Recent

The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout drastically changed Americans’ attitudes and behavior at home and at work. Business and consumer practices have shifted substantially under COVID-19 as people and businesses adapt to a socially-distanced world. Origin Ventures attempted to gauge the impact of the pandemic and economic fallout on businesses and consumers and see which changes were likely to persist, and which would fall back to “business as usual.” ...

Transport accidents are the third-leading preventable cause of death in the United States, and they continue to climb. In 2019, there were 43,024 U.S. road fatalities – 11.5% of which involved trucks. The number of people who died in large truck crashes rose 27 percent from 2009 to 2013. Driving a car is one of the most dangerous activities Americans do regularly, and trucks are a large part of the ...

  We are pleased to announce Origin Ventures’ investment in Voxpopme, an enterprise software company that allows brands to capture video feedback to measure customer satisfaction and gather market research. Voxpopme enables brands to use the power of video – featuring full sight, sound, and motion – to better capture consumer sentiment in real-time. Origin Ventures led a $9M Series A financing. The company – whose name is derived from ...

In 2019, we celebrate our firm’s 20-year anniversary with 20 short storiesand lessons learned by investing over $150M in more than 70 companiesand the entrepreneurs behind their origin. These are their stories. Thank you, Mr. Muir Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.–John Muir John Muir (b. 1838 – d.1914) ...

In 2019, we celebrate our firm’s 20-year anniversary with 20 short storiesand lessons learned by investing over $150M in more than 70 companiesand the entrepreneurs behind their origin. These are their stories. We are very happy to announce three promotions at Origin Ventures:  Scott Stern to Vice President Prashant Shukla to Vice President Devon Leichtman to Director of Platform In 2016, Scott joined Origin Ventures as a Senior Associate and ...

The next time a budding musician searches “best violin teacher near me,” he or she may find a link to an app, not a teacher. Origin Ventures recently announced its participation in a $1.29M seed investment in Chicago-based startup Trala. Other investors include LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Techstars Ventures, and executives from Duolingo. The Techstars company has built an app that can teach anyone to play violin using Julliard-approved methodologies ...

We finally met a used-car salesman we liked. Justin Davis is CEO of Kansas City-based BacklotCars, and while he’s not selling cars directly, BacklotCars’ marketplace has made it much easier for auto dealerships to buy and sell used cars between each other. Car dealerships have long bought and sold used cars from each other directly, usually at live auctions. For example, Carl’s Cars, based in Milwaukee, can’t find buyers for ...

We first met Cameo in October 2017, when a one-hour introductory meeting with the founding team turned into a two-hour chalk talk. We liked it right away. Cameo is a Chicago-based company that allows consumers to purchase short video shout-outs from a long list of “talent” - celebrities, entertainers, and athletes. Two days after that initial meeting, I tried Cameo by booking a video from European soccer star Kevin Prince-Boateng ...

As Series A investors, a majority of our capital and attention goes towards helping our portfolio companies grow and scale their sales and marketing organizations. So we know firsthand the many challenges that marketers face, especially when marketing directly to consumers. As paid social advertising platforms have matured, they have become efficient at capturing a large percentage of the advertisers’ willingness to pay. In turn, companies are finding it difficult ...

WeWork has acquired our portfolio company Teem. Teem is a Salt Lake City-based software company that provides innovative meeting room scheduling and workplace analytics. Since we first met the company in 2015, Teem has installed their software in tens of thousands of office locations, and touched millions of users in some of the most innovative companies in the world – including Airbnb, LinkedIn, Snap, Palantir, Slack and Evite. Teem had ...