Investor Newsletter H2 2021
November 4, 2021
Welcome to our Semi-Annual Investor Newsletter edition for Fall 2021. This Newsletter will present an update on the investment activity of the Wesley Clover Global Ecosystem of Technology companies as well as updates on the expansion of New Funds, LP participation opportunities of the Alacrity Global program and what trends we are watching in technology, investment, and policy.
In this Edition:
- Thought Leadership on 5G
- Our Latest Watch List
- Portfolio Investment Highlights
- New Initiatives
- Investment Spotlight
- Alacrity Entrepreneurship News
- Upcoming Events
5G – An Insatiable Global Appetite for Wireless Connectivity is Creating Many Related Business Opportunities.
Globally we are seeing massive growth in wireless devices and their use. Everything from IoT where the goal is to connect everything, to wider bandwidth systems like Wi-Fi 6E, 5G and more. Even older systems like FM and two-way radios continue to grow at a steady pace. Our appetite for wireless connectivity anywhere and everywhere continues to fuel this growth…
Wireless Technology Thought Leader Nikhil provides insight into 5G in relation to Spectrum. Nikhil has over twenty years of experience in wireless and has held engineering positions at Nortel and Communications Research Centre Canada.
Click the link below to read the full article Radio Spectrum presents a significant opportunity
Nikhil Adnani
PH. D Electrical Engineering
CTO, thinkRF
Our Watch List
- Cyber Security: HYAS – Your Existing Security and Visibility is Not Enough
- Edge Computing: Teldio Is Seizing a Leading Position in the Emerging Edge Computing Market
- Ottawa-Kanata 5G Ecosystem: TELUS, CENGN, KNBA Partner to Launch 5G Innovation Zone in Kanata North
Portfolio Investment Highlights:
The Alacrity Global Ecosystem has had 6 exits since the previous update. The cumulative funds raised for this year have been over $25 M USD and the exit value over $200 M USD. The tech verticals of Exits were in Adtech, AI, Education, and productivity software. The greatest follow-on investment attraction in the second half of 2021 was in the areas of Construction Tech, AI/ML and Health Tech. You can follow the links below for deal details:
- L-SPARK Portfolio Raises: NERv $2.65 Million USD, Deeplite $6 Million USD, Brokrete $3 Million CAD
- L-SPARK Exits (4): UpChain (2021-04-15), EssayJack (2021-07-20), HeyDay (2021-08-03), Levelup (Oct 2021)
- Alacrity Canada Exits (2): Pretio Interactive (2021-06-07), Encepta (2021-08-24)
- Alacrity Ottawa Launched (Sept 2021)
5 initiatives we are working on this year are:
- New Alacrity Funds & Accelerators under development: UAE, ASEAN, India, and South America
- Attract LPS for Alacrity Secondary Funds
- Support the acceleration of Pre-seed companies to investible revenue levels.
- Expand the WCS Global systems integrators offering in Europe, MEA, LATAM and APAC.
- Enhance engagement with Global Investor and Industry Analyst community via briefings and informative content.
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Deal Book: Investment Spotlight
Over the next 6-8 months we are anticipating further Early-Stage Investment attraction specifically in the area of IoT, HealthCare IT, FinTech, Management Software, HRTech, MarTech and Security & Monitoring. Companies have continued to grow in H2 2021 and are looking to accelerate global growth in 2022. We have 11 companies looking to raise funds over the next 6-8 months: BilliApp, Cliniconex, HyAlto, InitLive, Mydoma Studios, thinkRF, Teldio, Thrive, Segmentify, Twentify and SaaSquatch. Find the investment profile details below:
Billi
Website: https://billi.app/
Industry/Vertical: FinTech, Financial Services, Personal Finance
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: Nov 2021-Jan 2022
Active Users: 40,000+3K waiting list
Funding Target: Seed, $3 Million
Investor Targets: VC
Billi is on a mission to become the operating system of personal money management. The company helps its members track bills, avoid bank fees, save money, and lead more financially mindful lives by offering tools such as predictive cash flow, spending insights, categorization, and unified account aggregation. Through proprietary data analysis Billi is set to help 18M+ employed Canadians to unlock early payroll to help avoid the billions in fees collected by major banks and predatory payday lenders.
Current Investors: Founder, Wesley Clover, Angels, Debt
Strategic Customers: Finaptic, TransUnion, Flinks
Cliniconex
Website: https://cliniconex.com/
Industry/Vertical: Healthcare Technology, Ambulatory & Long-Term Care.
