The SaaS CFO

I spoke with Hauke Feddersen, VP of Operations at PreciTaste. PreciTaste is a fascinating combination of AI and vision hardware. It optimizes food production at quick service restaurants.

PreciTaste, a New York-based Vision AI platform in operational optimization, raised $24 million in Series A to continue its mission to become the standard for digital food AI management in fast casual and QSR kitchens.

Hauke’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hauke-feddersen-precitaste/

Fundraising Story: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/precitaste-raises-24-million-in-series-a

I interviewed Thomas Ramsøy, CEO and founder of Neurons. Thomas holds a Ph.D. in Neuropsychology and was a clinical psychologist. He and his company have worked with some of the largest consumer brands in the world to understand how consumers respond to ads.

He is helping these brands stop the waste in their marketing budget.

Neurons, a Danish consumer neuroscience company that helps businesses better understand unconscious and conscious responses, secured over €6 million in seed funding.

Fairpoint Capital Vækstfonden and Finance Zealand backed the round.

The round will fund the development of unique, state-of-the-art products, the scaling up of the company to 200 employees, and will bring a sizeable increase in annual recurring revenue by 2025.

Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tzramsoy/

Fundraising Story: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/neurons-raises-over-6-million-in-seed-round/

Oort, a Boston, MA-based identity-centric enterprise security platform, raised $15 million in the funding of Seed and Series A rounds.

I interviewed Matt Caulfield, Founder and CEO at Oort. Matt put his time in as a cloud/systems engineer. While working at a Fortune 100 company, he saw a market opportunity in security and ditched his employee title for SaaS founder.

Oort will use the funds to grow and further accelerate its go-to-market (GTM) strategy and leadership in identity threat detection and response.

The round was co-led by .406 Ventures, Energy Impact Partners (EIP), and Cisco Investments and joined by existing investors including 645 Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and First Star Ventures.

Matt Caulfield’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcaulfie/

Fundraise Story: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/oort-raises-15-million-in-funding

Devicie, a Sydney, Australia-based software startup that helps companies secure their workers’ laptops, announced that it raised $14 million AUD in Series A funding.

The round was led by New York-based private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from leading Australian cybersecurity firm CyberCX.

Devicie previously raised $1.3 million in seed capital from angel investors and the cybersecurity venture accelerator program CyRise.

I interviewed Martin McGregor, CEO and co-founder. Devicie was born out of a cybersecurity consultancy in 2020.

Martin McGregor’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdmc/

Fundraising Story: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/devicie-raises-14-million-in-series-a

I interviewed Tom Ross, CEO of Andgo Systems. This is not your regular shift scheduling software. Andgo is innovating on intelligent shift fill automation in complex industries such as healthcare and manufacturing. No more waiting for sick calls and then manually calling employees to fill open shifts.

Not surprisingly the pandemic drove growth. The pandemic crushed the status quo and demanded the need for real-time analytics of labor staffing.

Tom discloses his ARR range in this episode and plans to hire another 5-10 staff on top of its 60 employees.

Andgo Systems (Andgo), a Saskatoon, Canada-based provider of intelligent workflow automation solutions for dynamic absence onboarding, shift filling, and vacation mapping raised $5.6 million CAD in Series A funding.

The round was co-led by First Ascent Ventures and Waterline Ventures, based out of Toronto and Boston, respectively.

Tom Ross’ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasrosscan/

SaaS Fundraising Story: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/andgo-systems-raises-5-6-million-in-series-a

HPC-AI Tech, a Beijing, China-based artificial intelligence high-performance optimization platform, closed $6 million in seed and angel rounds.

The angel round was led by BlueRun Ventures China (BRV China); the funds will be mainly used to bring in more talented teams and expand the business market.

I interviewed Yang You, founder of HPC-AI Technology. He also holds a PhD and is a professor at the National University of Singapore. The number of parameters in AI modeling has increased 35x. Yang aims to make AI modeling faster and more efficient.

Yang You’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yang-you-0b92914b/

HPC-AI Technology’s Fundraising Story: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/hpc-ai-tech-completes-6-million-in-funding

Mesh Payments, a New York-based corporate payment and spend management platform, raised $50 million in Series B funding.

The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from Entrée Capital, Falcon Edge Capital, and existing investors TLV Partners and Meron Capital. I interviewed Oded Zehavi, CEO and co-founder at Mesh Payments.

He is a self-described “payments geek.” Mesh pivoted product strategy during the pandemic.

Oded Zehavi’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/odedzehavi/

Mesh’s fundraising story: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/mesh-payments-raises-50-million-in-series-b

Duel, a London, UK-based leading brand advocacy platform used by companies including ASOS, Dove, and Charlotte Tilbury, secured a $3 million (£2.5m) seed funding round led by SuperSeed.

The investment will enable Duel to continue its 13 percent monthly growth rate in 2022 and better serve its expanding global client base. I spoke with Paul Archer, CEO and Founder of Duel.

Paul’s tech experience dates back to when he wrote first video game at age 12. He founded Duel to turn word-of-mouth brand referrals into a scalable go-to-market motion.

Paul's LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulkarcher/

Duel's Fundraising Story:  https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/duel-raises-3-million-in-seed-round

Lionize, a New York-based SaaS leader in the influencer marketing industry announced that it secured a $3 million seed investment.

The round was led by St. Louis-based Cultivation Capital, with participation by ScOp Venture Capital, a Santa Barbara-based firm managed by DoubleClick founder Kevin O’Connor.

I spoke with Chris Buetti, co-founder and CEO of Lionize. He is a data scientist turned SaaS founder. The initial concept of Lionize started as an interview project. Chris learned the hard way through his agency that scaling micro-influencers campaigns is hard.

Chris Buetti’s LinkedIn

Lionize fundraising story

You may know David Spitz as the creator of the acclaimed Pacific Crest / Key Banc SaaS metrics survey.  He was a successful investment banker for over 30 years and then pulled the rip cord to found his own SaaS company.

David realized that traditional benchmarking is painful, using manual processes and ill-suited survey tools.  He founded Benchsights in 2021 to solve this pain.

With BenchSights, he built a software and data platform that focuses on software sales and compensation benchmarks.

David shares his investment banking journey and his experience as a first-time SaaS founder.

David’s LinkedIn Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/dspitz/

Benchmark your SaaS sales Here https://benchsights.com/