Recent news from our
‍portfolio and fund

Airspace Link's Michael Healander has been nominated and announced his acceptance to Esri’s Partner Advisory Council (PAC). Healander, Airspace Link’s founder and CEO, will serve as a representative for a 3-year term. This is an esteemed community offered to a select number of partner thought leaders that meet rigorous criteria for nomination including senior leadership in their organization, current engagement in the partner ecosystem, a clear business strategy, and technology alignment with Esri.

As the team at Zestful settled in to COVID life as a fully remote team, they realized their team felt less connected. In order to maintain casual conversation, continue sharing what was going on in their lives, and have fun together, Goals App was born!

‍

Learn more about Goals App, its backstory, and what people are saying about it on Product Hunt. Great work, Zestful Team!

StackHawk, the Denver-based software startup offering service to detect and fix security bugs, is doubling down on its support for the popular open-source OWASP Zed Attack Proxy web app security scanner by bringing on board its founder, Simon Bennetts. On the StackHawk team, Bennetts will continue to develop the open-source project, which is among the world's most frequently used security scanning tools.

See also:

https://enterprisetalk.com/news/devops-industry-veterans-team-up-with-zap-founder/

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/devops-industry-veterans-team-up-with-zap-founder-simon-bennetts-to-deliver-appsec-to-developers-301095005.html

Congratulations to Natty Zola on an amazing five years and six programs as Managing Director for the Techstars Boulder Accelerator! In this post, Natty expresses his gratitude to the entire Techstars team as well as shares his plans and goals for the future as he transitions away from his current role at Techstars and turns his focus exclusively to Matchstick Ventures.

In this podcast episode, Natty Zola visits with DNVR Biz CEO Brandon Spano to talk about why he invests in people over all else and what he’s looking for in that process.

As COVID-19 continues to keep offices closed and more venture capitalists are moving away from traditional cities, a big shift toward remote investments may be happening too. In this article, Natty Zola shares insight on the effects of coronavirus on how people are choosing to invest - shifting from geography-based to remote.

In this TechCrunch article, the commitments made by Matchstick Ventures to combat racism and underrepresentation are identified as more robust and measurable than those made by other firms. Matchstick has pledged specific changes to be made by June 2021, to include increasing the number of Black founders in their investment pipeline and adding a Black advisor to its advisory board.

We are sharing a detailed plan of what we will do to fight racism, injustice and underrepresentation in our firm, portfolio and community. This is a priority to us. We know this is only a start but we are committing to take these specific actions to drive change and be leaders in our communities.

‍

See additional publications here:

Built in Colorado: https://www.builtincolorado.com/2020/06/12/matchstick-ventures-funding-black-founders

Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal: https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2020/06/11/minnesotas-venture-capitalists-pledge-wire-hire.html?s=print

We are writing to publicly affirm our values and our commitment to building an inclusive entrepreneurial community, with access for all. We are committed to broadening and demystifying the closed networks that usually accompany venture capital. Our doors are open, and to Black Community – we stand by you. More to come on how we can be part of the solution.

We're thrilled to announce a new investment into Curu, an automated lead recovery solution enabling lenders to fund more loans. We've tracked the Curu team since it's time in the Techstars program in partnership with Western Union. We're excited to partner with Vestigo Ventures, Harlem Capital, Carolina Fintech Ventures, Techstars Ventures, Holt Accelerator, Chingona Ventures, and Upscale Fund on supporting Abb and David's mission.

Curu secures $3M in funding as the demand for credit skyrockets during the global pandemic.(press release)

Curu Raises $3M Seed Funding to Help People Improve Their Credit

Denver’s Curu lands $3M for personalized credit approval solution

We're excited to share that Operator Collective and Leyla Seka have joined the Spekit team! This is a win for the growing digital learning platform and for Denver, CO as well. We couldn't be more proud to be a part of this team. Congrats to the whole Spekit team on this next big step in driving your vision!

In this 30-minute webinar, the Apostrophe team discusses health plan concerns as we begin going back to the doctor, and how thinking ahead now and switching to Apostrophe could mean better care with bigger savings for self-funded plan sponsors. We are so excited about the work CEO and co-founder Cheryl Kellond and her team are doing!

Amidst the current restrictions and a lot of uncertainty about the future, soona provides you the ability to get the ecommerce content you need via virtual photoshoots. In this article, a member of the soona team shares ecommerce tips on making the most of the times by continuing to show your customers new visual content. See this Forbes article (Soona, The Virtual Photoshoot You've Been Dreaming About) for more info on how soona works!

Investment trends in America's heartland show that valuable, high-growth companies can be built outside of traditional tech hubs. This report put together by Dundee Venture Capital and Crunchbase shares details on the growth of non-coastal startup regions. Matchstick was proud to be featured.

Manisha Gupta of Warmly, shares best practices learned through the 14-week Techstars program under Natty's guidance to improve tracking and communication within any company.