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: Nov 2021-May 2022
Estimated ARR CAD: 4 Million+
Funding Target: Series A, $10 Million
Targets: VC and Corporate Venture
Serving medical professionals, patients, and their families Cliniconex is one of North America’s fastest-growing healthcare engagement solutions with an accelerated increase in year over year growth for the last three years. Our solution coordinates the exchange of information and communications from more than 5,000 medical professionals and 1,600 senior care providers, to trigger more than 800,000 meaningful engagements each month.
The Cliniconex software provides a host of services that automate repetitive tasks so staff can focus on caring for patients and/or residents. Digital transformation in healthcare is growing rapidly with national health spending projected to reach $6.2 trillion by 2028* in the U.S. alone. Cliniconex is seeking capital to accelerate expansion: 1) within existing strategic partnerships, 2) to adjacent senior care segments in new markets through product extension.
Current Investors: Angels and Strategic Investors.
Strategic Customers: PointClickCare, Loblaws, Telus Health
HyAlto
Website: https://www.hyalto.com/
Industry/Vertical: SaaS, Cloud Management Software
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: Jan 2022-Dec 2022
Estimated Annual Revenue CAD: $1 Million+
Funding Target: Pre-Series, $2 Million+
Investor Targets: VC
The HyAlto cloud management platform currently is used by Managed Service Providers (MSPs) with a private cloud business to increase their revenues by 10-15% by recovering leaked revenue due to billing errors. The HyAlto solution automates the cost and usage tracking of cloud services and replaces an MSP’s manual business workflow. HyAlto is seeking funding to extend the existing private cloud platform to also support the big 3 public clouds, Azure, AWS, and GCP. There are 250,000 MSPs globally and the public cloud managed service business is estimated to be $80B. The HyAlto solution will automate the quote-to-bill front-office and back-office workflows, resulting in an increase of revenues for an MSP of +15%. For the new public cloud offering, HyAlto’s go-to-market will be based on no-touch digital marketing with a frictionless try-and-buy model.
Current Investors: VC
InitLive
Website: https://www.initlive.com/
Industry/Vertical: Volunteer Workforce Engagement; Non-profits, Events, Corporate Social Responsibility.
Location: North America, EMEA
Investment Timeline: February-April 2022
Estimated ARR CAD: $400K+
Funding Target: Seed, $3 Million
Investor Targets: VC, PE, Strategic Acquisition
InitLive Volunteer Workforce Engagement Solutions transform the way non-profits, corporations, and event organizers attract, onboard, engage, and retain individuals who are critical to their volunteer-based programs. InitLive focuses on the volunteer experience, simplifying and streamlining interactions throughout the human resources lifecycle enabling our clients to scale their operations and increase their impact. InitLive sells directly and indirectly through industry leading CRM partners Link2Feed and Salesforce.org. As a certified BCorp, InitLive has grown revenues 160% year over year in the non-profit software space, acquiring customers from around the world. InitLive is seeking capital to increase investment in enterprise customer requirements, expand our technology partner ecosystem, and grow our direct and indirect sales channels across active geographies.
Current Investors: Angels, Wesley Clover
Strategic Customers: United Way, Websummit, National Grid, ePGA
Mydoma Studio
Website: https://www.mydomastudio.com/
Industry/Vertical: SAAS, Design Management Software
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: Dec 2021- February 2022
Estimated Annual Revenue CAD: 1M+
Funding Target: Pre-Series, $2 Million+
Investor Targets: Institutional Angels, Angels
Mydoma Studio is the all-in-one business management tool for design professionals. Mydoma Studio enables SMB’s in the interior design and kitchen and bath industry to onboard clients, source and procure products, generate proposals, invoices and payment processing all in one place. The interior design industry as a whole in the US is valued at over $17B. Mydoma Studio has a unique three-pronged go to market strategy; software as a service, continuing education courses and community. Mydoma Studio’s core customer base is located primarily in four countries, with the majority being in the USA. In 2021 Mydoma Studio had 290% revenue increase from payment processing over 2020. Mydoma Studio is seeking an initial $2M to further increase their value and scale rapidly with the acquisition of a mutual industry partner. The acquisition will provide increased customer base and access to industry leading 3D rendering software. The capital will also be invested directly into the sales and marketing team and growth of the development team.
