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One such company is Austin-based , which has developed an agile leasing platform and network. The startup just raised $8 million in Series A funding led by of (who鈥檚 also backed the likes of and ). Breyer is contributing $5 million of the capital. , the venture arm of commercial real estate brokerage giant , put up the remaining $3 million. The financing brings Swivel鈥檚 to $14.6 million, according to its 附近上门 profile.

Swivel raised an $850,000 seed round in 2016 and then another $1 million in June 2017. In 2018, the company in what Swivel founder and president described as a Seed 2 round.

The startup has been testing its model across Texas, mostly in Austin and some in Dallas and Houston.

鈥淓verything seems to be proven right and working,鈥� Harmon told 附近上门 News. 鈥淪o we raised this round to scale up nationwide.鈥�

How it works

founded Swivel in late 2016 with some initial incubation capital from . He and Floodgate Co-Founder had started and sold a software company together in the late 1990s called , and decided they wanted to work together again.

They both ,鈥� Harmon said, and felt like the commercial real estate office market needed to be disrupted.

So how does it work? Pre-qualified member companies can contract with Swivel鈥檚 landlord partners for turnkey office space on flexible terms with little or no upfront capital expenditure and no lease lock-in.

Landlords use the company鈥檚 agile leasing platform to backstop their leases for member companies. (I wrote about a similar startup, Landing, recently that is focused on flexible apartment leases). Using Swivel, leases are typically a 12-month commitment with a maximum of four years.

Clients are able to use Swivel鈥檚 software to configure and design the space however they want; most offices are between 3,000 and 10,000 square feet. Companies need only to give 60 to 90 days notice before moving out and then are not charged any penalties or move-out fees, and don鈥檛 have to deal with subleasing.

Since its network launch in 2019, Swivel has signed up over 30 landlords representing more than 150 properties across Austin, Dallas and Houston.

What it is and what it鈥檚 not

Harmon is quick to point out that unlike other flexible workspace operators such as or , Swivel is not a landlord. It does not lease space.

鈥淲e鈥檙e more like a VRBO for office space,鈥� he told me. 鈥淧eople who own properties use our technology and platform to lease to new tenants on more flexible terms. Landlords make the money and share their profits with us.鈥�

For example, a landlord can open up two floors in a building specifically to be listed via Swivel. They can charge a (10 to 20 percent higher) price per square foot because of the flexible terms, but it will still come out to about half the cost of a co-working space, Harmon said. Swivel will completely furnish the space, and 鈥渢he building becomes more valuable,鈥� according to Harmon.

鈥淲e work with hundreds of landlords,鈥� Harmon said, 鈥渁nd we allow them to make more money by bringing a different kind of client into their building and providing a new class of service.鈥�

Swivel is also not out to replace commercial real estate brokers, opting instead to partner with them so it saves money on marketing as well. It works out well for all involved, Harmon said.

Looking ahead

Swivel鈥檚 target market is tech-enabled companies in their growth phase, which make up about half of the tenants leasing through its platform. (It works with tenants such as Dremio, Graylog, Guideline 401k, hOp, Plivo, Samcart, TalentRobot, and Vertify.)

The process is a more appealing one to tech upstarts that simply prefer a more digital process in general.

鈥淭hey鈥檙e just used to flexibility and that sort of convenience in other parts of their lives,鈥� Harmon said.

But Swivel has also helped a number of multinational companies that require flexibility for their satellite offices.

The company plans to use its new capital primarily to expand across the U.S. in 2020. It is in talks with landlords in Boston, New York, Northern Virginia, Charlotte, N.C., Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Utah, Denver and San Francisco.

鈥淓xpansion cities are a finite list and expand based on how our landlord partnerships unfold,鈥� Harmon said. 鈥淟andlord partners will determine the order and timing of opening up each market.鈥�

For his part, Breyer believes Swivel’s business model is an ideal approach to help landlords be able to meet the evolving needs of tenants.

“As a VC, one of my mantras [to portfolio companies] is ‘don’t sign anything longer than two years,’ ” Breyer told me. “Real estate hasn’t kept up with that, as the leasing business hasn’t yet been tech-enabled, particularly in very important markets, like Silicon Valley and Austin.”

In general, he also believes flexible leases will become more and more important in general given workforce needs.

“The next generation thinks about flexibility first and foremost,” Breyer told me. “Swivel gives landlords the opportunity to attract the tenants of the future.”

