Showing posts with label MentorTech Ventures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MentorTech Ventures. Show all posts

Pitchbook: Early investors in Jet.com recieved 10.7x return



Tom Paine



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Marc Lore



Investors in Jet.com certainly did well, including Penn-related MentorTech Ventures.

The website Pitchbook reported that investors in Hoboken-based Jet.com's initial Series A (June 2014) earned a multiple of 10.7x their investment. The largest beneficiary may have been New Enterprise Associates, which led the round. MentorTech Ventures was an investor in the Series A, as it was in a $140 million round in early 2015. Technically Philly had reported that MentorTech had invested $8 million in Jet.çom, forming a special purpose fund to invest beyond its normal limits for one company.


Returns on the February 2015 round slipped to 4.3x, and for the final huge Fidelity-led $350 million round late last year, fell to 2.1x. But if a firm can put its money somewhere for less than a year and get more than twice as much back, its certainly happy.

Walmart agreed to buy e-commerce startup Jet.com in early August for about $3.3 billion. Jet.com raised a total of $565 million in venture capital.

MentorTech had previously invested in Quidsi, Marc Lore's earlier startup, that was sold to Amazon for $545 million in 2010.

MentorTech's total return on Jet.com will depend on how much of the $8 million it invested in the Series A as opposed to the latter round.

Lore, a Bucknell graduate, may be permanently on leave as a student from Wharton. He doesn't need to return.



Marc Lore's startup Jet offers equity to a few people who bring in the most referrals



Tom Paine



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Jet, the New Jersey ecommerce startup founded by Marc Lore, who sold his previous startup Quidsi (Diapers.com, etc.) to Amazon, offers special benefits on its website to early signups to its Jet Insider program: free membership, early access, and maybe even Jet stock.




By signing up for Jet Insider, you get a free six-month membership. Increasing awards come with the number of referrals you bring to Jet, but if I understand correctly you would have to be among the top 10 in referrals to earn 10,000 shares while the number one referrer earns 100,000 shares.

Of course, no one knows what those share may ultimately be worth, though Jet has raised at least $80 million to date. Jet plans to use advanced ecommerce technology to compete on price on selected items with Amazon.

Lore is a Wharton grad and Penn-related MentorTech Ventures is an investor in Jet along with other much larger funds. MentorTech was also an investor in Quidsi. Jet is based in Montclair.


NJ Serial Entrepreneur, Wharton Grad Marc Lore Snags $55 Million to Build E-Commerce Platform Jet

Esther Surden
Publisher & Editor, NJTechWeekly.com



Marc Lore has raised $55 million for a new e-commerce platform called Jet. |Source: Quidsi website



Whenever New Jersey entrepreneurs want to point to a local success story, they mention Quidsi — the parent company of Diapers.com and several other e-commerce sites — founded in Montclair and sold to Amazon.com in 2010 for $550 million.

Now one of Quidsi’s founders, Marc Lore, has raised money for a new e-commerce startup, Jet. And the amount of money he has raised is not small.

“I’m happy to confirm,” Lore wrote on his blog “that we’ve raised a $55M Series A round of funding led by NEA [Menlo Park] with participation from Accel Partners [Silicon Valley], Bain Capital Ventures [Boston, New York and Palo Alto] and MentorTech Ventures [Philadelphia] . Lore is a Wharton graduate and MentorTech invests only in ventures having a Penn connection. It had also invested early in Quidsi.

 The raise took place as soon as Lore was out from under a noncompete agreement with Amazon, sources say.

 Lore said in the blog that it’s too early to discuss the details of the business he is building. He did say, however, “e-commerce has come a long way in just two decades, altering our expectations around price, selection and service."

"We now expect the lowest prices, infinite selection and overnight delivery right to our doorstep. This transformation in customer experience is undeniable and, at the same time, I believe there is still a massive opportunity for innovation.”

Lore added that Jet will “make use of the latest advancements in technology to create a new shopping experience that will empower customers like never before. Jet will bring unprecedented transparency and efficiencies to the overall e-commerce market, and as a result, will transform the customer experience in a way that, until now, has not been possible.”

An article in Fortune says Lore is building the company alongside two Quidsi cofounders, former VP of special operations Nathan Faust and former project director Mike Hanrahan. Lore’s former cofounder Vinit Bharara, whose January 2014 talk NJTechWeekly.com covered here, is not involved in this project, sources say.
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Business Insider says Jet will operate out of Hoboken and already employs 30 people.

Recode.net’s Jason Del Rey, who broke the news July 29, 2014, says the deal values Jet at more than $100 million. The startup had been self-funded until this point and is expected to officially launch in 2015.




Esther Surden is Publisher and Editor of NJTechWeekly, and a contributor to Philly Tech News. This article (with some small additions) originally appeared in NJTechWeekly, and is republished here with her permission.


Penn-founded Yodle files for IPO to raise about $75 million






Tom Paine



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Local business advertising website Yodle filed today for an IPO to raise about $75 million in an initial public offering (IPO). It plans to list its shares under the ticker symbol "YO" (yes, true).

Founded in 2005 and originally named "NatPal", its founders included Penn grads Nathaniel Stevens and Ben Rubinstein. A 2007 Knowledge@Wharton article describes how the venture got off the ground, with the help of the Wharton Venture Initiation Program and a Wharton professor.

Now based in New York, Yodle reported a 30 percent jump in revenue to $45.7 million for the three months ended March 31, and a loss of $5.9 million. Competitors include Yelp, Angie's List and others. Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners and Jafco Technology Partners. Penn-related MentorTech Ventures is also an investor.