Current Investors: Institutional Angels, Angels
Teldio
Website: https://teldio.com/
Industry/Vertical: B2B SaaS, Workflow Automation
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: June 2022
Estimated ARR CAD: $2.5Million+
Funding Target: Series-A, $6 Million+
Investor Targets: VC and Corporate Venture
Teldio enables enterprises to quickly and cost-effectively integrate systems that power their business. The company’s platform automates routine tasks and improves operations using workflows that connect these systems, in the cloud or on-premise, resulting in dramatic productivity improvements.
Teldio sells in a subscription model to the global enterprise workflow automation market. Company is growing 2x 2020 to 2021 and projected to accelerate 3x in 2022 and beyond. The plan is to utilize the funding to accelerate organic growth and go public in five years with over $100M in ARR.
Current Investors: VC, Corporate, Angel
Strategic Customers: Amazon, Pfizer, Marriott, P&G, 3M, GE, Nissan, Cargill, Tyson Foods, NYSE, Honda, SpaceX
Segmentify
Website: https://www.segmentify.com/
Industry/Vertical: E-Commerce Enabler
Location: Turkey
Investment Date: Nov 2021-Feb 2022
Estimated ARR USD: $2.7 Million+
Funding Target: Series A, $6 Million USD
Targets: VC and Corporate Venture
Segmentify is an eCommerce personalisation platform that helps online retailers to optimize their conversion rates by enabling them to deliver a unique shopping experience for each visitor. Forbes named Segmentify as one of the top machine learning companies to watch in 2018. The company has grown more than 5-fold since then. Segmentify is raising USD 6M and projects to get to USD 1M MRR with the help of the round.
Current Investors: Angels, Institutional Angels, VC
ThinkRF
Website: https://thinkrf.com/
Industry/Vertical: Security & Monitor, Software-defined spectrum analysis platform
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: Nov 2021-Mar 2022
Estimated Annual Revenue CAD: $2.7 Million+
Funding Target: Pre-Series, $6 Million+
Investor Targets: Institutional Angels, Angels
Wireless spectrum is a scarce and expensive resource. Wireless operators in Canada paid $3.5 billion for spectrum licenses in 2019. These operators have little actionable intelligence about what spectrum to license and where to license it. These challenges are worsened by the complexity of next generation 5G deployments.
ThinkRF built its reputation designing and selling highly accurate low-cost spectrum analyzers delivering capacity of 8kHz to 45GHz, these ranges of network are extremely important to wireless networked sensors in the world of 5G. ThinkRF is currently working with leading Operators to instrument cities around the world, collecting data about what is happening in the spectrum, and using AI to create actionable intelligence. ThinkRF sells multi-year subscriptions to these insights to operators and regulators. To further develop this offering, ThinkRF is seeking $3M in the short term to bridge to a larger VC round later this year. Having grown revenues 3x last year, the plan will be to go public in five years with over $100M in ARR.
Current Investors: VC, Corporate, Angel, Institutional Angel
Thrive
Website: https://thrivemycareer.com/
Industry/Vertical: HRTech, Career Management
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: Nov 2021-Feb 2022
Estimated ARR CAD: $2.4Million+
Funding Target: Series A, $10 Million
Investor Targets: VC and Corporate Venture
Thrive Career Wellness platform is an enterprise career marketplace built to help any individual advance their career. Employers deposit dollars into the platform which individuals can use to access over 70+ services in our integrated marketplace. Thrive is used by employers for career transition, internal redeployment, and career management. Thrive is growing over 100% Year over Year and has customers in eight different countries around the world. Thrive is seeking capital to increase investment in enterprise customer requirements while growing and building direct sales and customer service teams across active geographies.
Current Investors: Angels, Institutional Angels, VC
Strategic Customers: Walmart, Scotiabank, Lowes Canada
Twentify
Website: https://www.twentify.com/
Industry/Vertical: Market Research, Research Tech
Location: EMEA, North America
Headquarters: Istanbul, Turkey
Investment Date: Jan 2022 – March 2022
Estimated ARR USD: $1.25M
Funding Target: $2M, Pre-Series A
Targets: VC
Current market research methods are slow, expensive and static in understanding consumer behaviour and trends. Twentify addresses that problem by leveraging smartphones to capture in-the-moment and contextually rich insights directly from the every-day-consumer. Twentify’s mobile app Bounty has more than 1.4M users who help brands by answering thousands of text, picture or video surveys everyday. Our app enables cutting edge technologies such as passive tracking, augmented reality etc. Users earn real money in exchange for participating in market research projects.
Current Investors: Wesley Clover, ZMT Ventures, Angels
Strategic Partners/Customers: Coca-Cola, Google, Pfizer, Unilever, Bayer, Procter&Gamble, McKinsey & Company. In total more than 50 clients.
