We're proud to announce that John Werner, Managing Director and Partner at Link Ventures, has earned a spot on Boston Globe's 2024 Tech Power Players 50! Their 2024 ranking highlights leaders who make New England's technology scene vibrant and vital. John Werner excels in connecting bright minds and substantial investments, spearheading his firm's foray into AI startups.
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With over 1000 MIT students in attendance and another 300,000+ online views, the interview with Sam Altman explores the emergence of ChatGPT, the scale of new AI models, and how quickly the AI models themselves may accelerate the enhancement of future models.
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PayZen, the fintech company tackling healthcare affordability with personalized, no-cost patient financing solutions, has raised a $220 million growth round to strengthen its leadership position as it pioneers the new category of Affordability Financing. The round is composed of $20 million in equity financing and a $200 million credit facility. The oversubscribed equity component was led by 7wireVentures, while Viola Credit provided a $200 million warehouse credit facility to support continued market expansion. This latest investment round reflects the significant and rapidly accelerating industry demand for PayZen’s affordability financing platform since it was introduced last year.
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Link Ventures (“LV”), a venture capital firm that focuses on investing in early-stage technology companies, announced today that it has launched its third investment fund, Link Ventures 3 LP ("LV3"), with approximately $150 million in commitments. This fund size is 50% larger than its vintage 2019 Fund, Link Ventures 2 LP (“LV2”). In addition, the Fund has announced that LV3 made its first investment into payment protection company, nsKnox. We are very excited about the investment opportunities for this fund as the world embraces new startups that are leveraging data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. We would like to thank our investors who have confidence in our abilities as investors and we look forward to partnering with entrepreneurs and our vast network of relationships who are going to help us make this Fund a great success. “Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.” ~ Albert Einstein
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For Isabel Rafferty Zavala, CEO and Founder of Canela Media, the question has always been: What about the Latino audience? The answer matters a great deal to Rafferty, who was born in Mexico City but moved to the US at 15. A career in media had shown her that the Latino audience is usually an afterthought. Rafferty’s desire to center Latinos ultimately led her to launch her first business, Mobvious, in 2016. The mobile advertising business soon became the second-largest Hispanic-focused ad network, according to Comscore rankings. This success led to its acquisition in 2017. Rafferty then set a new goal: to build a company for the US Hispanic market in the streaming space. She could see that streaming was the future and that no one else was hyper-focusing on the Latino segment.
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nsKnox Raises $17 Million From Link Ventures, Harel Insurance and Existing Investors Including M12 and Viola Ventures to Meet Growing Demand for B2B Payment Security & Compliance Solutions
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With more than 2,000 brands - including Nickelodeon, Discovery, Comcast, and PBS - and 275,000 signups, companies and creatives alike are emboldened by their New York-based platform. The new investment will go towards boosting product and engineering teams, growth marketing and data tools, as well as payment feature CreativelyPay. We believe in the power of the creator economy and Creatively's mission to help the world's creatives achieve their boldest ambitions.
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People around the world are realizing that in order for capitalism to survive, it will require crafting a new sort of social contract that restores the balance between money and people by constructing institutions and laws that control rights, ownership, and use. To address this need, the new ventures and ideas that were discussed at Imagination In Action are providing radically new solutions for funding and managing new civic and government systems, for digital privacy and cybersecurity, and for providing more agile, inclusive, and transparent responses to societies’ problems. Inside the Tata Dome, more than 400 attendees talked with the creators of dozens of real-world, human-centered ventures, many already touching tens and even hundreds of millions of people. This gathering is appropriately named “Imagination In Action”, and was curated by Alex Pentland of MIT Connection Science, John Werner of Link Ventures, and Randall Lane, Chief Content Officer of Forbes (see imaginationinaction.xyz ).
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Kevin Bennett has been on a mission to transform consumers’ financial relationships with their cars. His startup has already raised tens of millions of dollars from notable investors and is growing rapidly. The venture, Caribou has acquired financing from Moderne Ventures, Goldman Sachs, CMFG Ventures, and Link Ventures.
