Author: azeeadmin

Buzzy mega-rounds and high-profile IPOs often dominate headlines. But many of those companies were once early-stage and scrapping to raise a seed round.

Today, Chicago Ventures, a VC firm that often leads seed-stage rounds, announced the close of its third fund — a $63 million vehicle that it’s already put to work.

Chicago Ventures (which is based in Chicago, where else?) has a very specific set of criteria when it looks to back companies. For one, as mentioned, it not only wants to back seed-stage startups, it usually leads those rounds. The firm is targeting 25 investments out of its new fund with an average check size of $1.5 million to $2 million.

As evidence, it has so far backed 11 companies out of this third fund, leading 10 of those rounds. The startups include CognitOps, CoPilot, Forager, Interior Define, NOCD, OneRail, PreFix and Ureeka.

The firm also is focused on investing in companies located out of the traditional hotspots of Silicon Valley and New York. Six of its most recent investments were in Chicago-based startups, two in Austin (where it recently opened an office), one in Orlando, Florida, and one in Los Angeles.

Chicago Ventures prides itself in identifying, and backing, “overlooked” companies. It was founded in 2012 under the premise that enduring companies could be built “anywhere” and not restricted to “a few select area codes.”

“Only a handful of funds consistently lead seed rounds. Tag-along, momentum-based investing is the norm,” the firm said in a statement. “The industry’s attention still converges on industries and geographies with rich histories of innovation. We fill these gaps. We lead seed rounds before it’s obvious, and serve as active, operationally-involved partners during a company’s earliest days. We invest off the coasts.”

Since its inception, the firm’s portfolio companies have raised more than $1.5 billion in follow-on capital. Seventeen of those companies are now valued over $100 million, including Cameo, business software marketplace G2 and logistics software company project44.

Chicago Ventures closed its second fund in 2016 — which included a $60 million main fund and a $6 million sidecar fund. The firm opted not to go the sidecar route this time around. 

In conjunction with the new fund, Chicago Ventures also announced that it has promoted Peter Christman and Lindsay Knight to partner. Christman leads investments in companies rebuilding old-line enterprise workflows and consumer products expanding access to care and financial well-being. Knight leads the firm’s post-investment operations, including talent, business development and functional best practice sharing.

Chicago Ventures has also named Jackie DiMonte to the team as a new partner. DiMonte comes from Hyde Park Venture Partners, where she led early-stage, enterprise investments. An engineer by training, DiMonte is based in Austin, where Chicago Ventures has made 10 investments since 2015.

In 2020, the dollars invested into seed-stage startups in the United States had an up-and-down year that TechCrunch explored in this piece. Also, the pattern of rising seed-check sizes seen in prior years continued, despite the tumultuous business climate.

Tech companies are no stranger to controversy and workplace issues. Over the years, it’s become clear that no company is immune from diversity issues. But it’s the job of those in the diversity, equity and inclusion departments to create and foster environments that are welcoming to all.

Last year, in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, many companies spoke out in support of Black lives and the Black Lives Matter movement. At TechCrunch Sessions: Justice, we’ll examine what some companies said at the time and how those statements align with where they are today.

We’ll also dive in to the myth of the pipeline problem, as well as the idea of imposter syndrome and how companies can help to shift the onus from the person experiencing feelings of doubt to the systems and cultures that perpetuate biases, sexism and racism. We’ll also, of course, talk about each company’s DEI efforts over the years, where progress has been made and where there’s still room for improvement.

To have this conversation, we’ve called on three DEI leaders from Uber, Facebook and Netflix to share their experiences, struggles and wins leading the charge for genuine inclusivity in tech.

Here’s a bit about the three of them:

Bo Young Lee, Uber Chief Diversity Officer

Image Credits: Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch / Getty Images

Lee became Uber’s first-ever chief diversity officer in early 2018. Lee joined about one year after former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his law firm recommended Uber have a chief diversity officer. Holder and his firm were tapped in the aftermath of former Uber engineer Susan Fowler’s allegations of sexual harassment at the company.

At TC Sessions: Justice, I’ll chat with Lee about where Uber is today, as well as how it is doing in its mission to double Black representation in leadership by 2025.

Sandra Altine, VP of Workforce Diversity and Inclusion 

(Photo courtesy of Facebook)

Altine joined Facebook last April after previously serving as the managing director of global diversity and inclusion for investor service Moody’s.

Last year, Facebook committed to having 50% of its workforce be members of underrepresented groups, which includes BIPOC, women, disabled people and veterans. Over the next five years, Facebook also said it’s committed to increasing its Black employee base by 30%; currently 3.8% of its U.S.-based employees are Black.

