AlleyCorp: 2022 in Review
A look back at AlleyCorp's most active year
Note from Kevin
2022 was the most active year in AlleyCorp’s history: we doubled the pace of our incubations, roughly doubled our dollars invested over 2021, significantly increased our number of investments, and added over 50 new team members across our business and engineering teams. In a challenging year for companies and financial markets globally, we doubled down when many were pulling back because we know that now is the time to capture the value creation that will define the next ten years.
We also dedicated much of our time to helping our existing portfolio companies navigate a difficult macro environment. On the whole, we’re impressed by the resilience of our founders and teams, who have demonstrated great leadership as they ensure their businesses are healthy, stable, and well-capitalized to withstand the current headwinds.
By now, it’s been said many times that downturns spur innovation. We started MongoDB in the middle of the Global Financial Crisis. At that time, very few enterprise software companies had been founded in NYC.
The difference today is that NYC has matured into the most exciting city for startups and entrepreneurs and is attracting the best human talent in the world.
In the next decade, NYC will produce a wave of category-defining technology companies across myriad industries –– many of which have always been rooted here, like finance, media, and entertainment. The recent influx of West Coast investors says it all: tech’s center of gravity is shifting.
In a testament to our commitment and belief in this, we made a landmark purchase this year of a 47,000 square foot building on Mott Street in Soho. AlleyCorp’s new campus will be a home not just for us but for all of NYC tech, with founders, startups, VCs, and others in the community based there, a noteworthy restaurant, and a robust calendar of events.
Many are wondering how long this period will last. In the near term, we don’t expect much to change dramatically. However, the venture ecosystem works best long-term when it’s balanced, and a market with reasonable valuations is ultimately more favorable for companies than the down rounds and layoffs that follow runaway growth. It’s a phenomenal time to build.
We enter 2023 with our foot on the gas –– optimistic, energized, and with an extraordinary team to lead AlleyCorp into this next phase of growth.
Q4 Team Expansion
2022 was another year of substantial growth for the AlleyCorp team. We welcomed 16 new team members at AlleyCorp HQ, formally announced our Impact vertical and Robotics strategy through our investment in Alley Robotics Ventures, expanded our engineering team with the launch of AlleyCorp Sur in Bogota, and launched our search firm, AlleySearch. We’re excited to introduce the newest members of our team that joined in Q4:
Bill Georges joined as a healthcare Partner. Formerly the Chief Strategy Officer at Horizon Blue Cross, Bill brings two decades of payer experience across corporate venture, product, and strategy, and will offer invaluable leadership as portfolio companies navigate this pivotal pathway to growth.
Catherine Diffley is our new Director of Platform. As a platform leader, former founder, and seasoned operator, Catherine is uniquely positioned to lead AlleyCorp’s portfolio success, marketing, communications, and network development during this exciting growth juncture.
David Rosenthal, MD, came onboard as a healthcare Venture Partner. David is Assistant Professor in General Internal Medicine at Yale School of Medicine and former Chief Medical Officer at 4Catalyzer. David brings deep expertise in the area of Software as a Medical Device, as well as developing and scaling tech-enabled services for vulnerable populations.
Michelle Guengue formally joined the team as Office Manager, leading day-to-day operations at AlleyCorp HQ. Prior to joining AlleyCorp, Michelle managed HQs at Vewd Software and Mosaic Sales Solutions.
New Investments
EnCharge AI, which delivers a battle-tested computing platform to unlock the best AI possible, emerged from stealth with $21.7 million in Series A funding led by Anzu Partners, with participation from AlleyCorp, Scout Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and others.
Silvertree is a wellness wearable platform that provides the right balance of safety, connection, and style for active older adults. AlleyCorp participated in their seed round alongside RRE Ventures.
Kiip, a document management platform for at-risk and underserved populations, raised a seed round, which was co-lead by AlleyCorp Impact.
Dandi Technologies, the analytics platform for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace, emerged from stealth and announced $3.7M in seed funding led by Springbank and AlleyCorp Impact.
Alley Robotics Ventures led the Series A round for ARIX Technologies, which provides faster, safer, and cheaper corrosion risk management through robotic inspection services and advanced data analytics. Benson Capital Partners, Contour Ventures, Evok, and NGIF also participated in the round.
Earth Force Technologies supports fire-safe communities by reinventing vegetation management and generating safe, high-productivity jobs in the forestry industry. Alley Robotics Ventures co-lead their Seed round alongside Bold Capital Partners and Third Sphere.
From our General Partners
Marshall Porter, General Tech
Our General Tech team has had an incredibly prolific year: we made 25 investments in new companies and honed our focus to a few areas where we see compelling opportunity and have deep expertise as a team: marketplaces, nanotechnology and materials science, and enterprise software.
With this increased focus, we welcomed two Associates to the team: Joseph Krause, who specializes in nanotechnology and materials science and is simultaneously pursuing his PhD in nanotechnology at Rice University, and Grace Fish, who previously worked with us as a Venture Fellow and joined full-time after finishing her MBA at Stanford. We also promoted two of our longtime team members to Partner: Susannah Shipton, who is deepening her focus on marketplaces, and Jorge Colindres, who continues to lead on enterprise software investments.
In tandem with our growth on the investing side, we continue to found new companies in each of our focus areas. With our bottoms-up approach to identifying pains from the consumer and operator perspective, we’re excited to launch new companies in 2023 around the areas of global eCommerce, API management, and connectivity in scientific research. With those incubations in stealth mode (to be announced in Q1), we’re navigating the search for talent, fundraising environment, and go-to-market landscape alongside the new founders we welcome to the portfolio. In addition, the team is currently deep in diligence and discovery for several other potential incubations in partnership with leading domain experts.
