Social Leverage, a Scottsdale-based venture capital firm, raised $99 million for its fourth venture fund. The VC group, made up of managing partners Howard Lindzon, Gary Benitt and Tom Peterson, are looking to invest in early-stage SaaS, fintech and consumer startups. Peterson told the Phoenix Business Journal that the partners look for companies on the … Read more
Trainual, a SaaS platform designed to help growing businesses standardize policies and processes, has closed a $27 million Series B round, bringing the company’s total funding to $33.75 million. The round was led by Altos Ventures, a major venture capital firm based out of Menlo Park, Calif. Trainual founder and CEO Chris Ronzio said in … Read more
Scottsdale-based Lessen, a marketplace platform that connects property owners to service professionals, announced it closed a $35 million Series A funding round. The Series A was led by Fifth Wall, the largest VC focused on technology for the global real estate industry. Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst and Navitas Capital, who invested in Lessen’s seed round, … Read more
The Arizona Technology Council praised Gov. Doug Ducey and the Arizona Legislature for the fiscal year 2022 budget proposal. The proposal includes many of the Council’s key priorities outlined in their Public Policy Guide. Steven G. Zylstra, president and CEO of the Council, said the budget includes funding to keep Arizona competitive in the tech … Read more
The Sonoran Founders Fund, led by CEO and co-founder Romi Dhillon and co-founders Dan Burns, Cathy Eckstein and Kevin Groman, plan to raise and invest $10 million into Southwest-region pre-seed and seed-stage startups in 2021. According to the fund’s website, the group looks to invest in the SaaS, marketplaces, AI, Fintech, Edtech and healthcare IT … Read more
Tucson-based startup Phantom Space recently raised $5 million in seed investments in order to fund their ultimate goal to become the “Henry Ford of Space.” Talk about ambition. Remember Henry Ford? He founded Ford Motor Company and introduced the Model T, which was the first car that middle-class Americans could afford. He developed the assembly … Read more
We have Evercast to thank for the hours of binge-watching we did while on lockdown during the pandemic. Without Evercast, we wouldn’t have had our favorite movies and television shows to keep us from going bored out of our minds. Evercast is a remote collaboration platform that allows creatives to stream audio and video work … Read more
Just a few weeks after PayGround co-founder and CEO Drew Mercer found out he had testicular cancer, his wife gave birth to their third child. Mercer says that in a span of two weeks, he and his wife received more than 20 separate healthcare bills, each one a paper statement with a different way to … Read more
Correction: A previous version of this story stated that Schola did $125,000 revenue in 2020. The amount has been updated. Schola founder and CEO Jaime Martinez says it took a couple years’ worth of conversations to raise $2.5 million for the company’s second round of seed money. And yet Martinez says it was much easier … Read more
Phoenix, AZ-based ed-tech company, CampusLogic (founded by Gregg Scorsby), received a $120 million minority investment from Dragoneer Investment Group. The company will use the funding to invest in new product development and make strategic acquisitions that will increase the scope of its student financial success platform. The company currently serves more than 750 schools with … Read more