A steady stream of technology investment in the Seattle area continued as 2013 dawned, with Qliance Medical Management, Remitly, Yapta, and Clipboard attracting follow-on funding. The details:
—Qliance Medical Management—a flat-fee primary care provider backed by the likes of Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, and Drew Carey—raised $8.7 million out of a $10.1 million offering to help finance its ongoing expansion.
Cambia Health Solutions, a nonprofit formerly known as The Regence Group, led the funding round, which will help Qliance accelerate its expansion and move to markets outside of Washington.
In October, Qliance announced a clinic at Expedia’s headquarters in Bellevue, set to open this month, bringing its total to six around the region.
—Remitly, the Seattle startup modernizing international money transfers, raised $2.6 million from Trilogy Equity Partnership and existing investors, providing capital to expand beyond its current US-Philippines market focus.
The company, a 2011 Seattle TechStars graduate formerly known as Beamit, raised $2.5 million a year ago. Investors include Founders Co-Op, TomorrowVentures, Bezos Expeditions, and angel investors including Geoff Entress, Sujal Patel, and Chase Franklin.
Remitly pledges to cut out the bureaucracy of international remittances—a $350 billion annual market globally—providing the savings, both in time and cash, to its customers, all while maintaining “bank-level security.” The company says it makes about 1 percent on the exchange rate.
—Airline price-tracker Yapta raised nearly $1.2 million in what a company spokesman describes as a bridge financing to continue operations until another funding round is completed. Here’s the filing. Investors include Voyager Capital, Concur, and Bay Partners. Total investment in the company has reached nearly $15 million. We last checked in with Yapta in July, as new CEO James Filsinger took the helm.
—Clipboard, a Bellevue, WA-based startup for collecting online content, is taking an undisclosed strategic investment from Scientia and will work with the company to develop a product for the education market.
Clipboard, founded in 2011 by former Yahoo and Microsoft research and development leader Gary Flake, had raised $1.5 million from a long list of VCs prior to this funding, which is described as its largest single investment yet.
Cambridge, UK-based Scientia, which makes scheduling tools for higher education and training institutions, sees “immense” potential in this market, says Scientia chairman Baron Steven Bentinck. Clipboard’s “powerful features allow for first-of-a-kind collaboration around research, classwork, projects and more from across the web,” he says in a statement.
As of December, Clipboard hit 100,000 registered users. It launched a private beta in October 2011 and opened the service to the public last May.
There’s no shortage of competitors in this area, and while Clipboard has its unique take online organization—particularly as regards its balance between public and private content—there is clear overlap with features of Pinterest, Evernote, Read It Later, and others.
We profiled Flake and Clipboard last spring.