Wade Davis, VP of Inclusion Strategy for Product

Photo courtesy of Netflix

Davis, who joined Netflix in this role in September 2019, works directly with product leaders at the company to implement inclusive policies and practices into the workplaces. He also works alongside other VPs at Netflix to improve upon diversity and inclusion within the workforce. Prior to joining Netflix, Davis consulted for Google, P&G and others.

Netflix released its first-ever diversity report just this year. Netflix had previously disclosed its data but had yet to make a full report out of it. Netflix did not lay out any concrete goals, but said it’s generally wanting to increase representation by hiring more inclusively and building out its recruiting networks.

Be sure to snag your tickets to TC Sessions: Justice here for just $5 here.

Google Workspace, the company’s productivity platform you’ll forever refer to as G Suite (or even ‘Google Docs’), is launching a large update today that touches everything from your calendar to Google Meet and how you can use Workspace with the Google Assistant.

Image Credits: Google

Indeed, the highlight here is probably that you can now use the Assistant in combination with Google Workspace, allowing you to check your work calendar or send a message to your colleagues. Until now, this feature was available in beta and ever after it goes live, your company’s admins will have to turn on the “Search and Assistant” service. And this is a bit of a slow rollout, too, with this capability now being generally available on mobile but still in beta for smart speakers and displays like Google’s own Nest Hub. Still, it’s been a long time coming, given that Google promised these features a very long time ago now.

The other new feature that will directly influence your day-to-day work is support for recurring out-of-office entries and segmentable working hours, as well as a new event type, Focus Time, to help you minimize distractions. Focus Time is a bit cleverer than the three-hour blocks of time you may block off on your calendar anyway in that limits notifications during those event windows. Google is also launching a new analytics feature that tells you how much time you waste spend in meetings. This isn’t quite as fully featured (and potentially creepy) as Microsoft’s Productivity Score, since it only displays how much time you spend in meetings, but it’s a nice overview of how you spend your days (though you know that already). None of this data is shared with your managers.

For when you go back to an office, Google is also adding location indicators to Workspace so you can share when you will be working from there and when you’ll be working from home.

And talking about meetings, since most of these remain online for the time being, Google is adding a few new features that now allow those of you who use their Google Nest Hub Max to host meetings at home and a laptop to set up their own second-screen experiences. What’s far more important, though, is that when you join a meeting on mobile, Google will now implement a picture-in-picture mode so you can be in that Meet meeting on your phone and still browse the web Gmail and get important work done during that brainstorming session.

Mobile support for background replace is also coming, as well as the addition of Q&As and polls on mobile. Currently, you can only blur your background on mobile.

Image Credits: Google

For frontline workers, Google is adding something it calls Google Workspace Frontline, with new features for this group of users, and it is also making it easier for users to build custom AppSheet apps from Google Sheets and Drive, “so that frontline workers can digitize and streamline their work, whether it’s collecting data in the field, reporting safety risks, or managing customer requests.”

Zeta Global, the marketing technology company founded by David A. Steinberg and former Apple CEO John Sculley, is announcing an additional $222.5 million in new debt financing.

The company has gone down the debt route before — a Series F raised in 2017 combined $115 million funding with $25 million in debt. BofA Securities served as lead arranger and bookrunner for the new financing, with participation from Barclays, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley Senior Funding.

“For this round, we were able to both refinance our debt and add in a large amount of capacity for current operations and future initiatives,” Steinberg (Zeta’s CEO) told me via email. “We were able to work with our syndicate to capture a low interest-rate and take advantage of the strong credit markets.”

The company emphasizes its data-driven approach to marketing, combining companies’ first-party data with artificial intelligence and what it says are more than 2.4 billion customer identifiers. Steinberg said this approach has only become more crucial, with 2020 delivering “a five-year acceleration” as brands face the challenge of “digitally transforming their business structure to be data-centric.”

“Zeta’s capabilities are helping marketers engage customers across the entire digital ecosystem more intelligently and efficiently, with individualized messages, offers, and content by way of our identity-based data and predictive AI,” Steinberg continued. “Our challenge is to continue to keep up with our customers’ needs and maintain our competitive advantage around data and AI.”

The company’s funding announcement notes that previous loans have been used to finance acquisitions and integrations, including commenting platform Disqus and machine learning-powered marketing platform Boomtrain. Asked whether this new debt will also be used for acquisitions, Steinberg said the company continues to “organically innovate,” with a focus on its customer data platform and connected TV capabilities.

