Startups are raising seed funds, Paul English’s stealthy travel startup is making acquisitions, and an Israeli startup is setting up headquarters in the Boston area. Read on for more highlights of the past week in local tech.
—Boston-based Spiro announced the launch of its personal sales assistant app and $1.5 million in seed funding from angel investors, including Facebook head of global publisher development Vijay Balan, former Akibia CEO Tom Tucker, Imprivata CEO Omar Hussain, HarbourVest Partners managing director Rob Wadsworth, and Play Bigger Advisors co-founding partner Christopher Lochhead.
Spiro’s app is a virtual personal assistant for sales professionals that makes strategy recommendations based on an analysis of data from Salesforce and the person’s e-mail messages and calendar. The app’s personality can be customized, with options like R-Rated, Surfer Dude, Gossip Girl, and Coach.
—CrowdComfort raised $1.4 million from investors, according to an SEC filing. The Somerville, MA-based company’s software crowdsources building information from occupants to help address comfort, maintenance, and safety issues.
—Boston-based Cybric raised $1.3 million in seed funds from Petrillo Capital and others. The company provides automated software that it says can shrink the time needed to identify and fix cyber vulnerabilities. Its founders are former execs with Yahoo, Actifio, and Sentinel Benefits & Security.
—Cambridge, MA-based startup Eager raised $1 million in seed money from CRV and others, which it will use to advance its online marketplace that allows people who aren’t software experts to find tools they can integrate with their websites. The company was started by former HubSpot employees, according to the Boston Business Journal.
—Blade hasn’t unveiled what its new travel software startup is working on, but it’s already making acquisitions. In a Medium post, Blade Travel said it scooped up San Francisco travel startup HopOn and its staff. HopOn’s software allows users to book everything from hotels and flights to Uber rides and OpenTable reservations.
Blade was co-founded by Kayak co-founder Paul English as a hybrid venture fund and startup space, but recently stopped making new investments in order to focus exclusively on the stealthy travel startup.
—Knowmail, an Israel-born startup that helps professionals manage e-mails via an artificial intelligence messaging engine, has moved its headquarters to the Boston area. The company raised $1.2 million in seed funding earlier this year, according to a press release.
—Last week, we reported an SEC filing that indicated Lexington, MA-based QD Vision had raised $14.7 million from investors. That money was apparently part of a larger $22 million round the company announced this week, which was led by Tsing Capital and BASF Venture Capital. QD Vision makes a type of crystal semiconductor called quantum dots, which can be used in energy-efficient LCD displays for TVs and other consumer devices.
