including adding the primary HPV test to the screening guidelines, the screening experience hasn’t been updated since the 1940s,” said Kara Egan, Chief Executive Officer at Teal Health. “At Teal we are working to increase access to this important screening by coupling at-home self-collection with a health-tech platform that ensures women are encouraged, supported, and understood in the process.”

If caught early, 93% of cervical cancers are preventable. Following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, cervical cancer screening in the United States dropped by 94% and remained 35% below pre-pandemic levels even after stay-at-home restrictions were lifted. New research shows that late-stage cervical cancers are on the rise in American women. In contrast to more than 90% of cervical cancers being preventable when caught early, a late-stage diagnosis has an approximate 5-year survival rate of only 18%.

Teal Health has raised an $8.8 million seed round from investors, including Emerson Collective, Serena Ventures, Metrodora Ventures, and Felicis Ventures. Of the decision to invest in Teal Health, Serena Williams, Managing Partner at Serena Ventures, said, “For far too long women have been disenfranchised by their current healthcare experiences, with women of underrepresented communities feeling an increased strain on their access and options surrounding healthcare. We’re excited to partner with Teal to increase equity and access to this life-saving screening by removing the barriers such as awareness, time, and fear; while also empowering women to reconnect and take control of their health.”

Teal Health’s funding will enable the company to expedite product development, clinical testing, and FDA approval, facilitating access to the 88 million women within recommended screening age. Teal aims to reverse the rise of late-stage cervical cancer and get millions of women up to date on their screenings.

“Solving massive and critical health issues, including adherence to a national cancer screening, requires innovative solutions with expertise across the entire healthcare landscape,” shared Chelsea Clinton, Managing Partner at Metrodora Ventures. “Teal understands this complexity and is well positioned to take on the challenge through its dynamic team and strategic partner base, which spans health policy, cancer research, technology, consumer brands, and more.”

Teal Health’s clinical study is underway at leading institutions and women’s health organizations such as The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast. Early data found that 89% of women said that if Teal’s at-home collection were available, they would get screened on time. The self-collection option is preferred by 91% of study participants when compared to a clinical collection with a speculum.

Teal Health is accepting waitlist additions for those who wish to be the first to know about the product launch. To sign up, please visit www.getteal.com.

About Teal Health

Teal Health is on a mission to provide women with the tools and resources they need to make empowered and informed decisions regarding their health—starting with cervical cancer screenings. By allowing a woman to collect her own sample for cervical cancer screening from the comfort of her home, Teal can increase access to this critical screening and work to eradicate cervical cancer. To learn more, visit www.getteal.com or follow Teal on Twitter at @tealhealth.

SOURCE Teal Health