An Irvine-based company that’s poised to open a Series A raise seeking $5 million just received two investments.
Kadho got an investment from Sparks Lab for a venture in Korea that the company hasn’t announced, co-founder Kaveh Azartash said.
Kadho develops software for apps and children’s toys. Azartash declined to disclose the investment amount.
The company’s subsidiary, Kadho Sports, is one of four recipients of investment dollars from Stadia Ventures, a St. Louis-based accelerator. It will receive between $50,000 and $100,000 in exchange for an undisclosed equity stake. Azartash declined to disclose how much Kadho Sports will receive.
“We are very happy and proud to be backed by two highly specialized funds for both of our business units,” Azartash said. “We are looking forward to expand our growth with the help of these two funds that go way beyond just the financial support.”
Kadho Sports also recently announced that Bruce Rollinson, head varsity football coach at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, will join the company as a sports adviser.
Kadho Sports developed a cognitive sports training platform for professional, collegiate and national volleyball, baseball and softball teams, combining neuroscience research with mobile technology. It worked with Rollinson during the 2016 season to customize the football training platform. The resulting technology can be used to enhance game-day performance and accelerate film study for offensive and defensive players, according to the company. The technology was used by the Mater Dei football team during the 2016 season.
AI Platform Launches
A Fullerton-based tech startup launched an on-demand software platform to help commercial real estate brokers and sales teams execute “best sales practices” to generate and close more deals.
Digsy’s Digsy AI is a software licensing and delivery model. The software is centrally hosted and licensed on a subscription basis.
The company started off as a platform that connected tenants and buyers with commercial real estate brokers in their markets, with the goal of saving the former time and money.
The new platform uses data-entry automation, machine learning and analytics to improve agents’ sales performance. For example, Digsy’s software can remind a sales rep to reach out to a prospect at least five times so they can improve their sales performance, Digsy co-founder and Chief Executive Andrew Bermudez said. The platform also analyzes the activities of top-performing reps to identify practices that other reps in the organization can use to improve performance.
“Sales performance research shows that 80% of successful deals are made after contacting a prospect five to 12 times,” Bermudez said. “Yet, less than a measly 10% of sales reps contact a prospect more than three times.”
Bermudez is a 16-year commercial real estate agent and former senior vice president of Lee & Associates in Irvine. The company’s other founder is Alex Bloore, who serves as chief technology and product officer.
Engagement Measurer
A company that provides services to other businesses, including leadership development, employee assessment and consulting services, just snagged its first two clients.
Irvine-based Engage Factors secured San Francisco-based Fish Six Restaurant Corp. dba The Melt and an undisclosed Venice-based consumer products company that designs and creates inspirational gifts, stationery, books and other specialty items, Chief Executive Gary Willison said.
Engage Factors’ primary clientele includes multiunit specialty retail, food service and hospitality companies. Other companies in the space “simply measure employee engagement,” Chief Executive Gary Willison said. Engage Factors, however, helps companies develop and implement techniques to improve engagement and employee retention, especially for millennials and generation Y employees, he said. Willison founded the company last July and did a soft launch in the fourth quarter. The company’s been financed with approximately $55,000 from revenue, he said.
“We have been really bootstrapping to bring the business to market,” he said. “I even drove for Lyft and Uber during a six-month period, driving overnight seven days a week, averaging more than 60 hours weekly, plus another 60 hours weekly working on our startup.”
Annual Award Presented
Tim Jenkins, chief technical officer at SendGrid, received this year’s annual Eureka Award. The company, which has an office in Orange, was founded by a couple of Orange County residents and a partner from Riverside.
The award is presented to an entrepreneur or investor who helps other entrepreneurs in Orange County. It was presented on April 8 at the annual EurekaFEST at the Eureka co-working building in Irvine.
The company built a platform to reliably deliver high volumes of automatically generated emails from businesses to customers. It recently raised $33 million in advance of a potential initial public offering this year.
“Tim and his co-founders successfully built on their Eureka moment when creating SendGrid, which today is the most trusted email platform in the world,” said Peter Polydor, creator of the Eureka Building and the chief executive of Ergo Capital.
