Welcome to The Sounding Line, a publication from Pilot Growth Equity offering facts, insights and opinions on growth equity in technology. We aim to provide quality information that interests you and helps you understand a small part of our constantly changing and complicated world of growth equity in technology.
We're excited to host this conversation with the newest member of the Pilot Growth Platform Specialist Team, John Belizaire. About 2 years ago, John started writing his learning from over 20 years as a successful entrepreneur and CEO. That journal turned into CEOPLAYBOOK — an online publication of stories and sage advice for founders and CEOs of high growth companies.
Bizzabo, one of the Pilot Growth Equity Fund II portfolio companies, will be featured on the July call. We are pleased to host Eran Ben-Shushan, the CEO and Co-founder of Bizzabo which is the only event success platform for in-person, virtual, and hybrid events. Bizzabo’s all-in-one event software helps companies measure, manage, and scale events towards key business outcomes—empowering every organizer, marketer, exhibitor, and attendee to unleash the power of professional events. Bizzabo powers events for brands like Amazon, Electronic Arts, Financial Times, Forbes, Siemens, and Salesforce to name a few. The company was founded by Boaz Katz, Alon Alroy, and Eran Ben-Shushan, and has hundreds of Bizzaboers working around the globe.
CB Insights is a Pilot Growth Fund I portfolio company that has grown steadily over the past 5 years at a CAGR of 68%. CB Insights builds technology that helps corporations guess less and win more. The company aggregates and analyzes massive amounts of data and uses machine learning, algorithms, and data visualization to help corporations replace the three Gs (Google searches, gut instinct, and guys with MBAs*) so they can answer massive strategic questions using probability, not punditry. With backing from the National Science Foundation and venture capital investors, CB Insights mines terabytes of data and knowledge contained in patents, venture capital financings, M&A transactions, hiring, startup and investor websites, news sentiment, social media chatter, and more. Its software algorithmically analyzes this data to help clients see where the world is going tomorrow, today.
Tailwind, one of the Pilot Growth Equity Fund II portfolio companies, will be featured on the May webinar. Tailwind's mission is to make world-class marketing easy for everyone. Danny Maloney, Co-Founder & CEO, will represent Tailwind on the webinar. Danny's background includes rebuilding AOL's online video business following the Time Warner spin-off, incubating projects for Google Maps /Local, and YouTube and consulting for the Boston Consulting Group, and two prior start-ups. Tailwind is trusted by over 500,000 brands worldwide to help them plan, create, execute, and optimize marketing campaigns on digital platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. Founded in 2011, Tailwind is headquartered in Oklahoma City, with additional R&D teams and Customer Support teams in New York. The company provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based social media marketing platform for small businesses around the world.
Due to an overwhelming number of requests from our partners and friends for information regarding the COVID-19 outbreak from our portfolio company, Metabiota, we will be hosting an exclusive webinar on the coronavirus epidemic and the risks it poses to our markets and communities. Metabiota, a Pilot Growth Equity Fund I portfolio company, has been tracking the spread of COVID-19 and has created the proprietary Pathogen Sentiment Score, which measures public fear and anxiety and correlates to social and financial fluctuations associated with an outbreak. Metabiota's CEO, Nita Madhav, will be on the call to discuss the outbreak and the rapidly changing implications of a looming pandemic.
r4 Technologies, one of the Pilot Growth Equity Fund II portfolio companies, will be featured on the January call. r4 is the leader in applying AI to cross-enterprise management, delivering better business outcomes as a service. r4 was created by founders of Priceline, leveraging decades of expertise in extracting profit from data. Paul Breitenbach, Founder & CEO, will represent r4 on the webinar. Paul was the CMO and co-founder of one of the world’s most iconic e-commerce brands, priceline.com. They defined, built and led the business model, strategy and execution that leveraged data and mathematics to create over $100 billion in shareholder value and became one of the most successful IPOs in history. Now as founder and CEO of r4, Paul feels a similar sense of excitement and expectation. Value creation through smart application of AI technology could very well dwarf the value impact of the internet. r4 is already driving previously unthinkable revenue increases and cost efficiencies in the market. In 2019, r4 was named a Gartner Cool Vendor in AI Core Technologies. The company is based in Ridgefield, CT, with operations in San Francisco, Austin, Washington, DC, Dublin, London, Munich, Delhi, and Pune.
Velocidi, one of the Pilot Growth Equity Fund I portfolio companies, will be featured on the December call. Velocidi is an award winning CDP tailored for direct-to-consumer brands that uses machine learning to accelerate and guide brands' growth journey. Paulo Cunha, CEO, and Hyuk Lee, COO, will represent Velocidi on the call. Paulo has over 10 years’ experience in building products for the online advertising industry. Following its growth from the inside gives him an edge in the dynamic marketing technology landscape. After working as a technology consultant in London, Paulo returned to Portugal to found ShiftForward, a first-party state-of-the-art marketing technology company. Paulo led ShiftForward through successful rounds of investment, grew a product that was validated by clients worldwide and built a remarkable team of software developers who are now part of Velocidi’s team. He will be joined by Hyuk Lee, Chief Operating Officer. Prior to Velocidi, Hyuk held key positions at Samsung Ads and Time Warner Cable's Marketing Intelligence team. Velocidi, winner of Digiday Technology Award for Best Customer Data Platform, is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Porto, Portugal. The company provides a customer data platform and machine learning solutions for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. Velocidi makes advanced customer intelligence, predictive decisioning, and data activation accessible and easy to implement.
Webgility, one of the Pilot Growth Equity Fund II portfolio companies, will be featured on the October call. Webgility is the leader in e-commerce automation software for retailers and brands on QuickBooks and NetSuite. Parag Mamnani, Founder & CEO, will represent Webgility on the call. Parag founded and bootstrapped Webgility in 2007 and grew the company to profitability. In 2017, the company took its first institutional investment from Pilot Growth. Parag has led cross-functional teams to deliver software solutions for thousands of e-commerce companies. He will be joined by Soon-Chul Choi, Chief Operating Officer. Webgility provides e-commerce and accounting automation solutions by integrating e-commerce and POS applications, streamlining data flows, automating accounting and back-office operations, and providing actionable insights to maximize ROI. Webgility manages millions of customer transactions through thousands of online stores every month. Webgility is a certified partner of Intuit, QuickBooks, NetSuite, and Xero, and works with the world's best e-commerce platforms and marketplaces (including Amazon, eBay, BigCommerce, Shopify, and Magento), payment processors (PayPal, Stripe, Shopify Payments, Square), and shipping providers like Stamps.com, FedEx and UPS.
Perthera, one of the Pilot Growth Equity Fund I portfolio companies, will be featured on the September call. Perthera is the leading Healthcare AI company advancing precision medicine. Gary Gregory, CEO of Perthera, will represent Perthera on the call. Gary has 30 years of experience in the healthcare sector including leadership positions in numerous startups and Fortune 250 companies. He will be joined by Dr. Emanuel “Chip” Petricoin, Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer. Chip is the world's expert in personalized medicine enabled through the use of proteomic technologies. Chip is also Co-Director at the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine at George Mason University. Perthera is a Healthcare Informatics cancer company that enables Hospitals, Physicians & Advocacy Groups to deliver Best-In-Class Cancer Care to improve patient outcomes and save lives. Perthera’s business is built on providing Bio-Pharma companies (Pharmaceutical, Bio-Tech, CROs and Drug Development) access to the most comprehensive precision oncology database, which integrates Precision Medicine (PM) data, molecular profiling, Real World Evidence, and longitudinal outcomes.