Investments

We Made 19 Follow-on Investments & Announced 8 New Seed Investments

Wonderment

Wonderment gives small businesses the upper hand by preventing “where is my order” calls before they happen.

The SaaS platform increases customer delight by delivering instant visibility into shipments, sending proactive, branded notifications to customers, and delivering a better tracking experience, regardless of which carriers or warehouses the brand uses.

Luminai

Luminai empowers knowledge workers to focus on the most valuable and rewarding aspects of their jobs.

By connecting SaaS applications through Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Luminai streamlines multi-click processes and serves as an operating system that prevents teams from needing to jump between a dozen applications to execute a single action.

Herald

Herald connects software developers to commercial insurance carriers through a single API.

By providing the best infrastructure for developers, Herald is empowering both the carrier side and broker side of the market to move commercial insurance online. What used to take months of development time and days (even weeks) of email back and forth can now be delivered within hours.

Clockwork

Clockwork enables small businesses and their outsourced finance partners to take control of their finances.

Clockwork is an incredibly easy-to-use and accurate AI-powered financial planning and analysis platform. Clockwork customers can spot both problems and opportunities sooner, with tools and analyses previously only available to growth-stage enterprises.

Kard

Kard helps banks and other card issuers build an engaging rewards program with thousands of brands and retailer offers.

Kard is the first “rewards-as-a-service” API that empowers modern card issuers to create customized rewards programs tailored to their particular customer base. Kard is the first rewards platform that specifically services the entire spectrum of card issuers.

Appregator

Appregator takes Shopify apps to the next level, providing talented developers with the capital and resources to turbo-charge growth.

Appregator provides app developers with a reliable and efficient exit at a fair price, allowing them to monetize their hard work and trust that their app is in safe hands. Appregator provides a real home for the suite of apps they manage, ensuring a lasting legacy for the software.

3 Box Labs

The creators of the Ceramic Network are advancing a more open, safe, and composable Web3 with 3Box Labs.

Ceramic’s composable, self-sovereign data network allows developers to build applications by plugging into a vibrant, open, decentralized ecosystem of data to build next-generation applications natively on Web 3.0, instead of building with siloed databases.

Portfolio Momentum

$678.5M
in portfolio follow-on funding announced in 2022

We congratulate our portfolio founders on an impactful year of business building and value creation. In turbulent times, they’ve shown resilience, grit, and progress.

Project44

TPG, Goldman, Thoma Bravo Bet on Project44 at $2.4B value

Salisfy

Salsify secures $200M as the boom in eCommerce catapults its valuation to $2B

Messari

Messari raises $35M Series B to expand ‘Bloomberg of Crypto’ ambitions

Kard

Kard earns $23M Series A led by Tiger Global

Kaiko

Crypto data firm Kaiko raises $53 million during market rout

Apploi

Apploi raises $25M to address the healthcare hiring crunch

TetraScience

TetraScience launches revolutionary scientific data cloud

Hi Marley

Hi Marley grows headcount by 70% to meet demand

Pagos

Pagos hits 100M transactions ahead of schedule

Ethena

CEO Roxanne Petraeus raises $30M for compliance training platform Ethena

CloudZero

Cloud veteran Phil Pergola joins CloudZero as CEO

LearnLux

LearnLux backed by Twitter co-founder raises $10M

HourWork

HourWork raises $10M Series A to meet hyper demand

BastionZero

BastionZero launches zero-trust cloud platform for engineering teams

Herald & Salsify

NEVY Awards: Five portfolio companies nominated and two winners

Luminai, Posh, & Hue

Luminai, Posh, and Hue founders earned spots on Forbes 30 Under 30

FXP

Cybersecurity startup Jit raises $38.5M in Seed funding

Coda

Coda’s new features take on Microsoft Word and Google Docs

BusRight

BusRight empowers drivers during a national shortage

HelloTeam

HelloTeam receives top honors in G2's Winter Report

Frase

UFirst Alumni Frase acquired by Copysmith

Lendflow

Lendflow unveils partnership program to power embedded credit ecosystem

Goldcast

Goldcast announces $28M fundraise

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The Underscore portfolio by the numbers

93

Active portfolio companies

Across:
  • Future of Work
  • Vertical SaaS
  • B2B Fintech
  • Web3 Infrastructure

Sourced from...

68% Boston Founders

Measuring what matters

Since becoming a PRI Signatory in 2021, we’ve been measuring what matters and benchmarking the diversity of those we have the privilege to invest in.

We have a long way to go. These are our starting blocks.

47%

Diverse Founders

47% of Underscore’s participating portfolio company founders identify with an overlooked gender, race, or sexuality

21%

Female Founders
Compared to 11% benchmark

Nationally, only 11% of early-stage funding went to female founders

Source: Crunchbase, 2022

14%

Black/Latinx Founders
Compared to 0.9% benchmark

In Boston, only 0.9% of early-stage funding went to black/latinx founders

Source: All Raise, 2021

As of 11.30.22 - Based on 66 portfolio company founders who opted into self identifying in Underscore’s D&I survey.