MentorTech Ventures joins MissionOG in CloudMine round





Tom Paine



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UPenn-connected MentorTech Ventures has joined MissionOG in a new investment round in Philly-based startup CloudMine, MentorTech Managing Director Brett Topoche said via a tweet yesterday and confirmed to Philly Tech News via email. The Form D filing related to the offering dated in March said it was for up to $750,000, and that $505,000 had been raised at that time. I can't confirm the total amount raised to date, or whether there were any other investors in this round. The financing was in the form of convertible debt. MissionOG's investment had already been made public. Topoche says he will join CloudMine's board as an advisor.

CloudMine was in DreamIt Venture's 2011 Philadelphia class and raised an additional $480,000 in 2012 from investors that included Ben Franklin Technology Partners SEP and RobinHood Ventures. MentorTech's investments always have some Penn connection, and CloudMine CEO Brendan McCorkle received his Master of Science in Engineering in Computer and Information Science (a program sponsored by the school of engineering and Wharton) from there.

CloudMine competes in a hot, emerging market: backend-as-a-service (BaaS). It provides a cloud-based platorm that helps enterprises build mobile & web-based backend solutions and connect data sources such as Salesforce.com and SharePoint.




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Philly Tech TidBits 9/8/2011: InstaMed raises another $5.5 million

InstaMed, the Philadelpia-based provider of healthcare payment systems, has raised an additional $5.5 million, according to an SEC Filing. Headed by Founder, President and CEO Bill Marvin, InstaMed raised $6 million in debt and equity one year ago and had prior funding rounds in 2009 ($6 million) and 2007 ($5 milion), so it has now raised at least $22.5 million. Investors have included Osage Partners, NJTC Venture Fund, US Bancorp, and Ashby Point Capital. Josh Kopelman was an early investor through his personal Midas Capital fund.
InstaMed has several Penn/Wharton connections among its management team, board and advisors; Marvin played on the varsity squash team at Penn (as did Comcast's Brian Roberts). Bill was an executive with Accenture’s Health and Life Sciences practice and founded a software company that was acquired by a Microsoft/ Pfizer joint venture.
I don't have any information about InstaMed's financial performance. It describes itself as a healthcare payments network connecting providers, payers and patients, and says it serves over 200,000 providers nationally with tens of billions of dollars in healthcare payments processed.


Speaking of Osage, they have raised $47 million for what appears to be a new private equity fund, Osage Venture Partners III, LP.


UPenn-related MentorTech Ventures has raised $10.75 million towards a $40 million offering for a new fund, MentorTech Ventures III L.P., according to an SEC filing. Though not large, MentorTech, managed by Michael B. Aronson and Boris Kalandar, takes small, usually early stage stakes in Penn-associated ventures; major successes have included Diaper.com (sold to Amazon), PayQuik (sold to Citi), Yodle, and Neat Company. With all of the entrepreneurial activity going on within Penn/Wharton, it should have plenty of opportunities ahead.


Penn Mezzanine LP of Wayne has raised $34.2 million in an offering, according to an SEC filing. Its not clear whether this is related to or completely separate from Safefuard Scientifics' announced acquisition of a 36% interest in Penn Mezzanine in July.
Penn Mezzanine, which was founded in 2010, is headed by Managing Partners Donald K. Rice and Darl A. Petty. It provides mezzanine financing to middle market companies using combinations of structured equity and debt.


Square One Bank has provided a a $2.5 million credit facility to ProfitPoint, Inc., a Clifton Heights-based provider of stored value and loyalty program solutions. NewSpring Ventures was an early investor in ProfitPoint.


Oaks, PA-based asset manager and investment processor SEI Investments teamed up with Greenwich Associates on a survey of institutional investors, consultants and fund managers globally. The first report (out of three installments) from the survey indicated that Private Equity exits were way up in the 2nd quarter, and that fund allocations to that area may increase. But SEI says that many of those exits represent “low hanging fruit” and the average holding period for a portfolio company has lengthened to five years.


Silicon Valley Research Group says it has opened a practice in Philadelphia, its fourth location. Marc Pitcher, the company’s Director of Client Services, is based in Philly. He also manages the firm's New York City practice. "Philadelphia has a burgeoning technology and venture capital scene, and the presence of the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel, Temple and other highly respected centers of innovation make the city a natural fit for our company”, Pitcher said in a statement.



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myYearbook on Silicon Alley Insider's Digital 100

Social Networking site myYearbook of New Hope is the only company from the Philadelphia area (though some think of New Hope as a distant New York suburb) that I see on Silicon Alley Insider's Digital 100: The World's Most Valuable Startups. myYearbook is ranked 68th with estimated market value of $185 miliion, which may seem a little high, but perhaps not with some people talking about Facebook being worth $25 to $30 bilion. myYearbook's backers include First Round Capital and Northwest Venture Partners.

Recyclebank, which started in Philadelphia before moving its HQ to New York and still has significant operations here, has an estimated market value of $100 million, SAI says. Recyclebank has recieved investments of over $70 miliion, according to CrunchBase, so $100 million would be a marginal return. I've always had some questions about the long-term economic viability of Recyclebank's business model.

A relatively small fund, PENN-related MentorTech Ventures, has two of its portfolio companies in the top 100: Jersey City's Diapers.com and New York's Yodle, which I think actually started out in Philly.

Who else from the Philly area might belong on this list? Four possibilities that come to mind are Cloud software integrator Boomi of Berwyn, corporate meeting management site StarCite of Philadelphia (an ICG portfolio company), and two Healthcare IT firms: Portico Systems of Blue Bell (Safeguard Scientifics) and Octagon Research Solutions of Wayne. The SAI rankings are very consumer-centric, though, and don't pay much attention to enterprise-oriented applications.




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