The impending Coinbase direct listing is a fintech debut to watch. The cryptocurrency-focused consumer trading concern is set to become a public company on the back of a strong 2020, and a particularly strong final quarter.

And it appears that the company is also having a strong kickoff in 2021. What Coinbase is worth is therefore hard to guess, though some are trying, as we’ve noticed.

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But Coinbase is hardly the only company enjoying a crypto bounce: Robinhood, another American consumer fintech we’ve spent too much time discussing in recent weeks, is also riding a wave in its users’ cryptocurrency activity.

Between both companies, we’re seeing signs of the sort of growing consumer interest and trading volume that has historically come with sustained periods of bitcoin price expansion. But Coinbase charges fees for trading, while Robinhood doesn’t. And transaction fee-based incomes are the vast majority of Coinbase’s revenues — 96% in calendar 2020, for example.

The situation sets up an interesting contrast.

This morning, let’s see what we can learn about Coinbase’s recent trading volume before looking into Robinhood’s. And finally, we’ll remind ourselves of how Coinbase talked about Robinhood in its S-1 filing. Is Robinhood crypto a possible threat to Coinbase’s consumer trading volumes? Let’s tinker.

An argument called forever

Kicking off with Coinbase, The Block’s Frank Chaparro got us thinking this morning by tweeting the following chart:

You can see why the chart caught our eye. Now, we can’t reproduce the same chart on CryptoCompare, as the tool required sits behind a locked door. But we can, however, leverage other services to confirm the gist of the image.

Other data agrees: historical trading information via Nomics shows a steep rise in 2021 bitcoin trading on Coinbase Pro, a piece of the larger Coinbase empire. And Bitcoinity shows similar gains for Coinbase trading volumes over the same time period.

Chaparro is correct that the data paints a compelling Q1 2021 revenue story for Coinbase. But it’s not the only company that is seeing crypto demand spike.

Instagram today announced it’s adding a much-requested feature to its app with the launch of “Live Rooms,” which allow up to four people to broadcast live together at the same time. Previously, the app only allowed users to live stream with one other person, similar to Facebook Live. The company says it hopes Live Rooms will open up more creative opportunities in terms of live broadcast formats to allow for things like live talk shows, expanded Q&A’s or interviews, jam sessions for musicians, live shopping experiences, and more.

In addition to the ability to live stream with more people, Instagram also touts how the new feature can help creators to make more money. Last year, in the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, Instagram introduced badges as a way for fans to support their favorite creators during a live video. Once purchased, the badges appear next to a fan’s name throughout the live video, helping them to stand out in the comments and unlock other special features, like placement on the creator’s list of badge holders and access to a special heart.

Badges became more broadly available last fall, at three price points: $0.99, $1.99, or $4.99.

With Live Rooms, fans can buy badges to support the hosts (one badge per person) as well as use other interactive features like Shopping and Live Fundraisers. The company says it’s also now developing other tools, like moderator controls and audio features that will roll out in the months to come.

To start a Live Room, you’ll swipe left and select the Live camera option, then title the Room and tap the Room icon to add guests. Here, you’ll see a list of people who’ve already requested to go live with you and you’ll be able to search for other guests to add.

Image Credits: Instagram

When you start the Live Room, you’ll remain at the top of the screen while guests are added. The guests can be added all at once or individually, depending on your preference. This allows for opportunities to add “surprise guests” to live streams to keep fans engaged.

The ability to add more guests to a live stream can also help a creator grow their follower base, as all the guests’ followers are notified about the Live Room, in addition to your own.

For safety reasons, any person that’s been blocked by any of the Live Room participants will not have access to join the live stream. Plus, any guests who have previously had their live access revoked due to violations of Instagram’s Community Guidelines won’t be able to join any Live Rooms.

During live broadcasts, the hosts can also report and block comments and use comment filters to maintain a safer experience for all viewers.

Live broadcasts became an increasingly important way for creators, business owners and brands to stay connected with followers during the pandemic, which shut down in-person live events, including concerts, shows, classes, conferences, meetups, and more. Instagram reported a 70% increase in Live views from February to March, for instance, as creators and businesses shifted their work online.

Image Credits: Instagram

As the pandemic wore on throughout 2020 and into 2021, the lack of in-person connection has allowed for other opportunities and even new social networks to grow. Live audio platform Clubhouse, for example, has seen rapid adoption, particularly by the tech and creative crowds, who today use the app to tune into live shows, chat sessions, and even big-name interviews. Twitter is now building a rival, and reportedly, so is Facebook.

