Investor Newsletter H2 2022
March 23, 2023
Welcome to our H2 Investor Newsletter edition for the second half of 2022. This Newsletter will present an update on the investment activity of the Wesley Clover Global Ecosystem of Technology companies as well as updates on the expansion of New Funds, LP participation opportunities of the Alacrity Global program and what trends we are watching in technology, investment, and policy.
In this Edition:
- Leadership Article
- Our Latest Watch List
- Portfolio Investment Highlights
- New Initiatives
- Investment Spotlight
- Alacrity Entrepreneurship News
- Upcoming Events
Emend Vision Fund I
Major industries are under immense pressure to reduce their environmental impact. From agriculture to energy, transportation to construction, businesses across all sectors must adapt to the changing climate to stay viable. Doing so is also fiscally responsible. That’s why we created the Emend Vision Fund. Emend is an early stage venture fund that invests in companies with sustainable business practices and solutions that reduce carbon footprints, offer measurable and scalable GHG emissions and are globally competitive. The shift in industrial transformation is the largest venture opportunity of our generation. Our mission is to help heal the planet by investing in companies that tackle serious challenges and that will generate strong investment returns. The Emend team has a ten year track record of working together, earning top quartile fund results and building companies that are valued in excess of $1B.
Click the link below to read the full article.
Richard Egli
General Partner
Our Watch List
- Cyber Security: HYAS – How Can Disrupting DNS Communications Thwart a Malware Attack?
- 5G: Streetwave: – When is 5G Coming to My Area
- Cleantech: EmendFund – How One Visionary is Using AI to Safeguard Water in a Thirsty World
- Unified Communications: Martello – Better ROI on Your Microsoft Teams Rooms Investment
Wesley Clover & Alacrity Content
Content for global investor, entrepreneur, and partner audiences.
Wesley Clover issues updates on the portfolio each Quarter on Technology,
Hospitality and Real Estate business.
Find information related to Alacrity Funds, Hubs, and Companies.
Portfolio Investment Highlights:
The Alacrity Global Ecosystem has had 2 exits in 2022. The cumulative funds raised for this year have been over $50M USD. The tech verticals of Exits were in EdTech, and Mobile Payments. The second half of 2022 attracted early-stage investment of 1.8M and late-stage company Certn expands further through international acquisition. You can follow the links below for details:
- L-Spark Portfolio Raises: Fictionary CAD $1.8 million
- Alacrity Canada Portfolio Company Certn Acquires Australian Firm Intercheck.
5 initiatives we are working on this year are:
- New Alacrity Funds & Accelerators under development: UAE, ASEAN, India, and South America.
- Attract LPS for Alacrity Funds (France, Canada and Turkey).
- Support the acceleration of Pre-seed companies to investible revenue levels.
- Enhance engagement with Global Investor and Industry Analyst community via briefings and informative content.
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Deal Book: Investment Spotlight
Over the next 8-12 months we are anticipating further Early-Stage Investment attraction specifically in the area of IoT, HealthCare IT, FinTech, Management Software, HRTech, MarTech and Security & Monitoring. Companies have continued to grow in 2022 and are looking to accelerate global growth further. We have 9 companies looking to raise funds over the next 6-8 months. Find the investment profile details below:
CustomsBridge
Website: https://customsbridge.fr/
Location: Lille, France
Investment Timeline: 2023
Active Users: 200+
Funding Target: Seed, €400K
Targets: BA, VC
CustomsBridge is a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution that leverages new technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence, to support all the actors involved in international trade with their customs-related challenges. The platform aims to simplify and enhance the efficiency of customs clearance operations, particularly by providing assistance with customs classification. The objective is to make customs more understandable and accessible to everyone by offering a centralized tool that contains all the required regulatory information.
Current Investors: Founders, Alacrité France, Debt
Strategic Customers: Bolloré Transports & Logistics, CMP Paris, Descours & Cabaud, Clasquin, Brico Dépôt, Area Consulting, Castorama, Gigamedia, SMCP
Cliniconex
Website: https://cliniconex.com/
Industry/Vertical: Healthcare Technology, Ambulatory & Long-Term Care.
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: 2023
Estimated ARR CAD: 4 Million+
Funding Target: Series A, $10 Million
Targets: VC and Corporate Venture
Serving medical professionals, patients, and their families Cliniconex is one of North America’s fastest-growing healthcare engagement solutions with an accelerated increase in year over year growth for the last three years. Our solution coordinates the exchange of information and communications from more than 5,000 medical professionals and 1,600 senior care providers, to trigger more than 800,000 meaningful engagements each month.
The Cliniconex software provides a host of services that automate repetitive tasks so staff can focus on caring for patients and/or residents. Digital transformation in healthcare is growing rapidly with national health spending projected to reach $6.2 trillion by 2028* in the U.S. alone. Cliniconex is seeking capital to accelerate expansion: 1) within existing strategic partnerships, 2) to adjacent senior care segments in new markets through product extension.
