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Providing emergency and security services to employees, Base Operations raises $1M
In 2017, when a destructive earthquake struck Puebla, Mexico, sending shock waves to Mexico City and destroying buildings in the nation’s megalopolis and its surrounding suburbs, both public and private emergency services sprung into action.
For multinational corporations operating in the city it was a test of their internal support services, which were established to meet the “duty of care” requirements that multinationals have to their foreign employees. That’s a minimum threshold which companies must meet to ensure the safety of their employees.
After the Mexico City earthquake, at least one Fortune 500 insurance company found its services lacking. It took two weeks for the company to contact all of its employees and account for everyone.
So the company turned to a new Washington-based startup called Base Operations to see if they could do a better job.
Founded by a former security and risk management consultant, Cory Siskind, Base Operations uses a suite of hosted software services and mobile applications to provide security updates to corporate customers and their employees.
The insurance company tested Base Operations’ check-in feature to see how it would perform in a simulated natural disaster and Siskind said that Base Operations had identified the location of 80% of the company’s workforce in less than two days. More than half of the company’s employees checked in within the first 24 hours.
Base Operations offers a dashboard for corporate customers to monitor their employees’ locations and for staff traveling abroad, the company has an app that provides geo-tagged alerts on potential risks based on an individual’s location.
“This is a compliance situation for companies… They have to do it,” says Siskind. “We work with a company’s chief security officers and travel security. If you send people off into an emerging market with a risk PDF… It’s not dynamic information and it just sits in a report and nobody reads it.”
Companies with a sales or marketing team traveling around need to have some sort of tool to meet their compliance regulations and duty of care standards, says Siskind.
“We have a whole set of features that nudge towards safer behaviors so that you don’t end up getting mugged and so that you don’t end up in a situation that would be damaging to you,” she says.
Siskind recently raised $1 million for Base Operations from investors including Glasswing Ventures, Spiro Ventures, the Latin American early-stage investment firm Magma Partners and Good Growth Capital. Base Operations graduated from Techstars Impact Accelerator in 2018.
The money from the company’s most recent round will be used to expand the company’s sales and marketing efforts and continue its research and development.
So far, the company has three customers, including the undisclosed insurance provider, the energy company Enel and another, yet unnamed, corporation.
Base Operations provides its services in 15 cities, including: Mexico City, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago, San Juan (Puerto Rico) and San Jose (Costa Rica).
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Mejuri raises $23M Series B to serve women buying jewelry for themselves
New Enterprise Associates, the 42-year-old venture capital firm, has invested in the $23 million Series B round for Mejuri, a startup capturing millennial women’s penchant for affordable and treat yo’ self type of jewelry rather than diamonds and precious stones for special occasions.
It’s the latest instance of startups drawing investor interest with their direct-to-customer retail model. Based in Toronto and Buenos Aires, four-year-old Mejuri designs, makes and sells jewelry directly to women online and through offline showrooms, bypassing middle-person costs. Besides striving for reasonable prices, Mejuri also wants to upend an entrenched practice in its industry.
Traditional jewelry, the startup points out, targets men for gifting and makes higher markups acceptable. With its D2C play, Mejuri believes it’s putting the purchasing decision back with women; indeed, it found 75 percent of its customers are buying for themselves. Its team of 120 employees is constantly on the watch for trends and consumer feedback, a strategy made possible by its online presence of more than 422,000 Instagram followers. Instead of releasing large batches of seasonal pieces, Mejuri adapts the so-called “drop” model that introduces only a small quantity of products each week, which allows it to timely translate customer sentiments into designs.
Photo source: Mejuri
Another enabling factor is the company’s female-led team: 80 percent of the staff are women, headed by founder Noura Sakkijha, a third-generation jeweler and a former industrial engineer who scored the company’s latest capital when she was seven months pregnant with two twins.
“Mejuri’s mission really hits home for me,” said NEA partner Vanessa Larco in a statement. “I noticed a shift in trends when none of my friends wanted to go to any of the traditional fine jewelry companies to purchase jewelry anymore, and I realized a lot of those big brands were in trouble.”
Natalie Massenet, founder of Net-a-Porter and partner at Imaginary, another venture fund that participated in Mejuri’s Series B, said the startup is set to “disrupt” the jewelry industry through supply chain standards that modern consumers demand, “like sourcing from conflict-free and socially responsible diamond suppliers and maintaining affordable prices to serve a consumer who is buying for herself and her friends.”
The user-centric focus has brought customer loyalty to Mejuri. The startup claims that 30 percent of its monthly transactions come from returning shoppers, and 70,000 customers are on the waitlist for its products. It’s accumulated a total of 20 million visitors to its website and released 1,500 designs since launch. Revenues have quadrupled year-over-year for the fourth consecutive year, and the company, one of TechCrunch’s favorite picks from 500 Startups’ Batch 15 Demo Day three years ago, said it’s on track to achieve the same level of traction in 2019.
The new proceeds bring Mejuri’s total funds raised to more than $29 million to date. Others in the new funding round include follow-on backers Felix Capital, BDC Capital, Incite Ventures and Dash Ventures. The company plans to spend its latest financial injection on offline expansion, overseas growth and investment in branding and customer experience.
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Jam City is setting up a Toronto shop by buying Bingo Pop from Uken Games
The Los Angeles game development studio Jam City is setting up a shop in Toronto with the acquisition of Bingo Pop from Uken Games.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The deal is part of a broader effort to expand the Jam City portfolio of games and geographic footprint. In recent months the company has inked agreements with Disney — taking over development duties on some of the company’s games like Disney Emoji Blitz and signing on to develop new ones — and launching new games in conjunction with other famous franchises like Harry Potter.
The Bingo Pop acquisition will bring a gambling game into the casual game developer’s stable of titles that pulled in roughly $700,000 in revenue through October, according to data from SensorTower.
“We are so proud to be continuing Jam City’s rapid global expansion with the acquisition of one of the most popular bingo titles, and its highly talented team,” said Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and CEO of Jam City, in a statement. “This acquisition provides Jam City with access to leading creative talent in one of the fastest growing and most exciting tech markets in the world. We look forward to working with the talented Jam City team in Toronto as we supercharge the live operations of Bingo Pop and develop innovative new titles and mobile entertainment experiences.”
Founded in Los Angeles in 2009 by DeWolfe, who previously helped create and launch Myspace, and 20th Century Fox exec Josh Yguado, Jam City rose to prominence on the back of its Cookie Jam and Panda Pop games. Now, the company has expanded through licensing deals with Harry Potter, Family Guy, Marvel and now Disney. Jam City has offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Bogota and Buenos Aires.
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