Winter Newsletter
4 calling birds, 3 new investments, 2 turtle doves...
After a travel-packed December which saw members of our investment committee venturing to India, Vietnam, and Puerto Rico, among other places, the Armory team returned stateside rejuvenated and eager to invest capital into high growth opportunities in 2024. Thus far, we’ve been quick off the blocks, with three new investments to announce:
Machinery Partner (MP) raised $11m, completing a Series A (led by Armory). The company’s intent is to scale into the Amazon of construction equipment. Having already expanded into 35 states, MP is poised to lead the digital transformation of the heavy machinery industry.
Multiplayer raised a $3m seed round to help backend developers design, develop, and manage distributed software better with AI. As the name suggests, Multiplayer enables developers to collaborate in realtime, and in this sense is redolent of Figma, the industry-leading collaborative design tool. With the beta launching in 2024, we’re delighted to welcome Steph Johnson, Tom Johnson, and the rest of the Multiplayer team into the ASV family.
Compyl raised a $3.75m seed round (led by Armory) to accelerate its growth in the information security space, where it serves to crack open silos and automate continuous compliance. As a seasoned former CISO, founder/CEO Stas Bojoukha knows firsthand how challenging it can be for security leaders to maintain visibility and compliance across byzantine tech stacks. Compyl provides a single pane of glass for risk assessment and informed decision-making. We’re thrilled to work closely with the Compyl team moving forward.
Prior to departing for Delhi, Somak appeared alongside Vikas Mehta on the Billion Dollar Moves podcast to discuss the origin story of ACV Auctions. Stay tuned for that episode to drop any day now, and keep an eye out for more deep dives and opinion posts from the ASV team, drilling down into the nuts and bolts of venture capital, entrepreneurship, and B2B marketplaces. Moving forward, Armory’s collective writings will be housed under the banner of our Substack, Table Stakes. In one of our most recent blog posts, Somak dished advice on how founders ought to approach conversations with venture capitalists, while Pia and Preston surveyed the waves of incoming creativity and capital transforming Upstate New York. (Speaking of which: 8B Education Investments was honored as the Venture Investment of the Year by the Upstate Capital Association, in recognition of the hard work and impressive traction shown by CEO Lydiah Bosire and her team).
Portco Updates
Armory Square portfolio companies have been growing and evolving their product offerings. Heretto won awards recently for its CCMS (content management tools) and company folk speak regularly to enthusiasts about updates to their tools. They recently also partnered with Jami, a large software company that helps organizations manage and secure an Apple experience, the only one in the world to provide a complete management and security solution for an Apple-first environment that is enterprise secure, consumer simple, and protects personal privacy. Jami publishes 9,000 pages monthly.
Qualifi, which streamlines hiring solutions with proprietary software, has seasoned recruiters discuss the art of hiring on its regularly scheduled podcast “Hire Quality.” The show examines how recruitment can hinge on the solutions you deploy to identify talent and is available for download on Apple Podcasts.
Armory Square Prize
The Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation heads into its second year this month, and we’re pleased to announce our jurors. Jason Grunebaum, Shahnaz Habib, Daisy Rockwell, Arunava Sinha, and Armory’s own Pia Sawhney will reprise their roles on this year’s jury, while also welcoming newcomers Sawad Hussain and Deena Chalabi into the fold. Sawad is an acclaimed translator from Arabic whose work in 2023 was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. Deena is a strategist, curator, and writer who currently serves as Senior Director of Growth and Partnerships at The OpEd Project. Deena also teaches curatorial practice at the California College of the Arts.
To apply for the prize as a literary translator working in a South Asian language, visit the prize page on our website. We plan to announce guidelines soon. Submissions for this year’s prize will close in April.
Jobs in our Network
Machinery Partner is hiring for a slew of hybrid and remote roles, spanning software engineering, product management, and service positions.
Compyl is hiring for hybrid roles across sales, marketing, channel, design, and software engineering.
Forge Buffalo compiles job openings across a number of top-tier companies, including ACV Auctions.
Upcoming Events
Upstate Capital’s 2024 Investor Outlook — Buffalo — Feb 15
3 Rivers Venture Fair Launch Event — Pittsburgh — Feb 21
ASV B2B Marketplace Summit — NYC — Spring
Armory will be hosting a conference bringing together industry-leading experts to demystify the dynamics of building B2B marketplaces. Final details will be announced soon!
About ASV
Armory Square Ventures (ASV) is a returns-oriented, mission-focused technology venture capital firm based in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. We created the company to seed greater opportunities and jobs for those living in our region and across the Midwest. Over the past decade, ASV has catalyzed the creation of over 2,500 jobs in Upstate New York. We like to say we are an optimism engine for secondary cities and a community catalyst for regions outside Silicon Valley. As a firm, we are also enriched and nourished by individuals from a range of backgrounds, who are all passionate about uplifting and inspiring growth across America's smaller cities.
• Stage: Seed & Series A
• Location: Management based in New York State and/or other emerging cities across the US
• Check Size: $1M - $3M in the first round with plenty of reserves for follow-on capital
• Business Profile & Model: Software, mobile, or technology-enabled services (emphasis on B2B) with repeatable, recurring, or transaction-based revenue models
• Market: Addressable markets of at least $1B+
• Team: Full-time technical/product leader and sales/marketing leader
• Traction & Unit Economics: Prototype of product deployed with a small sample size of customers; capital efficient
We’re hard at work scouting new investments. If you or someone you know has startup questions, reach out to either Anthony or Preston (emails below). We are actively investing out of our third fund and look forward to sharing more on it as it continues to take shape.
Best wishes in the meantime.
The Armory Square Ventures Team
Get in Touch
Have an opportunity to discuss, or want to talk startups?
Anthony Santaro - anthony@armorysv.com
Preston DeGarmo - preston@armorysv.com