SaaSquatch
Website: https://www.saasquatch.com/
Industry/Vertical: MarTech, Customer Engagement, Advocacy, Rewards & Loyalty
Location: North America
Investment Date: May-Nov 2021
Estimated ARR USD: $2 Million+
Funding Target: Series A
Targets: VC
SaaSquatch is a loyalty, referral and rewards platform helping B2C and B2B companies across industries such as SaaS, Finance, Media, Telecom, and other online businesses grow through incentive marketing. SaaSquatch has increased revenue by 50%+ in the last 5 months and is forecasted to increase revenue 2.5 X this year. SaaSquatch is raising funds to accelerate sales and marketing while advancing the SaaSquatch platform to better serve Enterprise clients.
Current Investors: Founder, Institutional Angel, Debt
Strategic Partners/Customers: Western Union, Ring Central, PluralSight, Self Financial
Alacrity News
Alacrity Canada
Alacrity Canada (Non-Profit Organization) completes 2 additional exits of original cohort, placing total exits to 4 and a cumulative exit value to over $60 Million USD. Alacrity Canada is targeting to raise a Cleantech fund with an emphasis on helping early-stage companies with reporting their environmental sustainability and governance to investors and customers. The Fund is anticipated to be $70 Million in 2022 and potential LPs are encouraged to inquire.
Alacrity France
Alacrite France is supporting the development of 10 active NewCos to-date, each received Startup funding of €250K+. There are 4 additional NewCos in the pipeline planned for Alacrite France. 2 NewCos are expected to receive seed funding year-end 2021 and an additional 2 in the first half of 2022. Series A raise of select NewCos are anticipated to be announced in mid to late 2022. Alacrite France II is under development targeted for 2023.
Alacrity Affiliate: L-SPARK
The L-SPARK portfolio has attracted $11.65 Million USD follow-on funding in the second half of 2021 and an additional 4 exits. To date L-SPARK has exited 6 companies with a cumulative exit value over $200 Million USD for 2021.
Alacrity Mexico
Alacrity Mexico grows portfolio to 4 active technology companies in Logistics, Fintech, and Hospitality, another 2 NewCos are expected to join the portfolio within the next 6 months. The first private outside funding round is expected in early-mid 2022.
Alacrity Ottawa
Alacrity Ottawa has been launched this Fall in partnership with the University of Ottawa and L-SPARK and will be recruiting its first cohort of entrepreneur to lead future Startup tech companies.
Alacrity Turkey: Fund II Under Development
Wesley Clover seeking to develop a Second Fund in Turkey to take advantage of Seed & Early-Stage funding gap in talented tech ecosystem.
Alacrity U.K.
Alacrity UK in the second half of 2021 has attracted $8.23M CDN in program operating funding and grew its portfolio of active NewCos to 17, each NewCo receiving seed funding of £250K+. The Cyber Security Program was launched in 2020 and has graduated 3 NewCos; StreetWave, Recovar and Graphium. The other two companies graduating are StageUp and Validient.
Alacrity ASEAN New Fund Under Exploration
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of a new fund in the ASEAN region. Early-Stage Venture Builder model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
Alacrity India, New Delhi New Fund Under Exploration
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of new fund in the New Delhi. Early-Stage Venture builder in Alacrity India model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
Alacrity South America New Fund Under Exploration
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of a new fund in South America. Early-Stage Venture Builder model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
Alacrity UAE New Fund Under Development
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of a new fund in the UAE. Early-Stage Venture Builder model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
Upcoming Events
- SaaS North
November 17th – 18th 2021 - Wesley Clover SaaS North Exclusive Industry Pulse & Investor Pitches
November 17th 2021
Thank You
For any Investment related enquiries on portfolio companies, Alacrity Funds or for a Wesley Clover Briefing please contact Joshua Seerattan.
About Wesley Clover International
Wesley Clover International is a private, global investment management firm and holding company with over a Billion Dollars of Assets Under Management in Real-Estate & Technology. The focus is to fund and grow successful technology companies. More than 100 firms have been created to-date by Wesley Clover with more than $1.0B in direct investment. The portfolio regularly has more than 40 investments under active management around the globe. All are committed to next-generation Cloud and SaaS applications for fixed and mobile communications, video analytics, security, customer engagement, business enablement and more. Deal flow includes companies within the Enterprise Accelerator, L-SPARK, as well as the Alacrity Global Ecosystem of technology partnership funds which have been deployed in 6 international regions.