But while Clubhouse offers a very different experience, it still operates in the same broader space of allowing fans to connect with high-profile individuals of some sort — entrepreneurs and founders, celebrities, market experts, thought leaders, influencers, and so on. And because users’ time is limited, seeing this type of activity shift to non-Facebook owned platforms is likely of concern to Instagram and its parent.

Meanwhile, in the live video broadcasting space, Instagram today faces a number of competitors, from those focused on a particular niche — like game streaming site Twitch, live shopping apps, and more— as well as general purpose live platforms offered by YouTube and TikTok. (The latter was spotted offering a four-up live stream format just last month, in fact.)

Instagram says Live Rooms are rolling out now to both iOS and Android to all global markets. The company expects the rollout to reach 100% of its user base within the week.

The European Commission has said it will present a legislative plan later this month for what it’s calling a “digital green pass” — aka a digital certificate — which it says will be aimed at facilitating cross-border travel in the age of coronavirus.

President Ursula von der Leyen said today that the planned digital tool will aim to provide proof that a person has been vaccination — but not just that; the ‘digital green pass’ will also display the results of tests, i.e. for those who have been unable to get a vaccine yet, along with information on “COVID-19 recovery”.

“It will respect data protection, security and privacy,” von der Leyen added in a couple of tweets.

“The Digital Green Pass should facilitate Europeans’ lives,” she also said. “The aim is to gradually enable them to move safely in the European Union or abroad — for work or tourism.”

The Commission will release details of the legislative plan on March 17, per Reuters.

The EU’s executive is keen for a pan-EU system to be set up to avoid fragmentation of the bloc’s single market — such as if individual Member States strike their own bilateral deals. Or to avoid a third party commercial system gaining ground (earlier this year a number of tech companies announced they were working to establish a ‘universal’ standard for vaccine status).

The Commission is being careful to avoid calling the digital pass a ‘vaccine passport’ — as the notion of limiting people’s freedoms based on (still very) limited access to vaccines raises the ugly spectre of discrimination.

At the same time the EU executive is clearly feeling pressure to help Member States — such as Greece and Spain — whose economies rely heavily on cross-border tourism. And back in January it said a common approach for mutual recognition of vaccine documentation is of the “utmost importance”.

A pan-EU digital certification for displaying vaccine and COVID-19 test result status is the solution it’s settled on. Although it does not appear that use of the digital pass will be mandatory.

The Commission declined to go into further detail when contacted for comment and during a press briefing today when it was asked for more details about the digital pass plan.

Another question is how quickly the planned digital certificate system could be got up and running. With the prospect of summer vacations now just a few months out the Commission will be under pressure to work quickly. At the same time — per Reuters — the Commission wants to cooperate with international organization to ensure the system works outside the EU, too.

Last month Apple said it was tightening up the iOS review process around vaccines passes — saying developers would now be required to work with entities recognized by public health authorities or companies associated with them prior to submitting such an app. The BBC reported that Apple had made the change “to ensure these apps responsibly handle sensitive data and provide reliable functionality”.

Last year a number of European privacy experts mobilized to devise a decentralized privacy-safe standard for another coronavirus-related digital tool: Bluetooth-powered contact-tracing apps to estimate COVID-19 exposure risk. Although some Member States (like France) opted for a centralized system — despite Apple and Google choosing to support only decentralized apps for contact-tracing.

Early Stage is the premiere ‘how-to’ event for startup entrepreneurs and investors. You’ll hear first-hand how some of the most successful founders and VCs build their businesses, raise money and manage their portfolios. We’ll cover every aspect of company-building: Fundraising, recruiting, sales, legal, PR, marketing and brand building. Each session also has audience participation built-in – there’s ample time included in each for audience questions and discussion.

Tonal, maker of the smart home fitness trainer, announced it is more than tripling the number of physical locations it sells devices in through a new partnership with Nordstrom.

Starting this month, Tonal will have 50-square-foot stations in the women’s activewear departments of at least 40 Nordstrom locations across the U.S., bringing the total number of Tonal physical locations to 60 by the end of 2021. Shoppers will be able to walk in or book appointments to try Tonal devices and purchase them through employees on-hand.

“As we looked to expand our retail footprint and strategy, we looked to the retail landscape, and we really feel like Nordstrom says ‘best-in-class’ — the department store is well-suited to succeed in a COVID and post-COVID world,” explained Christopher Stadler, Tonal’s CMO.

