企业在线问答公司AnswerDash（Qazzow）获得种子轮290万美金融资AnswerDash成立于2012年，总部位于美国西雅图。
AnswerDash通过技术嵌入功能答案帮助企业更好地回答消费者的问题，从而帮助企业削减相应的用户支持开支，同时保持用户不流失。
本轮融资由Voyager Capital 领投，Arnold Venture Group、Summit Capital、The W Fund、WRF Capital跟投。
UW spinout AnswerDash raises $2.9M to support growth of online contextual help platform
What started as an idea inside the Information School at the University of Washington is now a full-fledged business that’s raising cash from venture capital firms.
UW-spinout AnswerDash today announced a $2.9 million seed investment round led by Voyager Capital, with participation from existing investors WRF Capital, Summit Capital, the W Fund, and Arnold Venture Group.
AnswerDash, formerly known as Qazzow, wants to fundamentally change how online businesses answer questions that customers might have.
Rather than forcing people to comb through an FAQ or use a written-based solution like email or live chat, AnswerDash’s technology embeds answers within a website’s functionality.
The company helps its clients offer customers instant, contextual answers to a question they may have while browsing a given web page on desktop or mobile. When a user clicks on something they have a question about — this could be an image, link, header, etc. — AnswerDash employs a machine learning search process to retrieve the most relevant questions and answers.
The idea is to reduce the amount of time customers search for answers online, ultimately helping businesses improve the consumer experience while retaining revenue that previously could have been lost due to user frustration.
“By enabling users to quickly and easily find their own answers to commonly asked questions, AnswerDash prevents costly and repetitive help requests that would otherwise arrive via e-mail, phone or live chat,” explained CEO Bill Colleran. “AnswerDash also reduces the likelihood that online shoppers will abandon their shopping activity because they fail to receive answers to their questions simply and intuitively.”
Colleran, a former longtime CEO of Impinj, joined AnswerDash in June when he replaced co-founder Jake Wobbrock, who started AnswerDash back in 2012 with fellow UW professor Andrew Ko and their Ph.D student, Parmit Chilana.
AnswerDash co-founders Jake Wobbrock and Andrew Ko.Wobbrock and Ko have held the CEO and CTO roles, respectively, at AnswerDash for the past three years —Chilana went on to become a professor at the University of Waterloo — but will return to their careers in academia this fall.
Wobbrock told GeekWire that “this was always a planned transition.” The co-founders will remain involved with AnswerDash in an advisory capacity, while Wobbrock will serve as a board observer.
“Our goal as academic co-founders was to take the technology we created out into the world,” he said. “We wanted to get the startup going, get it funded, build a great launch team, refine our product, and get customers and value proof-points. Once we had achieved this, we knew that the best people to take the company to the next level would be seasoned industry executives with years of experience building companies and taking products to market.”
The leadership baton is now passed to Colleran, who previously spent 14 years leading RFID technology-maker Impinj, and VP of Engineering Kevin Knoepp, who joined the team in January after spending more than two decades as a back-end technology executive.
“AnswerDash will continue its evolutionary arc from a small, research-based product team to a vibrant, innovative and fast-growing SaaS company,” noted Colleran.
Colleran said that the company has “matured dramatically” since starting three years ago. Now that the startup has established product-market fit — it has “dozens of customers” like Chef, PetHub, and PipelineDeals — it will use the fresh cash to expand its sales and marketing efforts while continuing to improve the AnswerDash platform.
Colleran has lofty ambitions for AnswerDash, which makes money with a tiered subscription model based on the amount of usage its tool gets and also produces unique analytics to clients that can provide insight into what types of questions customers are asking while browsing through a given website.
“AnswerDash’s service enables more efficient, succinct and clear communication over the web and on mobile devices, so over time our market will grow to include almost every website and mobile app,” he said. “That’s a huge opportunity.”
Total funding for the 13-person company is now $5.3 million.
来源：GeekWire
种子轮
2015年09月16日
种子轮
Qwilr 获种子轮融资，可将商业文件转变成更吸引人的网页
Qwilr 是一款工具，目标人群是那些花费数小时制作 PowerPoint 文件，在发送出去之后只想知道究竟有没有人去下载这些文件来看的人。这个平台可以让人们把商业文件轻松转变为网页，反过来也让用户能够使用分析等各种有用工具。
这家位于悉尼的初创公司在种子轮获得了 50 万澳元的投资（约合 39.5 万美元），投资者包括 Sydney Seed Fund 和 Macdoch Ventures。
公司联合创始人马克·唐纳（Mark Tanner）说 Qwilr 是介于 Google Docs 和 Squarespace 之间的产品。Google Docs 的创建和分享都很容易，但要个性化很难。Squarespace 让非开发者也能创建具有吸引力的网页，但如果用户想要创建多个同一类文件，就不得不重复做过多的工作。
“我们最大的用户在他们的账户里存有超过 1000 个文件，但人们不会在每次要做演示文件的时候都打开 Squarespace。人们不需要制作一个全新的网站，但这正是 Qwilr 发挥作用的地方。”曾经是谷歌战略合作伙伴开发经理的唐纳说道。
唐纳和另一名创始人迪伦·巴斯坎（Dylan Baskind）创建 Qwilr 的动机来自巴斯坎此前作为一名自由开发者和设计师所遭遇的一些问题。为了从那些有一整个部门来支持演示文稿创建的大机构中脱颖而出，巴斯坎为自己的演示和提案从头建立了一个网站模板。这帮助他获得了大项目，而巴斯坎决定让那些没有网页开发工具的人也能制作网站。
像其他初创公司一样，Qwilr 面临的挑战是说服企业切换他们早已习惯的工具，尽管这些工具像 PowerPoint 那样繁琐不好用。为了获得用户，唐纳表示 Qwilr 重点是将功能都放入免费版。Qwilr 的模板允许用户上传文字和照片并且集成了谷歌地图、视频和各种云服务。它还有一个很方便的工具可以插入价格。
现在这家初创公司计划利用其种子资金打造产品的高级版本，增加更深层次的分析，添加客户与文档交互的功能，这包括电子签名和购买按钮。
唐纳说：“我们会逐步并且肯定会将网站的更多功能带给管理业务的非技术人员。”
Qwilr Gets Seed Funding To Turn Business Documents Into Attractive Websites
Qwilr is a tool for anyone who has sent out a PowerPoint deck they spent hours creating, only to wonder if anyone is even going to bother downloading it. The platform makes it easy to turn business documents into webpages, which in turn gives users access to analytics and other helpful tools.
