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Previously, the Golden, Colorado-based company has the ambitious goal of changing the way 500 companies “move products from the warehouse door to the road.” It has been quietly operating and working on its technology since June 2017. Outrider raised an $8.5 million seed round, led by NEA, in June 2018, and then a $44.5 million Series A led by 8VC in April 2019. Other investors include , , , ,   and the .

 founded Outrider, which essentially seeks to automate every aspect of logistics yards such as moving trailers around the yard, hitching and unhitching, connecting and disconnecting brake lines, and identifying and managing trailer locations.

While all this doesn’t necessarily sound as sexy as some other high-flying industries, such as self-driving cars or scooters, the company maintains there is a big need for increased efficiency in the space.

The goal of distribution yards, Smith maintains, is to keep semi-trailers full of freight moving quickly in the space between the warehouse doors and public roads. However, he says, many of the current processes that make up yard operations are manual, inefficient and hazardous.

Outrider has paid pilot programs in place with and four unnamed Fortune 200 companies.

How it works

The Outrider System is integrated in three parts: SaaS-based management software, autonomous zero-emission yard trucks that feature vision-based robotics, and site infrastructure. It integrates with existing supply chain software used by large enterprises.

Ultimately, Outrider’s mission is “to drive the rapid adoption of sustainable freight transportation by deploying zero-emission systems.” At scale, the company says it will deliver yards that are more efficient, safer and more sustainable for logistics hubs.

“Logistics yards offer a well-defined environment and a set of discrete, repetitive tasks that make the ideal use case for autonomous technology. But today’s yards are also complex, often chaotic environments, with many manual tasks,” Smith said. “This is why a systems approach is necessary to automate every major task in the yard.”

Outrider says it automates those repetitive, manual aspects of yard operations and does it in a more environmentally responsible way.

“Modern distribution yards aren’t just autonomous, they are electric,” continued Smith. “Electric yard trucks are easier to operate and maintain than their diesel counterparts.”

For now, Outrider is focused on North American companies in the consumer packaged goods, package delivery, manufacturing, retail and transportation industries.

Outside perspective

, vice president of automation transformation at Georgia-Pacific, said his company is constantly looking for ways to transform to make work safer, more efficient and productive.

“Yard operations has been one of our opportunities, and Outrider has been a great partner to help us automate our pilot site,” Patel said.

Meanwhile, 8VC Founding Partner said his firm considers hundreds of investment opportunities in the logistics space every year. It chose to back Outrider because of its “highly compelling” vision and plan for the industry.

Outrider has more than 75 employees, including 50 engineers solely focused on distribution yard automation–that’s up from 19 employees a year ago. It says its engineering project leads “total more than 100 years of hands-on experience in ground-vehicle automation and robotic material-handling development.”

The company plans to use its new capital to hire more engineers as well as to invest in the rollout of its commercial system.

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The financing, which closed in July but is just now being disclosed, comes less than 10 months after the Los Angeles company’s $30.5 million (which we covered at the time) and 13 months after its , bringing its total raised to $96 million. PlayVS was founded in early 2018.

led the latest round, which included participation from , and of , , , , general partner at and , co-founder of .

PlayVS’ first product is dubbed ‘Seasons,’ and so far brings League of Legends, Rocket League and SMITE to high schools across the country. The company is working on more partnerships that it declined to name at this time.

In a phone conversation, PlayVS founder and CEO (who we profiled in this piece last year) did tell me that a lot has happened since the Series B. For one, the startup has now “successfully operated” two seasons and according to Parnell, “validated the appetite for the product.”

PlayVS (pronounced Play-versus) currently has 13,000 schools on its waitlist which, according to Parnell, represents 68 percent of all high schools in the United States.

“Many are going through onboarding and getting activated for the Fall 2019 season,” he said.

PlayVS has also shown it can grow and scale its state partnerships, he said, growing from five in the fall of 2018 to eight in the spring of 2019 and now up to 15 (including Connecticut, Georgia, parts of Texas, and California). This means that students in those states can compete in state championships. (States not endorsed by their state association will compete regionally for a PlayVS Championship.) Also, its platform will be available to high schools across all 50 states (including D.C.) this fall.

“In our first two seasons of operation, we saw no product failures and learned a ton,” Parnell said, “in particular around game integration.”

The company plans to use its new capital “efficiently,” he said.

“Throughout the summer, we rebuilt the product, matured the company and built out the executive team,” Parnell said, including people from , and other startups. It has increased its headcount from 16 employees at the end of last year to a current total of 41.

Ultimately, the company is eyeing ancillary markets and wants to become a platform for amateur players in general.

“Our goal is for PlayVS to become a generational product like Twitch, so we want to leverage the resources we have to hire really smart people to build incredible products,” Parnell told me.

Within high schools, its goal is for as many students as possible to be able to participate. Currently, PlayVS charges $64 per player to participate per season, a sum that Parnell said is far below that of other sports. But for now, as it is a nascent program, schools need to recruit more coaches so that more players can participate, according to Parnell.

Beyond the participation fee, Parnell sees potential revenue streams in building additional products and services to bundle onto its platform.