Current Investors: Angels and Strategic Investors.
Strategic Partners/Customers: PointClickCare, Loblaws, Telus Health
Teldio
Website: https://teldio.com/
Industry/Vertical: B2B, SaaS, Workflow Automation
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: 2023
Estimated ARR CAD: $2.5 Million+
Funding Target: Series A, $6 Million+
Investor Targets: VC and Corporate Venture
Teldio enables enterprises to quickly and cost-effectively integrate systems that power their business. The company’s platform automates routine tasks and improves operations using workflows that connect these systems, in the cloud or on-premise, resulting in dramatic productivity improvements.
Current Investors: VC, Corporate, Angel
Strategic Customers: Amazon, Pfizer, Marriott, P&G, 3M, GE, Nissan, Cargill, Tyson Foods, NYSE, Honda, SpaceX
thinkRF
Website: https://thinkrf.com/
Industry/Vertical: Security & Monitor, Software-defined spectrum analysis platform
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: 2023
Estimated Annual Revenue CAD: $2.7 Million+
Funding Target: Pre-Series, $6 Million+
Investor Targets: Institutional Angels, Angels
Wireless spectrum is a scarce and expensive resource. Wireless operators in Canada paid $3.5 billion for spectrum licenses in 2019. These operators have little actionable intelligence about what spectrum to license and where to license it. These challenges are worsened by the complexity of next generation 5G deployments.
ThinkRF built its reputation designing and selling highly accurate low-cost spectrum analyzers delivering capacity of 8kHz to 45GHz, these ranges of network are extremely important to wireless networked sensors in the world of 5G. ThinkRF is currently working with leading Operators to instrument cities around the world, collecting data about what is happening in the spectrum, and using AI to create actionable intelligence. ThinkRF sells multi-year subscriptions to these insights to operators and regulators. To further develop this offering, ThinkRF is seeking $3M in the short term to bridge to a larger VC round later this year. Having grown revenues 3x last year, the plan will be to go public in five years with over $100M in ARR.
Current Investors: VC, Corporate, Angel, Institutional Angel
Thrive
Website: https://thrivemycareer.com/
Industry/Vertical: HRTech, Career Management
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: 2023
Estimated Annual Revenue CAD: $2.4 Million+
Funding Target: Series A, $10 Million
Investor Targets: VC and Corporate Venture
Thrive Career Wellness platform is an enterprise career marketplace built to help any individual advance their career. Employers deposit dollars into the platform which individuals can use to access over 70+ services in our integrated marketplace. Thrive is used by employers for career transition, internal redeployment, and career management. Thrive is growing over 100% Year over Year and has customers in eight different countries around the world. Thrive is seeking capital to increase investment in enterprise customer requirements while growing and building direct sales and customer service teams across active geographies.
Current Investors: Angels, Institutional Angels, VC
Strategic Customers: Walmart, Scotiabank, Lowes Canada
Validient
Website: https://validient.com/
Industry/Vertical: LegalTech, Compliance Management, Customer Engagement
Location: Newport, United Kingdom
Investment Timeline: 2023
Active Users: 1
Funding Target: Seed, £750k
Investor Targets: Angels, VC
Validient is a digital client onboarding and compliance management system built for the regulated industries. Validient provides a complete onboarding process for clients which includes KYB, KYC, AML, and PEP checks. Validient extends further to streamline internal processes such as ongoing monitoring of due diligence, action management for compliance teams, risk assessments and management, and proof of funds and wealth utilising open banking.
Current Investors: Founders, Wesley Clover, Government
Strategic Partners/Customers: Capital Law
Whispeak
Website: https://whispeak.io/
Industry/Vertical: Voice biometrics, Cybersecurity, speaker authentication
Location: Lille, France
Investment Timeline: 2023
Estimated ARR USD: $2.4 Million+
Funding Target: Series A, €4 Million
Investor Targets: VC, BA
Whispeak provides a solution to simplify authentication processes by using voice as a biometric factor. This allows users to access their accounts, give sensitive commands, or be recognized at call centers, making their digital journeys secure and easy. The solution is easily deployable through SaaS, on premise or embedded versions, and can be used on all points of contact where microphones are present. Additionally, it is natively compatible with RGPD for user privacy protection.
Current Investors: Founders, Alacrité France, Finovam Gestion, Debt
Strategic Partners/Customers: Thalès, Continental, Airbus, Safran
TrustEat
Website: https://trust-eat.com/
Industry/Vertical: Cold Chain monitoring, food industry, IoT
Location: Lille, France
Investment Timeline: 2023
Active Users: 250+
Funding Target: Series A, 3M€
Investor Targets: VC, BA
TrustEat provides a solution to protect against health risks caused by cold chain breaks in the food industry. It helps professionals improve the quality of their products by ensuring sanitary control and reassuring consumers. TrustEat’s application integrates refrigeration sensor data for end-to-end supervision of the cold chain, targeting risk areas and alerting before problems occur. With over 250 customers, TrustEat supports all actors in the food industry, including restaurants, caterers, bakeries, large-scale distribution, and the food industry.
