Recent news from our
‍portfolio and fund

Spekit, a company that was founded by CEO Melanie Fellay and Head of Product and Technology Zari Zahra, announced recently that it raised $2.54 million in seed funding led Bonfire Ventures with participation from Matchstick Ventures and individual investors, including Dan Scheinman. Spekit is essentially a just-in-time digital adoption platform that enables teams to communicate change and surface training across applications.

Last weekend Matchstick Ventures announced a $30 Million Fund II. One of the investors’ most recent successes is local startup, Soona. The Soona journey began in the Techstars Boulder accelerator. This is where owner, Liz Giorgi, met Ryan Broshar of Matchstick Ventures, while he was offering mentoring services to the program. The two found an immediate connection in each other because both are from the Twin Cities. Neighbors meeting in a distant land, and both dedicated to entrepreneurship, they became fast friends. Giorgi described her experience with Techstars as an opportunity to “expedite the process of stabilizing” her business. “It not only helped me in the building of my business, but more importantly, it accelerated my leadership.”

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As network planners at Alaska Airlines charged with where the carrier would fly and when, Ben Munson and David Sunde sometimes identified smaller communities that were ripe for air service, only to realize their employer didn’t have the right airplane to profitably fly the route.

Out of that shared frustration came a business plan. The two entrepreneurs, who did not overlap during their stints earlier this decade at Alaska but shared the same general concerns, decided to start a bus company that would function like a regional airline. Their company, called Landline, intends to shuttle passengers on behalf of the airlines from the smallest markets to nearby airports, where they can catch a flight. They think they can sell their service for bus routes of just 50 to 250 miles, with the price of the bus ticket becoming part of the overall ticket price for the flight, much like a connecting leg of a trip.

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We are excited to announce that Matchstick Ventures Fund II has completed an investment in Landline (landline.com). Landline is a next generation transportation company that connects regional airports to major airport hubs. 

Matchstick Ventures, a seed-stage firm that says it invests in “rapidly growing, yet underserved startup ecosystems,” announced this week that it has raised $30 million for its second fund.

That’s a lot more money than the firm’s $5 million first fund. This time, Matchstick says it will write initial checks of around $500,000, and in some cases make follow-on investments of $1 million or $2 million.

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Today we are excited to announce the closing of Matchstick Ventures Fund II. It is a $30 million fund supporting early-stage software companies in rapidly growing, yet underserved startup ecosystems. For us, this includes the North, the Rockies, and companies across the Techstars ecosystem. We are incredibly humbled that Foundry Group continues to support us alongside local institutions, family offices and many of the most successful entrepreneurs we know. Please click here to read our full announcement.

We are excited to announce that Matchstick Ventures Fund II has completed an investment in Cured (cured.health). Cured develops a customer relationship management platform for health systems and hospitals.

We are excited to announce that Matchstick Ventures Fund II has completed an investment in Spekit (spekit.co). Spekit is a digital learning and change enablement platform designed to help companies inform and train their staff on constantly changing business processes and SaaS applications.

Matchstick Ventures portfolio company Zestful raises it's next round led by Thrive Capital. Congrats to Mat and the team! Learn more on CrunchBase, Business Insider, AmericanInno and Zestful's website.

Today’s guest is Fletcher Richman, CEO & Cofounder of Halp, a company backed by Techstars and Slack that makes an internal helpdesk to streamline workflows for the teams at Adobe, HomeDepot, SeatGeek, and hundreds of other companies.

Fletcher also helped found the Seed Angel Forum, an investor forum for early stage entrepreneurs and investors, and is a partner at Kokopelli Ventures, a micro venture fund in Boulder CO.

In our conversation we explore Fletchers path into the world of business and creating things and his experience running a social impact venture (Spark).

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Matchstick Ventures portfolio company ScaleFactor raises $60M Series C to empower small- and mid-size businesses by streamlining and automating back-office tasks. From bookkeeping to payroll, ScaleFactor provides a built-in cadence to business operations, giving owners access to tools and insights previously only available to enterprise companies. Congrats to Kurt and team!

ScaleFactor, the accounting fintech serving the small and medium-sized business market, raised $60 million in venture funding, in its third fundraising round in about a  year.

To date Austin, Texas-based ScaleFactor has raised $100 million, completing a $10 million Series A round in July of 2018 and a $30 million Series B round in January.

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Matchstick Ventures portfolio company Ordermark raises $18M Series B to help restaurants adapt and thrive in the mobile delivery era. We're lucky to be early investors in Ordermark, who we met through the Techstars Boulder program. Congrats to Alex and team!

Los Angeles-based Ordermark, the online delivery management service for restaurants founded by the scion of the famous, family-owned Canter’s Deli, said it has raised $18 million in a new round of funding.

The round was led by Boulder-based Foundry Group. All of Ordermark’s previous investors came back to provide additional capital for the company’s new funding, including: TenOneTen Ventures, Vertical Venture Partners, Mucker Capital, Act One Ventures and Nosara Capital, which led the Series A funding.

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Development cycles for software developers are only getting faster, which is a problem when it comes to implementing security measures.

Building secure code into software requires not only time for testing but also a dedicated security team to solve any issues that may crop up. But most companies consider security an afterthought and tackle it far too late in the development cycle. That can lead either to massive delays to patch issues or a vulnerable product.

StackHawk hopes to fill that gap in the market. Based in Denver, StackHawk is developing security software that will work alongside developers to identify and address vulnerabilities at each stage of the development cycle. Rather than add to their workload, StackHawk co-founder and CEO Joni Klippert told Built In that their goal is to make software that lightens it in the long run.