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HealthCare.com, a leading data-driven insurtech platform, announced today the closing of $130 million in Senior Non-Convertible Preferred and more than $50 million of Series C Preferred equity in an oversubscribed round led by funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management, L.P. ("Oaktree"). Existing investors Axis Capital, Second Alpha and Link Ventures participated in the financing, as did founders. With this new funding round, the HealthCare.com team is committed to changing the U.S. consumer’s relationship to their healthcare, creating solutions that make it easy to discover, choose, buy and use health insurance and other healthcare-related products – across every life-stage.
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For many Uber drivers during the pandemic, the decision to keep working comes down to a simple calculus of whether their earnings outweigh the costs. Beyond health risks, things like car loan payments, gas and maintenance take big chunks out of income, and are a major source of driver turnover. Uber is addressing at least one of these challenges through a new partnership with fintech firm Caribou. The startup is integrating its service into Uber's driver app, to help top drivers in California refinance their car loans.
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Healthcare costs in the U.S. are steadily rising, and the share patients must pay out-of-pocket has increased in tandem. Nearly one in three American households have delayed medical care due to its cost, per a 2019 Gallup poll. Payzen, a healthcare fintech startup, raised $15 million in Series A funding for its solution that leverages artificial intelligence to underwrite patients’ medical debt, allowing them to access care and pay for it over time in installments.
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SmarterTravel, a Kendall Square-based travel company, announces a name change from Hopjump, as well as the closing of a $9.5 million Series B round. The funding will allow the Company to hire key staff and build new travel products. “We’re very excited about this funding and the opportunities it gives us,” said Jordan Staab, CEO, SmarterTravel. “We are already the go-to source of information for more than 7 million people, intelligently streamlining their access to information that helps them travel safer, stay more informed, and save money. By Q122 we intend to expand on relationships with our members and be the best way to book a hotel on the internet.”
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When our friends at Redesign Health shared their new venture plans to roll up health-and-wellness native eCommerce brands, we couldn’t wait to speak to their CEO. Redesign Health was fortunate to find Yadin Shemmer to build and steer the ship for its prized new venture. Yadin has built and run consumer health businesses for 15 years. Prior to Intrinsic, he ran and sold Mango Health and before that served as President of Everyday Health’s consumer business.
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MotoRefi has raised another $45 million in a round led by Goldman Sachs just five months after investors poured $10 million into the fintech startup to help turbocharge its auto refinancing business.
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Carlos Cashman is an MIT grad with a visionary mind, a huge personality, and an even bigger heart. Carlos has an extensive background in strategic marketing, branding and positioning, advertising, high tech software and hardware, and design, and is typically driving multiple innovative projects forward at any point in time. Over the past twenty years, Carlos has worked with numerous successful startups as an executive, founder, investor, and advisor in the US and abroad. He has been a part of several venture-backed and non-venture backed startups and has founded a dozen companies himself including Thrasio, Asset Performance Technologies (sold 2018), OrionCKB (sold 2017), CourseAdvisor (sold 2007), and Opus360 (IPO in 2000).
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When I got on the phone Thursday with the leaders of EverQuote, Boston’s newest publicly traded tech company, I expected them to grumble about how I cast their venture as a “company you’ve never heard of” in yesterday’s story about its IPO.
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Each year, the World Economic Forum brings together an international array of prominent leaders from business, government, academia, media and civil society, to deepen relationships and work more collaboratively towards improving the state of our world.
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At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Link Ventures Managing Partner and Cogo Labs Chairman Dave Blundin gave a presentation on Democratizing Big Data. Hosted in the iconic TCS Dome, Dave’s talk was part of the Blockchain in Action event which brought together global leaders from business, government, academia, and media.
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While Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg dominated the news coverage, the biggest conversations this week at the World Economic Forum at Davos focused on “stakeholder capitalism,” and both the opportunities and necessities for business to align with the public and nonprofit sectors to solve the world’s most intractable problems.
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Cutting-edge competitive intelligence, mathematical modeling and behavioral analysis are what it takes to succeed in the ever-competitive startup scene. Link Ventures has quickly become the model for identifying the next “it” companies in the Cambridge, Mass. ecosystem.
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Auto refinance platform MotoRefi has raised $8.6 million in funding, the company announced Friday. Investors in the round included Motley Fool Ventures, CMFG Ventures, Accomplice, Link Ventures, Gaingels and others. Former Uber Technologies Inc. executive and Construct Capital co-founder Rachel Holt will join the board, as well as Rob Chaplinsky, managing director of Link Ventures.