The Sydney-based startup has landed AUD $500,000 (about $395,000) in seed funding from investors, including Sydney Seed Fund and Macdoch Ventures.
Co-founder Mark Tanner says Qwilr sits in the space between Google Docs and Squarespace. Google Docs are easy to create and share, but difficult to customize. Squarespace lets non-developers create attractive websites, but is too much work if you need to create the same type of documents, like pitch decks, over and over again.
“Our biggest users have over a thousand documents in their accounts and you wouldn’t go into Squarespace each time you do a pitch or presentation. You wouldn’t just make up a whole new website, but that is what Qwilr is for,” says Tanner, who was formerly a strategic partner development manager at Google.
Tanner and co-founder Dylan Baskind were inspired to create Qwilr by the frustrations Baskind dealt with as a freelance developer and designer. To stand out from big agencies with entire departments dedicated to creating presentations, Baskind built a website template from scratch for his pitches and proposals. They helped him land big jobs, and Baskind decided to make the process accessible for people without web development tools.
Like other enterprise startups, Qwilr faces the challenge of convincing businesses to switch over from tools they are accustomed to, even if those tools are cumbersome and annoying, like PowerPoint. In order to acquire users, Tanner says Qwilr focused on packing features into its free version. Qwilr’s templates let you upload text and photos and integrate Google Maps, videos, and various cloud services. It also has a handy tool for inserting price quotes.
Now the startup plans to use its seed funding to build its premium version by adding deeper analytics and features that allow clients to interact with documents, including e-signatures and buy buttons.
“We’re slowly but surely bringing more features of the web and putting them into hands of non-technical people who run businesses,” says Tanner.
来源：techcrunch.cn
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关注员工健康是趋势 促进企业员工运动的应用 Yomp 完成种子轮融资
位于伦敦、此前名为 PleaseCycle 的健康创业公司 Yomp 已从 5 名天使投资人处融资 31.5 万美元（20 万英镑）。该公司将利用这笔资金去拓展其健康平台，这一平台帮助企业员工以游戏的方式形成良好的健康习惯。
Yomp 的平台设计能鼓励企业员工参与运动，从而提高效率，降低缺勤率，让你能喜欢你的老板。
Yomp 的移动应用能记录距离，追踪数据，帮助用户组建团队，设置目标，并赢得积分。这就像是健康市场的 AirMiles。这些数据随后可以换取在线折扣券，奖励，或是向慈善组织的捐款。
已签约使用该应用的公司包括电通安吉斯传媒、彭博社和 EDF Energy，前者已经在 9 个国家部署了这款应用。
Yomp 现年 26 岁的创始人及首席执行官莱伊·摩根（Ry Morgan）表示：“我们此前一直小本经营，利润微薄。不过目前，随着资本的注入，我们将推动业务向前发展。”
Yomp 的竞争对手包括 Global Corporate Challenge、Keas（谷歌前高管创立的一家公司，已实现高速增长）、EveryMove、GetHealth、MaxwellHealth，以及 Challenge forChange / Love2Ride。
这些“量化自我”公司也开始探索 B2B 市场，例如 Jawbone 近期推出 了“Up for Groups”。
传统的员工福利及医疗健康提供商也来到了这一市场，不过它们已经落后，例如 PruHealth 的 Vitality。
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Yomp, An App To Get Employees Fit And Healthy, Raises An Angel Round
Londonbased health startup Yomp, formerly known as PleaseCycle, has raised $315,000 (£200,000) from five angel investors, to expand its heath and wellness platform which ‘games’ company employees into healthy habits.
Yomp’s platform is designed to encourage physical activity amongst a company’s employees, helping to increase productivity, reduce absenteeism and make you like your bosses (ok, maybe not that last bit).
A mobile app logs trips, tracks stats, lets you form teams, set goals and earn points – like an AirMiles for being healthy. These are then used to get online discounts, win prizes, or give donations to charity.
Companies signed up to use the app include Dentsu Aegis Media, Bloomberg and EDF Energy, with the former deploying it in nine countries.
Ry Morgan, Yomp’s 26 year-old Founding CEO, says, “We’ve built everything to-date on a shoestring and retained profits, but we’re now at a stage where an influx of capital will help drive the business forward.”
Competitors to Yomp include the incumbent in the space, Global Corporate Challenge, Keas (ex-Google founders with huge growth), EveryMove, GetHealth, Maxwell Health (bigger remit but similar budgets) and Challenge for Change / Love2Ride .
The QS companies are also starting to explore the B2B space, such as Jawbone’s recent launch of “Up for Groups”.
Traditional employeebenefit and healthcare providers are also in this space too, although they’re lagging behind, such as PruHealth’s Vitality.
来源：techcrunch
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