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To quickly recap, we talked with Accel, #Angels, BBG Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, The Engine, Floodgate, Homebrew, Lerer Hippeau, NFX, UnCork Capital and UpWest.听Here is the customized 附近上门 Pro list of organized by last equity funding amount from smallest to largest.听

Vas Natarajan: Partner, Accel

Natarajan pointed to , a site reliability engineering platform that addresses those instances when a company鈥檚 site goes down, potentially costing millions of dollars in lost revenue.

led the seed in 2018. Blameless raised a in March 2019 led by Accel and .

鈥淲hat Blameless is building is a command and control for engineers, DevOps leaders, product leaders to be able to collaborate by Slack, pull in all the relevant metrics that they’re seeing from different infrastructure monitoring problems, and then push fixes as quickly as possible.鈥澨� said Natarajan.

Secondly is , a data privacy technology company that raised a in April 2019 from Accel.

Every technology company needs to know where their users are logging in from around the globe, and the laws of that country. 鈥淭hat is a whole set of infrastructure solutions, and front end consumer facing tools that Transcend will build and sell for any company,鈥� said Natarajan. 鈥淚f you go to privacy.trulia.com or privacy.hoteltonight.com, I as an end user can see your privacy policy, I can log in and see what data you’ve collected on me and then I can hit delete. Transcend powers all that.鈥�

Jana Messerschmidt and Katie Stanton: Founding Team #Angels

The #Angels founders have their eyes on , a marketplace that matches celebrities with consumers for personalized video shoutouts. Cameo raised a $50 million Series B in June 2019 led by .

鈥淭he consumer will script what they want the celebrity to say. So it could be a happy birthday message. It could be an engagement message. It could be congratulations on your job promotion. Whatever you want it to be. And then the celebrity decides whether they want to fulfill it. The celebrity also sets their price. You have everything from cameos for $25 all the way up to slots charging a few thousand dollars,鈥� said Stanton.

Next is that helps women track their fertility at a fraction of the cost. Modern Fertility raised ain June 2019 led by of . 鈥淭hey’ve helped demystify fertility, and giving you more power towards understanding how fertile am I right now?鈥� said Stanton.

Susan Lyne: Co-founder, BBG Ventures

鈥� is a marketplace for very large farms to sell the 30 percent of produce that gets ploughed under, because it doesn’t meet cosmetic standards for grocery,鈥� said Lyne who invested in its seed round. Full Harvest connects large farms to food businesses. led its in August 2018.

Then there is .

鈥淕oTenna allows you to send a text message and your location when there is no wireless coverage, no cell coverage, nothing. It was really developed initially for rock and roll concerts, and off-grid sports,鈥� said Lyne. Since its early days it has been adapted for more critical use. 鈥淚t’s just a great communications protocol that allows anyone to communicate in a disaster.鈥�

Lyne invested in GoTenna鈥檚 seed round back in 2013. Most recently it has raised a in June 2019 led by .

Ted Wang: Partner, Cowboy Ventures

is an AI platform for accounting firms to automate routine tasks.

鈥淲hat you鈥檙e really stopping humans from doing is reading and typing. This makes people more effective in their jobs. I can’t imagine anyone is going to be unhappy about not having to do that,鈥� said Wang.

Vic.ai raised an in September 2019 led by .

鈥� is a company that currently has a product that looks at your job postings, and is able to analyze the text of the job postings and help you to write them in a way that they’ll be more effective,鈥� said Wang. 鈥淵ou can send a posting through the Textio system, and it will send you an augmented version of the same text with suggested changes or highlights.鈥�

Textio raised a in June 2017 led by .

Katie Rae: CEO, The Engine

鈥� is miniaturising a fusion plant with an invention that allows them to get to net positive energy,鈥� said Rae of this fusion energy company built on top of decades of research. 鈥淲e believe what they’ve invented will allow you to get there. If that’s true, you basically have endless clean energy. This is a team that has already proven out a bunch of the most significant milestones, and will continue to do that over the next two to three years.鈥�

Commonwealth Fusion raised a in June 2019 led by , with , , and along with other investors.

Next up is , a company that develops technologies to engineer human primary cells and iPSC’s for both discovery and clinical manufacturing of advanced therapies. According to Rae, 鈥淭hey looked at the biotech industry and asked, 鈥榃hy are there PhDs basically injecting things into cells?鈥� Would there be a way to speed this up in the biotech industry by ten thousand X?鈥�

Kytopen raised a in May 2019 led by and .

Iris Choi: Partner, FloodGate

has built software for simulation testing of autonomous vehicles. Applied Intuition raised its Series B of $40 million led by in September 2019.

鈥淚nstead of physically having to run autonomous vehicles in Arizona in a quarantined off area, you can do billions of test runs, in various scenarios, using software. There is a benefit to having a mutual third party, instead of everyone building it in-house whether you are an OEM or a rideshare provider. This is only going to become increasingly necessary in the future,鈥� said Choi.

