Pat Matthews Archives - StartupsSanAntonio.com

Active Capital Leads $1.3M Seed Round for Stagger, a Visual Storytelling Platform for Businesses

10Mar

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Active Capital Leads $1.3M Seed Round for Stagger, a Visual Storytelling Platform for Businesses

Stagger, a visual storytelling platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses, closed a $1.3 million round in pre-seed funding Wednesday. The San Antonio-based venture firm Active Capital led the round, with participation from Operator Partners, Hustle Fund, Adapt VC, and several angel investors.Stagger is a graphic design platform that includes templates for users to create social media graphics, presentations, and other visual content. Chrissy Cowdrey launched Stagger first as an iOS app in mid-2019 for her own use. Stagger has a drag and drop design much like Canva that business owners lacking complex design software experience can use. Stagger's added value is the machine learning features Cowdrey built into the platform to feed the analytics-based dashboard that tra...

Active Capital Raises Over $25 Million for Second Startup Seed Fund

7Dec

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Active Capital Raises Over $25 Million for Second Startup Seed Fund

In an unprecedented year of economic downturn triggered by a pandemic, the San Antonio-based venture capital firm Active Capital has raised over $25 million to invest in the business-to-business (B2B) software as a service (SaaS) market.Pat Matthews, Active Capital's CEO, is an entrepreneur and angel investor in more than 50 startup companies. The venture firm raised $21.5 million over 18 months for its first fund in late 2018. Matthews, along with co-founders Pat Condon and Cat Dizon, typically lead seed rounds for founder-led B2B SaaS companies based outside of Silicon Valley. The team mentors their portfolio founders as they grow their startups into sustainable businesses.At the beginning of 2020, Matthews had communicated with potential investors for Active Capital's second fu...

Fintech Startup FloatMe Closes $3.7M Seed Round

3Dec

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Fintech Startup FloatMe Closes $3.7M Seed Round

The financial tech startup FloatMe announced Thursday it had closed a $3.7 million seed funding round led by ManchesterStory, a leading firm focused on early-stage fintech and companies using technology to disrupt the insurance industry. San Antonio-based Active Capital, Denver-based SpringTime Ventures, and existing investors Drummond Road Capital and HTV Industries are among the 17 investors who participated in the seed round. Joining FloatMe's board is ManchesterStory co-founder and managing partner Matt Kinley, who has 21 years' experience as a venture capitalist focused on early-stage through growth-stage fintech, healthcare, and technology companies. "We think the opportunities for FloatMe to help clients improve their finances are endless, and FloatMe's offering is appealing...

Tech-Driven Braustin Homes Lands $1.9M Seed Funding Round

16Nov

By Iris Gonzalez1 Comment

Articles, Featured

Tech-Driven Braustin Homes Lands $1.9M Seed Funding Round

Braustin Homes, a San Antonio-based factory-built home business, has landed a $1.875 million seed funding round led by the venture capital fund Geekdom Fund, with participation from City Rise Ventures investors Graham Weston and Pat Matthews, and angel investor Pat Condon.Brothers Alberto and Jason Piña founded Braustin Homes in 2017 with a vision to build affordable manufactured homes in South and Central Texas. They plan to use the seed funding to scale operations across the state of Texas. A tech-fueled home-buying business model The Piñas discovered the homebuilding industry struggles with a complicated buying process. From its earliest days, the startup incorporated technology into their operations for a seamless customer experience. Based out of Geekdom, a downtown co-worki...

Gov Tech Startup Irys Closes $1.2M Seed Round

22Jul

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Gov Tech Startup Irys Closes $1.2M Seed Round

Irys announced Tuesday its $1.2M seed round led by early-stage venture capital firm Good Growth Capital with participation from Arcadis and Techstars Ventures. Investors in the seed round from San Antonio include former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, Graham Weston, Pat Matthews, Victor Miramontes, and Matthew Starr.Cityflag, a government technology startup focused on helping cities flag and track 311 service requests, rebranded itself as Irys in mid-March, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was triggering lockdowns across the country. Alberto Altamirano, Alberto Gomez, and Eduardo Bravo founded the company in 2017. That same year, they received a contract with the city of San Antonio for an app to revamp its 311 system.Read more: San Antonio 3...

