Social Leverage Review of H1 2020

This year is a year like no other.  We continue to be living through a global pandemic and debating the efficacy of masks and whether schools should reopen or not, while the Nasdaq hits new all time highs.  Social justice initiatives are in full stride, even as there is rioting in the streets.  And we have a presidential election coming up.  The US - and the world - has been busy, no doubt.

At Social Leverage, we’ve continued to work well together in a distributed environment, which is how we’ve been set up from the beginning.  The lack of travel has made us much more efficient with our work efforts.  In Q1, we spent a significant amount of time with our portfolio companies, helping them navigate through complex issues related to the pandemic.  In Q2, as the world reached a new normal, we were fortunate enough to find three exciting investment opportunities.

We made an investment in Nayya Health.  Nayya is a data platform that uses billions of data points to help their customers personalize health insurance decisions and optimize healthcare journeys. In addition to choosing the optimal insurance plan for each employer and their employees, Nayya also provides employee tools to navigate using insurance from an optimal perspective. You can read more from TechCrunch.

Beyond Pricing acquired Blizzard Internet Marketing’s website design, hosting and booking engine from RedAwning. This acquisition advances the technology roadmap for the company by 12-18 months and allows them the opportunity to immediately sell the new product.

1upHealth was named a “Cool Vendor in Healthcare Interoperability” by Gartner for its FHIR Platform. Gartner says "1upHealth's FHIR Platform is the first true implementation of the ONC's intent for healthcare interoperability."  Earlier in the year when HIMSS, a major industry conference was cancelled due to COVID, 1Up stood up a virtual conference, "Virtual Health Conference" where they hosted Dr. Don Rucker who gave a talk on the  ONC Rules Overview.

Kustomer was recognized by Gartner in the June 2020 Magic Quadrant for Customer Engagement Center.  This recognition helps solidify Kustomer as a key player in the customer engagement space.  Earlier in the year, Kustomer had announced its acquisition of chatbot company Reply.ai.

Robinhood raised $280M of additional capital in the quarter and followed that with a further capital raise of $320M in Q3. The company is now valued at $8.6B.

Stackin raised $12.5 million in a Series B funding in April. Prior to the new round, the company expanded their marketplace offerings to include tax, investing, credit, budgeting and side hustle products aimed at driving increased LTV with their mature subscribers.

ChartIQ and Finsemble have evolved and now live under one brand: Cosaic. This name merges the prefix co- (working together) with mosaic (bringing all the pieces together). The name represents their mission to work with clients and deliver software that solves their most difficult problems.

We’ve added a new Partner to the Social Leverage team, Ross Hoffman.  Ross was an early employee at YouTube, Twitter and Headspace.  He brings a wealth of experience in general business, go to market and specifically business development and partnerships. You can hear a conversation between Ross and Howard that took place almost a year ago. You can see his note on our blog for more details.

Twice weekly now since March, Howard has been doing a podcast called ‘Panic With Friends’ with entrepreneurs and investors.  You can follow along on Spotify or Apple.

We recently held a virtual Fintech Palooza with some of our Fund III Founders. Although the majority of that content is reserved for our LPs, we asked some of the founders their thoughts on working with the Social Leverage team. We’re thrilled by their responses.

Open Roles: Social Leverage companies are continuing to hire great talent. An updated view of the companies that are hiring in our portfolio is visible on our site via AngelList. We’d appreciate help finding terrific candidates.

We continue to thank and celebrate our founders. Our success is truly because of them. We're looking forward to finishing 2020 strong and remain optimistic about the digital economy and the entrepreneurial spirit.  We hope you and your families stay healthy.