We’re starting 2023 energized, excited, and more focused than ever with an incredible and experienced team in place to do what we love most: help our founders build and win.
Brenton Fargnoli, MD, Healthcare
2022 was another banner year for AlleyCorp Healthcare across investments and incubations, new partnerships, and team growth. Through it all, we are creating an ecosystem that honors patients and practitioners, and breaks through healthcare’s iron triangle (quality, cost, and access).
We had our most productive year yet, investing 1.5x more capital in 2022 than 2021. Despite the turbulent markets, we supported our existing healthcare portfolio in raising nearly $500M this past year. And we significantly expanded our healthcare portfolio with 15 new investments and 6 new incubations. Along with Jeff De Flavio, MD, we launched incubations across a variety of domains, including geriatric psychiatry, neurology digital biomarkers, financial wellness for clinicians, cardiac care, social determinants of health, and value-based care infrastructure.
We also announced two big platform partnerships. First, ascribing to the philosophy that people are everything, we announced our partnership with Soul Search to support our digital health portfolio and incubations in recruiting top executive talent. Second, in recognition of NYC’s emergence as the digital health capital and our commitment to supporting this ecosystem, we launched Digital Health New York (DHNY) with Bunny Ellerin, dubbed New York’s “most connected person in healthcare.” DHNY kicked off with a spectacular full-day summit at The Edge Hudson Yards and Zero Bond. The 2023 DHNY Summit is slated for September 21st!
On the team front, we welcomed two industry leaders as new Partners to provide key guidance and leadership on payer strategy, Bill Georges, and talent, Michelle Garland. We also welcomed two new Venture Partners, David Rosenthal, MD, previously Chief Medical Officer at 4Catalyzer, and Sven Karlsson, co-founder of PlateletBio. With these additions, AlleyCorp’s dedicated healthcare team now stands at ten, all of whom have been operators and half are physicians. We’re energized to start 2023 with such an exceptional team and group of entrepreneurs, who bring a diversity of healthcare expertise and backgrounds.
New Healthcare Incubations
Chamber empowers cardiology practices to operate in value-based agreements by ensuring they are compensated for delivering the right care at the right time, leveraging technology that enables comprehensive patient care and unlocks new revenue streams for practices.
EnSage Health powers accessible geriatric psychiatry and behavioral care management services for patients, caregivers, and clinicians to significantly improve the quality of life for older adults with combined psychiatric and medical conditions.
SynapseBio uses machine learning and EEG to improve detection and treatment of dementia and other neuropsychiatric disorders.
As a healthcare analytics company, Auxa Health orchestrates supplemental and other public benefits to optimize utilization, management, and the ROI of social care investments.
Conduce
Conduce is building infrastructure enabling value-based multi-specialty care. More information to be shared soon.
Attend is a financial wellness platform designed to meet the unique needs of physicians, who take on tremendous amounts of educational debt, face delayed wealth creation, and are forced to purchase obtuse, confusing insurance products unique to their trade.
Tanya Beja, Social Impact
It’s been an exciting first year of building AlleyCorp Impact. Since we announced our launch earlier this year, we’ve supported nine organizations across education, the future of work, and social justice. The common thread in our investments and grants is the deliberate build of products and services that meaningfully impact low-income families or that contribute to the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We’re proud to be investors in companies like Patch Caregiving, which delivers emergency childcare to hourly-working parents, and Upwage, which leverages AI and big data to connect the 44% of Americans making less than $16/hr directly with employers raising wages.
Supporting the growth of the Impact ecosystem at large continues to be a primary focus for us as well. We joined leading philanthropic organizations in supporting the EdTech Tools Competition, which awards more than $4M to tech-enabled solutions that support learning outcomes. We are also proud to support the collaboration and sharing of tech-enabled tools in the reproductive justice space. We look forward to building on our momentum in 2023 as we continue to identify the most promising technology solutions for underserved communities in New York and beyond.
Abe Murray, Alley Robotics Ventures
It’s been a terrific first year for Alley Robotics Ventures (ARV). We announced our $30M fund in Q1, saw over 250 early-stage robotics and automation companies, made six investments, hosted our first ecosystem event in NYC, and even had our first portfolio markup –– all within our first year!
With the requirement to deliver enough value to cover the CapEx demands of any robotics business, every company we invested in this year is aiming at a problem that urgently matters. We’re proud to invest in companies like Mapless AI, enabling the future of mobility through driverless vehicles (read more about their first pilots deployed at airports this year), and Civ Robotics, revolutionizing land surveying for civil engineering and infrastructure projects with CivDot, their autonomous surveying solution.
As we look ahead, ARV plans to keep up the pace in 2023 as we continue to invest in the cresting wave that is robotics and automation. We plan to add more team members as we lead pre-seed and seed rounds into companies tackling the labor challenges and big problems of the future.
Portfolio News
OMNY Health, a provider of compliant data and platform solutions for connecting healthcare stakeholders, announced $17M in Series B funding led by Chicago Pacific Founders.
Relay Commerce, an e-commerce software holding company that stewards founder-led businesses through the next phase of growth, raised $27 million to fuel more acquisitions of e-commerce software businesses.
Everphone, the Berlin-based phone-as-a-service company, raised $32 million led by Cadence Growth Capital (CGC) to continue to expand globally, develop its products, and increase the number of devices in service.
Quinio, which acquires, operates, and builds consumer packaged e-commerce brands across Latin America, announced $40 million in new financing led by Northgate Capital.
Aescape, which is building fully-automated, data-driven massage therapy experiences, announced $30 million in Series A funding led by Valor Siren Ventures and Valor Equity Partners, with participation from Alley Robotics Ventures and Fifth Wall.