Current Investors: Founders, Alacrité France, Wesley Clover, Finovam Gestion, debt
Strategic Partners/Customers: Intermarché, Biocoop, Kimoco, Super U, Hôtel Mercure
Phedone
Website: https://phedone.com/
Industry/Vertical: Customer Support, Customer Engagement
Location: Lille, France
Investment Timeline: 2023
Active Users: 11
Funding Target: Seed, 500 K€
Investor Targets: BA, VC
Phedone solves the challenges of implementing semantic analysis in enterprises, which are typically complex and high cost with disappointing results. The Phedone solution includes advanced semantic analytics with state-of-the-art off-the-shelf tools that can be integrated through NoCode and LowCode platforms. Phedone aims to cost effectively enable large-scale deployment of quality semantic analysis, streamlining processes, optimizing support agent performance, and detecting weak signals.
Current Investors: Founders, Alacrité France
Strategic Customers: Berger Levrault, Culligan
Alacrity News
Alacrity Canada
Alacrity Canada runs programs in support of early-stage technology companies. To-date these programs have supported the development of companies with value greater than $700M. Given the success of the Alacrity program the Emend Vision Fund is being developed with the intent to invest in high potential early-stage companies with strong environmental and sustainability impacts. The fund will focus on emerging opportunities through Industrial Transformation, Big Data and Critical Infrastructure, Clean Water and Food Security. For more information contact the Emend Fund on how you can support.
Alacrity France
Alacrite France is supporting the development of 11 active NewCos to-date, each received Startup funding of €250K+. There is 1 additional NewCos in the pipeline planned for Alacrite France which is expected to receive seed funding in the first half of 2023. 3 NewCos are currently seeking funding for Series A raises. Alacrite France II is under development targeted for 2023.
Alacrity Affiliate: L-SPARK
The L-Spark portfolio in 2022 has had 1 exit. To-date L-Spark has had 7 companies exit with a cumulative exit value over $200 Million USD.
Alacrity Mexico
Alacrity Mexico continues to support the development of 3 portfolio companies in the Enterprise Contract Lifecycle Management software (CLMS), Fintech, and Secure Tech for eCommerce. The first private outside funding round is expected in late 2023.
Alacrity Ottawa
Alacrity Ottawa was launched in partnership with the University of Ottawa and L-Spark and will be recruiting cohorts of entrepreneurs to lead future Startup tech companies in 2023
Alacrity Turkey: Fund II Under Development
Alacrity Turkey is launching its second fund, a $30M USD seed-stage “SaaS Globalization” Venture Fund II to invest in Turkish B2B SaaS start-ups.
Alacrity U.K.
Alacrity UK continues to support startup ecosystem through programmes to include:
- Digital Customer Acquisition course
- Wales Cyber Hub
- Community Renewal Fund
- Media Hub commercialisation programme
The current Alacrity portfolio has grown to 17 active NewCos, each NewCo receiving seed funding of £250K+.
The Cyber Security Program launched in 2020 has now graduated 4 NewCos.
Alacrity ASEAN New Fund Under Exploration
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of a new fund in the ASEAN region. Early-Stage Venture Builder model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
Alacrity India, New Delhi New Fund Under Exploration
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of new fund in the New Delhi. Early-Stage Venture builder in Alacrity India model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
Alacrity South America New Fund Under Exploration
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of a new fund in South America. Early-Stage Venture Builder model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
Alacrity UAE New Fund Under Development
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of a new fund in the UAE. Early-Stage Venture Builder model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
2023 H1 Ecosystem Events
- L-Spark Investor Event – Toronto, March 2, 2023
- L-Spark SaaS Showcase – Ottawa, April 20, 2023
- L-Spark Collision Kickoff Event – Toronto, June 26, 2023
For more information contact Joshua Seerattan via email.
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Thank You
For any Investment related enquiries on portfolio companies, Alacrity Funds or for a Wesley Clover Briefing please contact Joshua Seerattan.
About Wesley Clover International
Wesley Clover International is a private, global investment management firm and holding company with over a Billion Dollars of Assets Under Management in Real-Estate & Technology. The focus is to fund and grow successful technology companies. More than 100 firms have been created to-date by Wesley Clover with more than $1.0B in direct investment. The portfolio regularly has more than 40 investments under active management around the globe. All are committed to next-generation Cloud and SaaS applications for fixed and mobile communications, video analytics, security, customer engagement, business enablement and more. Deal flow includes companies within the Enterprise Accelerator, L-SPARK, as well as the Alacrity Global Ecosystem of technology partnership funds which have been deployed in 6 international regions.