Announcing our 2nd cohort of companies in San Francisco!

Today we announced the close of our first fund in San Francisco on TechCrunch.  We are also very excited to announce the 10 companies that are part of our 2nd cohort here in San Francisco.  We have spent the last 3+ months working closely with all of them and are impressed with what they are building.

The companies below will present as part of our Demo Day on May 18th, 2015. Accredited investors interested in attending can email us at mike@forumvc.com

AdHusky  provides an automated Facebook ad solution for SMB’s via partnerships with Eventbrite, Yahoo, WIX and more.  AdHusky is one of Facebook Marketing Developers Ninjas. In addition to Forum Ventures, AdHusky is incubated out of StartX (Stanford University Accelerator), funded by the NSF grant, and part of Digital Work by Microsoft.

Limelight is a live experience marketing platform that empowers marketers to efficiently build and measure their live marketing efforts, turning attendees into leads and ultimately, quantifiable sales.  Lead by a team of experiential marketers and proven SaaS revenue generators, Limelight has 20+ paying Fortune 1000 customers including Home Depot, Allstate and BMW, in just 6 months of operations.

Measurence is an actionable intelligence and knowledge-sharing platform for physical retailers. Our system measures store performance by analyzing inputs from physical in-store IoT wifi and bluetooth sensors, store observation inputs, open data feeds and store POS. Inputs are then translated into actionable insights, shared in a mobile collaboration platform connecting retailers’  decision makers. In addition to Forum Ventures, they are part of the Cisco EIR innovation program.

Nova is creating technologies to advance computer-human interfaces. Nova believes that all digital experiences should (and will) be customized for the specific individual, and is creating technology to make this a reality. Nova’s first product is a sales and marketing productivity product that combines aspects of text composition, tonal analysis, and machine learning. This product enables salespeople to focus on what they do best — meeting customers and closing deals — by creating customized messaging for the targeted individual at scale.  A nascent version of Nova’s technology was used by Nova’s CEO while at CloudFlare to increase customer response on outbound sales emails by 600%.  Since quietly announcing a closed beta in February, they have added 130+ beta customers, including New Relic, Intercom, Taulia, Zuora, and HortonWorks.

Pick, founded by early Yammer employees, Pick is “Stripe for scheduling.” Many applications across numerous verticals including recruiting, sales, customer success, and more have customers demanding scheduling functionality. These application providers understand that scheduling is a complex solution, and do not wish to build it in-house.   Pick’s technology syncs with calendar platforms (Google, Outlook, iCloud) to surface real-time availability so meetings can be scheduled in one step, and this is integrated in to existing applications via API. Additionally, anyone can utilize Pick’s technology by signing up at Pick.co.

RankPeek is a platform that makes it easy for consumer goods companies to monitor, manage and respond to product reviews across 30+ platforms – early customers include Fitbit, Belkin, Contigo and Linksys.

RoomKey by Ve-Go – RoomKey (iOS) is a mobile first front desk solution for hotels that integrates seamlessly with Oracle Hospitality and enables travelers to not only book a room, but also check-in & select their own room prior to arrival, use their smartphone as a room key, message hotel staff at anytime and check out from their mobile device.  The platform has already been rolled out to 10+ hotels in cities like Miami, Chicago and San Francisco.  Consumers can download RoomKey to book hotels and streamline their check in at participating hotels.

SherpaDesk is a cloud hosted desktop and mobile customer support, time tracking and invoicing platform for IT organizations and personal service firms.  It’s already being used by 300+ paying customers and is currently integrated with Intuit, Google Marketplace and Microsoft 365.  SherpaDesk makes it easy for any company to manage support tickets, track time associated with each ticket and send invoices accordingly.

Whistler Technologies provides communications intelligence to enterprises. We use artificial intelligence to help companies monitor, analyze and act upon their digital communications, determining potential risks and preventing damaging communications from being sent

WorkingGroupLink is a financial technology company that helps professional services firms – investment banks, law firms and management consultancies – complete deals and cases more effectively, and engage more deeply with their clients. The company’s flagship product is a cloud-based, digital and mobile version of the time honored, but hopelessly archaic working group list. Among other benefits, the WorkingGroupLink application integrates seamlessly with Outlook (mail, contacts, calendar) and with all major CRM programs. Our customers work smarter and faster, outperform their competitors, and position themselves in the coveted role of trusted advisor.