100+ New Core Members

The Underscore portfolio is strengthened by a Core Community growing in size and impact

  • 1,800+
    Core Members
  • 15
    Peer Groups
  • 88
    Community NPS

2023 Core Leaders

Seijin Mong
Customer SuccessSr. Dir. of CS, Starburst Data
Jaclyn Smith
SalesAMER SI Team, Boomi
Joseph Alim
ProductVP of Product, Compt
Susan An
SalesVP of Sales, Tessian
Kevin Flynn
ProductVP of Product, Reggora
Shari McGrath
Customer SuccessSVP of CS, Hi Marley

12 New Core Partners Added in 2022 including...

Deborah Yang
CEO & Co-Founder of DAIZYKaiko Core Partner
Jonathan Chen
Founder & CEO of NitraLendflow Core Partner
Julia Cheek
CEO & Founder of Everly HealthDarby Core Partner
Lindsey Christensen
B2B Marketing Lead at FlywireKaiko Core Partner
Bryan Dsouza
Head of Marketing at Berkshire GreyIkigai Core Partner
Jana Iris
Community & Events at HashiCorpGoldcast Core Partner

Underscore returns 10% of our profits to members of our community who help us source, select and build iconic companies.

We call these special members of our community Core Partners. To date, Underscore has 103 Core Partners.

Core Events

Taking Part in 113 Core Events and Workshops

Enthusiastically Sponsored by...

Startup Secrets

Throughout the year, we learned together and synthesized our insights along the way.

We shared Startup Secrets with 430+ entrepreneurs in 19 workshops across 2022:

Top 5 Tools of 2022

A Seed Round Fundraising Toolkit for 2022

We get fundraising questions from early-stage entrepreneurs all the time, but the answers are often unhelpful: “It depends.” So we’ve packaged some repeatable tactics and best practices designed to get you started on each step of the fundraising process.

How to Create a Competitive Landscape Slide

“For a long time, this was my least favorite slide to put together,” says Luke Thomas, Founder of Friday. But creating this slide is not about defending yourself or complaining about your competitors; it’s an opportunity to spark a conversation about what makes you different.

How to Adjust your plan During a Downturn

There’s been a lot in the news about market fluctuations. And while there could be more focus on the opportunities that a downturn can create for entrepreneurs, there’s no doubt that preserving cash is solid advice. “In short, you have to do more with less,” says Michelle Hipwood, CFO of Mable. Here's how.

How to Outline an Ideal Customer Profile

A lot of startup founders, when they first take venture capital, focus relentlessly on top line growth numbers. But to set a strong foundation for the business to scale, it’s so much more important to show consistent, repeatable customer satisfaction with one segment. That starts with identifying an ideal customer profile.

How to Hire and Retain the Right Startup Talent

"You’d be surprised at how many founders just google job descriptions and copy from samples to create their own haphazard one,” says Gabriela Serret-Campos, VP of People Ops at Chronosphere. “Then they just select the first candidate that meets their gut feel.” Instead, learn how to hire intentionally.

15

8 Underscore Insights for the Road Ahead

Lily Lyman

The uncertain times ahead will make collaboration even more paramount. Hybrid is here to stay and requires a blend of software and rituals to be successful. Corporate conversations and collaboration will fuel the truly sticky use cases of AI. Legacy industries - insurance, healthcare, supply chain - are waking up to the importance of having collaboration embedded in the software that transforms the business. Conversations will be digitized, spitting off data that will fuel AI applied to change how work gets done. How we work will get more predictive, collaborative, and focused on employee experience.”

Chris Gardner

Even in the wake of a much-needed reset in fintech valuations, there is much to look forward to. AI/ML has been very important to the ecosystem for some time, but look for more applications in predictive analytics and the mining of transaction data for customer insights. As Web3 adjusts to the 'new normal,' its intersection with traditional finance will be an important area of innovation. Lastly, the next two years will see a raft of new regulatory oversight that will impact all of the above. Buckle up!”

Jimmy Orsillo

The uncertainty impacting markets will persist through 2023; that’s the only thing we can be certain about. Startups will continue to push the boundaries of today’s technologies but will be capitalized in a more measured manner by investors who will struggle with price discovery and valuations in this market. Durability and resilience as default operating principles will serve the startup ecosystem well, just as we’ve seen in prior downturns. The best companies will take on measured risks to advance their products and market, while also building deeply thoughtful, scenario-driven models to course-correct as they navigate.”

Richard Dulude

In crypto, I’d expect zero-knowledge smartcontracting platforms to break out, and the next generation of oracles, off-chain compute, and interoperability solutions to come online. These big developments will yield little fanfare, but will fundamentally underwrite the next generation of Web3 infrastructure.”

Sooah Cho

The past few years have made it absolutely clear, given the on-going ‘tripledemic’ and climate crisis, there's nothing more important than protecting our health, family, and planet. In 2023, we’ll see FinTech and AI leveraged to tackle these pressing challenges! I hope to meet founders that are transforming how we pay for healthcare, streamlining how we manage caregiving for children and aging parents, or shifting consumer and business transactions based on climate impact.”

Brian Devaney

The large language model hype will shift from early excitement to practical applications. ChatGPT has shown that there's enormous potential for this technology. But, in 2023, hype will separate from reality, and we'll see more clearly what's truly unique, defensible and value-creating. I'm interested to see the technology woven into vertical and workflow software as a way to both implement and get work done within the software. I'm less excited about the obvious, questionably defensible, applications of the technology for marketing, especially considering the number of horses already in that race.”

Michael Skok

We’re at the very beginning of massive and decades-long expansion beyond the relatively limited current scope and abilities of AI into areas like knowledge representation and reasoning, intelligent natural language processing, automated learning, predictive planning and execution, and software to aid sensing & perception of the real world. These advancements will happen over the course of decades and over time will likely require or be advanced by quantum computing.”

John Pearce

The metrics startups will need to achieve their next financing will be increasingly less well defined - The goal posts will regularly move. The most successful founders will extend their runway well beyond when the experts are telling them."

Cheers to the road ahead!

We are thankful for our robust community of bold founders, business builders, co-investors, limited partners, and Underscore team members for another year to remember.

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