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The Financial Technology Report is pleased to announce the Top 50 Financial Technology CEOs of 2020. These exceptional executives lead some of the most prominent financial technology companies across the globe and have helped define many of the wide scale advancements the industry has undergone over recent years.
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Let’s get something morbid out of the way right up front: estate planning is a growth business in 2020. Whether you need to create or update a will, build a family trust, or sign over power of attorney for end-of-life decision-making, it’s been a heck of a year for many families, and even more people are starting to think about these instruments if anything worse happens this year (and there are still six weeks left!)
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EverQuote, Inc. (Nasdaq: EVER), has been named one of the Top Places to Work in Massachusetts in the 13th annual employee-based survey project from The Boston Globe. EverQuote was ranked #23 in the category of large employers.
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How can you provide a great digital product or service, while still providing the human contact that consumers want? The mortgage company Own Up originally got that balance wrong... and fixing it transformed their business.
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Based in New York City, Creatively is a professional network for creatives. Think of it as “LinkedIn for the creative world.” LinkedIn and other job platforms are not built for creatives. They don’t showcase portfolios, an essential element for promoting creatives’ professional experience and connecting them to the right job opportunities.
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Jobcase, Inc., provider of a social platform dedicated to empowering and advocating for workers, has announced a significant new capital investment, with Providence Strategic Growth (PSG) acquiring a majority stake and Workday Ventures participating as a strategic investment partner. The investment includes $30 million of primary capital to accelerate Jobcase’s product development, member services, and employer partnerships. In addition, Jobcase is joining the Workday Software Partner Program.
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Creatively, the job platform for creatives, today announced a $5 million seed round led by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Link Ventures, joining Michael Eisner's Tornante Company and Shari Redstone's Advancit Capital as investors. Creatively will use the new round of financing primarily to expand its product and engineering team as well as its data capabilities.
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Patrick Boyaggi is co-founder and CEO of Own Up, a technology company changing the way people shop for and secure a mortgage. Prior to co-founding Own Up, Patrick was a Senior Vice President at Leader Bank, where he led a team that closed over $11B in residential mortgages. Patrick also served as a Management Consultant in Accenture’s Financial Services practice.
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Kevin Bennett is the CEO of MotoRefi, a mission-driven fintech startup revolutionizing consumers' financial relationships with their cars. An experienced CEO, Kevin has spent over 10 years launching and leading startups from early to late stage.
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Recent work has demonstrated substantial gains on many NLP tasks and benchmarks by pre-training on a large corpus of text followed by fine-tuning on a specific task. While typically task-agnostic in architecture, this method still requires task-specific fine-tuning datasets of thousands or tens of thousands of examples. By contrast, humans can generally perform a new language task from only a few examples or from simple instructions – something which current NLP systems still largely struggle to do.
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The NIPS 2017 paper that laid the groundwork for the language modeling revolution. The dominant sequence transduction models are based on complex recurrent or convolutional neural networks in an encoder-decoder configuration. The best performing models also connect the encoder and decoder through an attention mechanism. We propose a new simple network architecture, the Transformer, based solely on attention mechanisms, dispensing with recurrence and convolutions entirely.
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Creatively — a startup that helps designers, photographers, illustrators and other creative professionals showcase their work and find their next job — is announcing that it has raised in $5 million.
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Link Ventures is pleased to announce its newest investment, modern estate planning startup Trust & Will. We are leading the round with participation from existing investors including Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, WTI, Halogen Ventures, Luma Launch, and Techstars Ventures.
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From his company’s statement: “Seth was a genuine, dynamic leader whose remarkable passion, vision and tenacity attracted the world-class team we have in place today, which serves as the foundation for EverQuote’s success. We will be forever grateful for his entrepreneurial spirit and the welcoming and caring environment he cultivated.”
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That was one of the questions posed by Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross at our annual Friends of Link Ventures event last month. He spoke about getting to the point of artificial general intelligence — AI that is so advanced that language models can teach us new language models. We’re very close to that point, according to Dr. Wissner-Gross, because of the availability of large data sets.
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A rite of homeownership is the search for a better mortgage interest rate and refinancing to lock in. What many vehicle owners don’t realize is you can do the same thing with auto financing, which led to the creation of a fast-growing startup called MotoRefi.
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