“There’s a ton of opportunity to leverage software we’ve built and are building,” he told Crunchbase News. “We want to take that to amateur esports, growing our presence internationally and alongside publishers. Our vision for the company has evolved.”

Early Investor Weighs In

Investors seem excited about that vision.

NEA Partner notes his firm has backed PlayVS since its founding and his enthusiasm has only increased with time.

“While there are established forums for casual gameplay and professional gameplay, there is a big gap in the market when it comes to amateur esports,” he wrote via email. “The high school demographic is the perfect place to start to close this gap, and PlayVS has made tremendous strides in launching this new market.”

In particular, NEA has been impressed by the team PlayVS is building out as well as with the “pace of growth and expansion…early on across schools, states, and games across multiple publishers.”

And the icing on the cake? People seem to really like the product. According to Yang, feedback from athletes, coaches and parents “has been extremely positive.” Both students who have played other sanctioned sports and newcomers to sanctioned activities have participated so far, he said.

“PlayVS is changing lives and experiences of student athletes in all sorts of positive ways – building community, self confidence, friendships, life lessons, and boosting academic performance,” he wrote. “I think we are just at the beginning of the creation of a very large category.”

Other Players In The Game

Meanwhile, PlayVS is not the only esports-related company raising money this week. Today, a $2.5 million seed raise. and Varga Capital led the round for the San Francisco-based global esports tournament platform.

“The majority of the esports market has few opportunities to compete for cash prizes,” said XY Gaming co-founder and CEO Aaron Fletcher, in a . “Through our simple, free, and one-click to enter and play platform, we enable gamers of all skill levels to take their gaming to the next level in a fair and secure environment.”

Also in July, , a popular esports team, announced that it closed a $35 million Series B.

In general, esports has had its ups and downs. While funding in the sector is certainly up as it continues to go mainstream, there have been concerns about monetization. It will be interesting to see how the space plays out in terms of winners and losers.

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Photo Credit: Sean Yalda

Founded in 2015 by husband and wife Majed Masad and , Mejuri just raised a $23 million Series B led by NEA.

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NEA’s Larco, who is joining the company’s board as part of the transaction, called Mejuri’s strategy and growth “truly impressive.” While the startup would not disclose exact revenue numbers, Mejuri said its revenue quadrupled yearly from 2015 to 2018 and that it’s “on track to do the same in 2019 at scale.” The company is also notable in the venture-backed world for having a majority female staff.

However, glowing words after the ink has dried tends to obscure the work that goes into making a deal happen. And for Larco, the work started long before Mejuri signed the term sheet.

“Personally, I don’t shop at traditional jewelry stores, but I do want jewelry that is simple but real and of good quality,” she told Crunchbase News. “I started looking at all kinds of early-stage fine jewelry companies and a lot of them had similar stories so, at first, it was very hard for me to differentiate any of them.” As a result, she put investing in the jewelry sector on hold.

But as she got to know Sakkijha and the team at Mejuri, she started to change her mind.

To Larco, Mejuri stood out because it had built “such an interesting supply chain” as well as an increasingly recognizable brand. Larco was also impressed with how “sophisticated” the company was concerning user acquisition and “how it thought about data.” She also liked how Mejuri frequently launched new product lines, keeping its inventory fresh.

“I also noticed how the brand was having authentic conversations with its customers via social media,” said Larco, who also wrote a on the topic.

Yet the startup was hesitant to commit to raising more money. According to Larco, Sakkijha had told her that the company “didn’t really need” to fundraise, saying Mejuri was “extraordinarily capital efficient with most of its Series A still in the bank.” Sakkijha was also pregnant with twins when Larco had initially approached her about the Series B.

But Larco said she helped Mejuri understand the benefits that new capital could bring, and with Sakkijha limited in terms of travel, the Mejuri co-founder ended up pitching her company to NEA via video.

“I don’t think anyone had ever presented over video conference before,” Larco told Crunchbase News. “But as more VCs look at investing in female founders in their 30s, there’s going to be a high probability they might be pregnant.”

The NEA team was won over, and the deal got done.

“I think there’s space for companies that advertise and speak to women,” Larco said.

The new capital will go toward an offline expansion, international growth, and “continued investments in brand and infrastructure,” according to the company. Specifically, Sakkijha told Crunchbase News that Mejuri will be opening new stores and pop-ups in the US and Canada.

The company will also continue to hire, having grown its headcount to more than 130 people compared to 25 at this time last year, spread across its offices in Toronto, New Yor and Buenos Aires.

Note: This post was updated post-publication to include information provided by Mejuri.

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According to the filing, the first sale has “yet to occur” and the offering should not take more than one year.

Menlo Park-based NEA has made more than since its inception in 1977, more than one-third of them, according to Crunchbase data. It made nine investments in February alone, including participating in $93 million and ’s $80 million . Generally, it likes to invest in biotech, health care and software companies although its portfolio is varied.

NEA has also seen more than 300 over time, including , and .

The filing lists the firm’s 10 general partners, including , , , , , , ,, , and .

Crunchbase News reached out to NEA seeking comment and will update the story once they get back to us.

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