A Newport Beach-based company that created an online platform for audio-video, IT and security projects closed a $700,000 seed round. Jetbuilt is using some of the money on marketing, and the effort already paid off with the U.S. state department coming aboard as a client, founder and President Paul Dexter said.
The department’s Video Program Office is using Jetbuilt’s technology to create internal proposals for new or renovated audio-video room designs for constituents at venues including embassies, consulates and administrative offices throughout the world. Jetbuilt removed the need for “antiquated” spreadsheets for the department’s creation of budgets and proposals while providing more ease in collaboration, Dexter said.Â
Jetbuilt is also using some of the funds to complete its project management software package for businesses, the companion product to the B2B sales platform it launched two years ago. Dexter plans to release the package to market this fall.
The company’s been growing revenue by 25% month-over-month since it launched in mid-2015, he said. While it’s still an early-stage revenue company, its B2B software product is experiencing traction with several long-term subscription customers, he added. The company’s evolved from signing up small audio-video companies to obtaining “major” national and global companies and organizations, he said.
Dexter was a music producer through the 1990s and by 2003 was nominated for a Grammy for an album he produced and engineered. Upscale restaurants, such as those owned by Beverly Hills-based Hillstone Restaurant Group, asked him to make their establishments sound like his studio because “they heavily value good sound.” That led to a second career designing audio and video systems for national clients, work that “revealed the huge need for a cloud platform to design, budget, propose and manage such projects,” he said.
“The area was dominated by … 20-year-old Windows applications,” he said. “Jetbuilt essentially reimagined how this process could work in the cloud with collaboration between manufacturers, contractors and end users.”
XPRIZE Led by Local
An OC entrepreneur is the leader of the global IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, a $5 million artificial intelligence and cognitive computing competition.
Amir Banifatemi, founder and managing partner of Newport Beach-based early-stage venture fund K5 Ventures, has the title of “Prize Lead” in the competition. He explained that he oversees all efforts and organizations for it, including 148 teams from 22 countries. The team’s goal is to develop artificial intelligence applications that tackle “grand challenges” and demonstrate how people and machines can collaborate.
Banifatemi, along with the rest of the XPRIZE leadership team, recently organized a joint effort between XPRIZE and 22 United Nations agencies to convene the first summit on the use of artificial intelligence for doing good. The Geneva-based International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, and the Culver City-based XPRIZE Foundation organized the AI for Good Global Summit in early June in Switzerland.
It’s the first time industry, academia, nongovernmental organizations, and U.N. agencies gathered to discuss the impact of AI on the world’s “grand challenges” and the U.N.’s sustainable development goals, Banifatemi told the Business Journal while traveling in Europe.
He’s also co-founder of Irvine-based Bodymatter, a digital therapeutics company that develops health tools and programs. It’s one of the companies in the XPRIZE competition. Banifatemi said he doesn’t get directly involved with the XPRIZE teams. He and his team organize the conditions for them to have the resources they need to win. They organize the structure, and independent judges and advisers evaluate the teams.
Firm, Fletcher Jones Partner
Irvine-based AutoGravity announced the launch of real-time inventory on the Fletcher Jones Drive smartphone app that it created.
The fin-tech company joined with the Fletcher Jones Auto Group to launch the FJ Drive app, which allows customers to secure financing for new Mercedes-Benzes from their smartphones. People can also use it to shop for specific vehicles at a dealership, apply for financing, and review their leases or loan offers before picking up their cars.
AutoGravity’s a company whose mobile platform enables car buyers in 46 states to get financing offers on their phones.
Locker Co. Cools Down
An Irvine-based company that provides electronic lockers to apartment complexes is providing the apartments industry with the first refrigerated and outdoor lockers, according to the company.
Parcel Pending’s refrigerated lockers are cooled to 35 to 44 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing food, beverage and other shipments to stay fresh longer than the standard dry ice or gel packs used by online retailers.
Parcel Pending also recently unveiled its outdoor lockers for properties that lack adequate indoor space or have no communal area with 24/7 resident access. The lockers are made to withstand the elements, according to Parcel Pending.
Online grocery sales are projected to reach $9.4 billion in sales this year, according to IBIS World. When those are added to the $1.5 billion meal-kit subscription industry, multifamily properties are seeing “a real demand for temperature-controlled storage,” according to the company.