What’s Happening in Venture Capital? Local Investors Weigh In

18May

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

What’s Happening in Venture Capital? Local Investors Weigh In

Startup founders know the COVID-19 pandemic has changed investor funding for the foreseeable future. Beyond the obvious shift to virtual pitching and team meetings, what else is going on in the world of venture capital (VC)?We spoke with three San Antonio investors who are tracking what’s changing during the global pandemic, and more importantly, looking ahead at the investing landscape over the next year or so. Level playing field, opportunities abound for innovative companiesIn April, Active Capital founder and CEO Pat Matthews said his venture firm had invested in eight portfolio companies and three new ones.“We also closed two Series As, two sidecars, and one M&A [mergers and acquisitions] transaction. I wouldn’t say it’s been business as usual, but it’s been busy,” ...

Active Capital’s First Investment Pays off with VidGrid Acquisition by Paylocity

7Apr

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Active Capital’s First Investment Pays off with VidGrid Acquisition by Paylocity

Paylocity, a provider of cloud-based human resources and payroll software solutions, announced on Monday its acquisition of VidGrid, a leading video learning platform provider. VidGrid provides two-way, peer-to-peer learning courses, transforming video into two-way communication.Paylocity has worked with VidGrid for several years to deliver a video-enabled learning management system to its clients. The acquisition effort was underway before the COVID-19 pandemic began forcing employees and students alike to work from home."As a leading modern workforce platform, we are constantly looking for opportunities to make our product suite even more useful for our clients. We believe video will play a critical role in transforming workplace communication," Steve Beauchamp, CEO of Paylocity,...

Active Capital Leads $1.5M Seed Round for Social Media Management Platform Cloud Campaign

31Jan

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Active Capital Leads $1.5M Seed Round for Social Media Management Platform Cloud Campaign

Cloud Campaign, a social media management platform for marketing agencies, announced it closed a $1.5 million seed funding round Friday. Active Capital, a San Antonio-based seed venture firm for business-to-business (B2B) software as a service (SaaS) companies, led the round. Also investing were Colorado-based Access Venture Partners, AdEspresso founder Armando Biondi, Datalogix chief operations officer Eric Kirby, and former Google vice president of marketing Scott Epstein.Ross Gray and Ryan Born founded the company in 2017. Cloud Campaign has nine employees and is based in Portland, Oregon, with a second office opening in Boulder, Colorado, in the coming months. They previously received $20,000 in pre-seed funding. Social media has become an essential element in marketing campa...

SaaS Voice App Yac Closes $1.5 Seed Round led by Active Capital

16Jan

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

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SaaS Voice App Yac Closes $1.5 Seed Round led by Active Capital

Without tone and inflection, it's hard to tell sometimes if an email, Tweet, or text is meant as a compliment or a complaint. One Orlando, Fla.-based startup developed a voice app solution to solve this problem.Yac announced Wednesday a $1.5 million seed financing led by San Antonio-based venture firm Active Capital with participation from angel investors. Betaworks and Booth VC invested $275,000 in a pre-seed round that closed in April 2019.The Yac app helps users send voice messages asynchronously (meaning, there’s a delay between the message sent and the recipient’s response). On average, there are about 4,500 messages a month left on Yac’s service, and the company has around 250 daily active users, according to Yac founder Justin Mitchell.Mitchell, who is also founder of di...

Promoter.io Founder Chad Keck Talks About Being First, Offers Acquisition Advice for Founders

14Jan

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

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Promoter.io Founder Chad Keck Talks About Being First, Offers Acquisition Advice for Founders

With little fanfare, San Antonio-based Promoter.io, a customer analytics and insights software as a service (SaaS) platform for small and medium-sized businesses, was acquired in September 2019 by Medallia, the global leader in customer experience management. In that same month, Medallia underwent an IPO four days before buying two other companies along with Promoter.io.Founders Chad Keck and Ricardo Reyna (who left the company in 2018) launched Promoter.io in 2013, working out of Geekdom, San Antonio’s first co-working space. The startup raised $1.6 million in funding over five pre-seed and seed funding rounds. Their latest round was in January 2018 for $150,000.Startups San Antonio caught up with Keck to reflect on why he built Promoter, the significance of being the first startu...