Tonal, which manufactures a wall-mounted device with a digital weight system that emulates various traditional gym stations, already operates 16 locations across the country with devices shoppers can try and work out to, with plans to open four additional showrooms later this year. But the partnership with Nordstrom, which expects overall sales growth of 25% in 2021, marks a first-of-its-kind for at-home fitness makers. Peloton, for instance, operates a larger network of dedicated showrooms in the U.S., Canada, Germany and the UK, but it has yet to partner with an outside retailer to display and demo its bikes and treadmills.

Tonal’s physical expansion arrives amid a boom in demand for at-home equipment during the pandemic. According to Stadler, sales of Tonal equipment surged 800% from December 2019 to December 2020, causing 10-12 week wait times for deliveries. Those delays are somewhat comparable to Peloton, which has also faced significant delivery wait times in recent months and currently reports 6-10 week delays — an issue Peloton CEO John Foley acknowledged and apologized for in a note to users.

Tonal, for its part, is working to address shipment delays. According to Stadler, the startup has significantly ramped up production of devices, increased employee headcount, and in some cases, now air-ships equipment from Taiwan to the U.S. to meet demand.

“We have seen extraordinary demand for Tonal, and we’re working aggressively around the clock to produce, deliver and install Tonals faster and faster,” says Stadler. “We’ve absolutely ramped up production, and all facets of the organization are rallying to deliver our customer orders as quickly as we can.”

Few things are more personal than a keyboard and yet they are often overlooked by Work From Home guides. Why use the standard issue keyboard when there are so many options available? This is a sampling of some of the keyboards used by TechCrunch’s editorial staff. Some are boring, some are for different languages, and each one is kind of dirty.

Excuse the dust, grim, and general dirtiness of the following. Keyboards are gross and hard to clean and we did the best we could getting our keyboards photo-ready. I used two cans of air on my keyboard and it still looks like a toy in a preschool sandbox.

Please note this post is not sponsored and TechCrunch does not earn anything from keyboard sales. We just want to show off our gear.

Danny Crichton

Image Credits: Danny Crichton / Danny Crichton

Working across borders is hard — working across languages is even harder. So getting a foreign language keyboard (mine is Korean) has been a godsend, if only because after two decades of using a computer, I still peck at a keyboard like I don’t know the location of the keys.

Now, should you get a foreign language keyboard? Good god no. Certainly don’t buy it overseas like I originally did when I was a foreign correspondent in Seoul, since apparently warranties don’t transfer globally. Also, the E key finally busted on my last “space white” keyboard (unfortunately, E is about as common in English as ㄷ/ㄸ is in Korean so that key gets a lot of abuse), and let’s just say the world is not designed to special order individual keys in a foreign language in the United States.

So I bought a new space grey keyboard. And then Apple said they couldn’t find a replacement Korean keyboard E key in white, so they gave me a free keyboard because Apple is nice. So now I have two space grey Korean keyboards, one on my desk and one sitting in storage for when I invariably destroy the one I’m typing this on. Don’t buy a foreign language keyboard. Actually, don’t buy a keyboard at all. Certainly don’t be a writer. Just yell in a Clubhouse room and let’s move to the next, post-text century.

Devin Coldeway

Image Credits: Devin Coldeway

I just acquired this Varmilo V87M tenkeyless with PBT keycaps and Cherry Red switches. It’s got a great solid feel and is very comfortable to type on, and has a deeper sound than some more clacky keyboards I’ve used. But I don’t like the placement of the media keys.

Before this I had an all-black Ducky One with side-printed key labels, which I much prefer. But I ordered it with Cherry Black switches, which it turns out are uncomfortable for me to use – they take a bit more force and have a sort of “bump” in the middle, and my body didn’t like it. I did, however, like the DIY feel of adjusting the dipswitches and programming the media keys in as well, though I totally get it’s not for everyone.

I wish that I could combine the feel and build of the Varmilo with the keycaps and customizability of the Ducky and the media controls of the Das Keyboard 4, with its lovely volume wheel. But I’m tempted by non-Cherry switches now that their patents have expired and the market is wide open. Someone send me one of those little switch samplers!

Romain Dillet

Image Credits: Romain Dillet

Here’s my boring Apple keyboard. It’s a French keyboard so it’s going to look all weird if you’ve used QWERTY keyboards your entire life. It works, it’s reliable and I can type for hours and hours… The most important part is that I don’t think about it so I can just focus on what I’m writing.