Another company worth watching is , which offers business owners a simple procurement app for their daily supplies, reducing time spent on managing their inventory, and helping lower waste. Cheetah last raised its in October 2018 led by and .

Satya Patel and Hunter Walk: Homebrew Founders

鈥溙� was started by two brothers, one who was a Navy Seal and the other who was an engineer at MIT. And the brother who was a Navy Seal came back for his tour of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he came to the realization that none of his colleagues, fellow soldiers died in battle,鈥� said Patel.

鈥淭hey died when they were doing reconnaissance into areas where there was no information about the building or the terrain that they were going into. And it seemed crazy to him that that can鈥檛 be solved in some different way. And so he got together with his brother, and they decided to build a company called Shield AI, which is developing fully autonomous drones for the public sector. These drones can by themselves navigate into buildings and caves. Collect intelligence about what’s going on inside through thermal cameras, regular cameras and then communicate that back to people who can do analysis on it,鈥� said Patel.

鈥淪hield AI is a company that has such a powerful mission around ensuring the safety of civilian and military lives.鈥�

Shield AI raised a $25 million Series B in August 2019 led by .

Also on his radar is , which听 creates software infrastructure for any software company to become a payments company. Finix raised a in July 2019 led by .

鈥淲e think of it as democratizing access to a financial services infrastructure, helping a whole generation of software companies create more value for themselves and their employees and their customers,鈥� said Patel.

Eric Hippeau: Co-founder, Lerer Hippeau

is an AI powered app for personalized health information

鈥淭hey can answer pretty precisely all your health questions. If you use the app then you have the choice of very quickly getting on in a telemedicine way talking to an experienced doctor,鈥� said Hippeau.

鈥淚t’s also a B2B business where you’ll see it appear at the front end to a number of different kinds of service providers, who would rather have something like this, as the first point of contact. It might be a hospital or it might be a clinic so that they can better direct the patient to the right service,鈥� said Hippeau.

K Health last raised ain December 2018 led by , and .

Also up is , which automates retirement plans for small to medium sized companies. 鈥淭hey basically offer a very easy, low cost for SMBs. It’s really low cost,鈥� said Hippeau. 鈥淭hey do all this hard work for about $8 per employee per month. And so they now originate a huge percentage of all new 401K plans in the United States.鈥�

Guideline raised their in December 2018 led by .

James Currier: Co-founder, NFX

New York-based centers on financial products in the real estate sector.

鈥淭hey allow people to buy residential houses for cash,鈥� said Currier. 鈥淩ibbon gives the cash for two to eight weeks for the transition to take place and then the home buyer gets a mortgage. It really helps when you want to buy a home before you sell your other one.鈥�

Ribbon raised a led by 听 in October 2019.

is the largest repository of in the world, for disease detection. 鈥淭hey’ve created a platform play, and then they’re working with pharma and agricultural companies to develop diagnostics and therapies to edit change in a responsible way,鈥� said Currier.

Mammoth Biosciences raised its in June 2018 led by the .

Jeff Clavier: Founder, Uncork Capital

鈥� is a hardware company that makes air purification technology for allergy, asthma or respiratory disease,鈥� said Clavier. 鈥淚t has a huge potential market. When you think about pollution in India and China this is a big market.鈥�

Molekule raised their in November 2018 led by .

Another on the watchlist is , a chat inbox for teams. 鈥淐ompanies can aggregate a bunch of email, text accounts and any communication into one single chat inbox where teams can collaborate and have way more efficient customer support,鈥� said Clavier.听 Front raised a led by in 2018.

Shuly Galili: Co-Founder, UpWest

is a company automating accounts payable to decrease time spent chasing invoice approval. Stampli raised a in October 2019 led by .

鈥淭hey’re dealing with customers who have thousands and thousands of invoices, are inundated with paperwork, with a paper trail, with not knowing where the invoice started, and when is it going to be paid,鈥� said Galili. Customers include retailers through to companies that have many outsourced vendors.

Also up is , a cybersecurity startup that addresses the risks in a company鈥檚 IT systems. CyCognito recently raised an funding in Nov 2019 led by .

鈥淭he attack surface has changed because it’s no longer just the technology that is on your laptop. There are many ways that servers, mobile technologies, customer lists and credit cards are being exposed today,鈥� said Galili. CyCognito monitors these shadow risks an IT team might not be aware of to minimize exposure to attack.

Pro Tip. 附近上门 Pro subscribers can save this to their account to track changes over time, and get alerts.听

To Note: Some of the investors mentioned in this article are 听

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