Lucas Matney

Image Credits: Lucas Matney

The fact that Apple charges $149 for its wireless space grey Magic Keyboard when the silver variant goes for $129 might seem like an oddity for a company worth $2.2 trillion, but maybe the fact that they have suckered a rube like myself into paying an extra $20 for a dark grey colorway is the reason they have achieved such ridiculous success.

In recent years, Apple has opted to stay conservative with the entry prices for some of their hardware but they have also begun jacking up the prices of accessories for those devices. My desire to have an external keyboard that matched all of my other tech stuff says more about me than it does Apple, but come on Tim, do you really need that extra $20 from me?

Darrell Etherington

Image Credits: Darrell Etherington / Darrell Etherington

Taylor Hatmaker

I bought this keyboard when I built my new PC last month. I generally use an Apple keyboard for work and mostly game with a PS4 controller so I hadn’t used it much. But a few weeks ago I spilled coffee on my main keyboard for the first time in my life. I tried to used a Logitech K380 I have as a substitute but even though it’s pretty new a few of its keys squeak which makes me feel crazy.

Now I’ve subbed in my admittedly beautiful rainbow machine the Cooler Master SK622 as my day to day keyboard. It’s my first mechanical keyboard! I went with blue switches because I don’t like the feel of the red ones, but it is a bit hard to get used to the noise. Ideally I’d probably prefer brown switches! It feels pretty good though, even for someone (me) who types pretty fast but in a very wacky way because I never learned to do it the right way. Maybe it’s time for Mario Teaches Typing after all.

Natasha Lomas

There’s not much to say about the tool of my trade – except that it could do with a good clean. The white is definitely not as crisp as Apple would like at this point. The lettering on the ‘S’ key has also worn a bit for some reason. Other than that I’ve no complaints. I had to stop relying on the MBP laptop keyboard because it’s so faulty (sticky ‘B’ and ‘N’ keys which either don’t type or double type in faulty keyboard roulette). I like the Magic keyboard’s compact size. The battery also lasts a decent amount of time before you have to go hunting for overpriced Apple dongles in order to juice it back up.

I have one complaint: The Bluetooth connection seems to go a bit funky after a while because hitting CAPS Lock can fire up the MBP’s spinning wheel ‘o death for no good reason. Switching the keyboard’s Bluetooth off and back on and again seems to restore order.

Matt Burns

Image Credits: Matt Burns

This is the Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional 2 with a partial set of custom keycaps. Yes, long name for a small keyboard. It’s not perfect and yet I love it. Don’t worry. It still has a number pad and media controls. These are accessed through a function key (the heart).

The Happy Hacking Keyboard has a longer history than most, originally designed for Unix programmers. For me, the small size is perfect for just typing, and the keys feel lovely thanks to its novel switches. This keyboard uses Topre capacitive key switches, which combine the feel of a mechanical switch with the responsiveness of a membrane-based keyboard. The result are resounding clicks and clacks, and keys that are resistant at the top and easy at the bottom. 

There are several newer versions of this keyboard with wireless connectivity and quieter key switches.

Atlanta startups can now add another name to their rolodexes of venture firms operating out of the Big Peach with the close of Silicon Road Ventures new $31 million fund.

Silicon Road invests across the U.S. from its base in Atlanta, the firm said with a focus on e-commerce, retail, and consumer packaged goods.

The firm said it’s focused on in-store retail and technology for shoppers, the multi-channel commerce world, supply chain and logistics technologies and financial technologies and payments.

Founded two years ago, the fund invested in ten startups over the course of 2020 and is targeting another twenty for its first fund.

The firm hopes that entrepreneurs find its “corporate connect” program to be a key differentiator, which relies on founder and managing partner Sid Mookerji’s experience in e-commerce, retail and consumer packaged goods to link corporations to relevant startups and research, according to a statement.

Silicon Road is already working with the upstart retail chain Citizen Supply, which provides a highly curated marketplace to showcase new consumer brands.

Mookerji previously founded Software Paradigms International Group, which was one of the first retail IT companies offering a suite of products designed to optimize omni-channel strategies. The company’s clients included Macy’s, Walmart, Carrefour, and NAPA.

Joining Mookerji is managing director and partner, Ross Kimbel, a former co-founder of Be Curious Partners and a global director of innovation and entrepreneurship at The Coca-Cola Company. curated engagements between portfolio companies and major retailers and brands.

The company’s current portfolio includes: Perch, Toucan AI, WeStock, SoftWear Automation, Patron, Pull Logic, Turn, SymTrain, Everyware, and Wripple.