Our Companies

PaperG
PaperG is a local online advertising company founded by a group of Yale and Harvard students in March 2007. Setting out to overcome the economic issues facing local media, the founding team came from diverse backgrounds in college newspapers, dotcom startups, and even microfinance. Looking at the most popular ways of exchanging local information, PaperG innovated upon the concept of the bulletin board to produce the Flyerboard, a virtual bulletin board for local online advertisements.

In 2008, the company moved into the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute incubation space and raised venture capital to expand on its vision for the local space.  TopFloor Capital invested in the seed financing of PaperG.

YouRenew

YouRenew.com is the easiest, fastest and greenest way to turn your old electronic devices into cash. We’re pioneering a field called “ReCommerce” — making it easier for people to get the most out of everything they buy and cut down on the waste going into our landfills.

Top Floor Capital led the seed financing round for YouRenew.

Zeo

Zeo Inc., formerly known as Axon Labs, was started by a group of sleep-deprived students at Brown University. Looking for a way to fight grogginess and perform at a higher level during the day, we learned that the stage of sleep from which a person awakens has a huge influence on how that person feels in the morning. So we developed a comfortable way to track sleep and help people wake up “on the right side of the bed.”

When consumers tried our new way to wake up they became fascinated with their personal sleep data and asked us for more sleep education and sleep tips. That’s when the idea of the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach was born. Creating Zeo has required more than five years of invention, engineering innovation, and rigorous consumer testing, all the while incorporating cutting-edge knowledge from the field of sleep science. Throughout this process, we’ve maintained our steadfast commitment to listen to people’s needs, questions, and hopes about sleep. We embrace that: The More You Know, The Better You Sleep™.

Top Floor Capital invested in the angel round of financing for ZEO. Subsequently the company has raised financing from Trident Capital and iD Ventures.

Continuity Engine
Continuity Engine makes the software that makes compliance easy.
Business veterans know that the vital stuff is the small stuff: the daily notes and plans that end up on scattered papers, spreadsheets, or coffee shop napkins. These daily details are the lifeblood of community banks and credit unions.

Our mission is to help you gather those details and automate those daily processes that are so crucial to modern regulatory compliance. Our suite of simple solutions is designed just for community financial institutions. Control ActionPacks make it easy to target those “inbetween” areas so often missed by traditional corporate software.

Top Floor Capital participated in the seed financing of Continuity Engines and introduced the company to fellow investor First Round Capital.

EkoVenture

EkoVenture is a social marketplace for experiential travel, giving you access to more than 10,000 trips from approved operators around the world or in your own backyard. Whether that’s exploring California’s wineries by bicycle for the day, taking a cultural tour in Thailand, or a two week safari in Kenya – we make it accessible. Our community of travelers share reviews, blogs, photos, videos, and more. The ekoVenture Guru network includes more than 100 of the world’s top experts across travel, adventure, and conservation – they collectively bring their wisdom to share with our community. We enthusiastically donate 10% of our profits to support local communities through initiatives such as providing clean drinking water, preserving our reefs and rainforests, and much more. We wholeheartedly believe in doing everything we can to change the world through experiential travel.

Tactics II Stem Cell Ventures

Tactics II Stem Cell Ventures General Partner manages investments in companies industrializing human pluripotent stem cell technologies.

In the November 20, 2007, online edition of the prestigious journal Science, Dr. James A. Thomson of the University of Wisconsin revealed that his lab had turned back the developmental clock of ordinary skin cells and induced them to return to a pluripotent state. On the same day, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University published a similar study in the journal Cell. The pluripotent cell represents one of the earliest stages in human development and is found naturally in the human embryo. It is from these cells that all other human cells are formed. Drs. Thomson’s and Yamanaka’s discoveries demonstrated that normal human skin cells could be reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem cells (human iPS cells). This discovery, combined with Dr. Thomson’s previous breakthroughs in human embryonic stem cell research, ushers in a new era in medicine and human biological research.

This new iPS technology has two major implications. First, the methodology now exists that permits everyone to have his or her own personal stem cell line. Second, the ethical issues surrounding stem cells have been eliminated, because iPS lines are sourced from human skin cells, not embryos.

The iPS approach enables a small amount of an individual’s skin cells to be turned into unlimited supplies of pluripotent cells. Pluripotent stem cells are the only type of stem cells that now can be coaxed to change, or differentiate, into any of the over 220 somatic cell types in the human body. Further development of this technology creates the possibility that, in the future, any person could have a supply of personalized pluripotent stem cells from which there could be developed a supply of new personalized replacement somatic cells as desired for research and medical use.

We believe that companies dedicated to developing products and services based on the potential of these new technologies offer investors opportunities for sizeable returns. In the early 1980s, multiple companies were formed around the newly discovered genetic engineering technologies. These scientific breakthroughs lead to the founding of companies like Amgen and Genentech, and the formation of the biotech industry. The Managers believe that Dr. Thomson’s discoveries will have a similar impact and that we are on the cusp of a burgeoning new industry based on pluripotent stem cell technology.

Top Floor Capital is an LP in Tactics II.

Carnegie Speech

Carnegie Speech Company is the premier developer of software for assessing and teaching spoken language skills. Using state-of-the-art speech recognition and artificial intelligence technologies licensed from Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Speech enables cost-effective, scalable and personalized spoken language instruction that maximizes training effectiveness and minimizes training time. With years of linguistic research, world-class technology and language tutoring expertise, Carnegie Speech provides language training products to a diverse and global clientele.

Top Floor Capital participated in the Series A2 financing round of Carnegie Speech.  Other investors include In Q Tel.

InnRoad

innRoad is the first, and only, technology company to address the needs of independent hoteliers for an efficient, affordable solution that seamlessly integrates bookings, global distribution, property management and marketing all on a single, easy-to-use platform. Building on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery, low-cost subscription pricing and knowledgeable customer support, the company is revolutionizing the way hotel owner and operators manage their properties over the Internet – and helping them increase profits.

Top Floor Capital is an investor in InnRoad.

Finario

Finario provides a complete, integrated, web-based solution for capital investment planning, procurement, project management and performance analysis.

Top Floor Capital participated in the first round financing of Finario.

Pharmasecure

At PharmaSecure, our mission is twofold: to end the public health menace of pharmaceutical counterfeiting, and to help manufacturers communicate more effectively with their customers.

Our systems cut out counterfeiters by creating a simple, secure, and effective line of communication between manufacturers and consumers. The result is a permanent solution to counterfeiting, and unprecedented access to customers in hard-to-reach markets.

Top Floor Capital invested in PharmaSecure’s first round of financing. Other investors include the Life Science Angels.

Marinus Pharmaceuticals

Marinus is a specialty pharmaceutical company dedicated to the reformulation, development, and commercialization of novel drugs to treat serious neurological, psychiatric, and pain disorders. The Company’s lead product is a first in class therapy for epilepsy. Marinus Pharmaceutica’s investors include Domain Associates, Canaan Partners, Sofinnova Ventures and Foundation Medical Partners. The Company is located in Branford, Connecticut.

Top Floor Capital invested in the pre seed financing of Marinus Pharmaceuticals.  The company has subsequently raised $50 Million dollars from investors including Sofinova Ventures, Domain Associates, Canaan Partners, and Foundation Medical Partners.

GameChanger

Fungo Media’s first product, GameChanger, provides mobile apps that replace pencil-and-paper scorekeeping and online tools that distribute real-time game updates for amateur sports.

TopFloorCapital participated in the seed financing of Fungo Media.

SeeClickFix

SeeClickFix encourages residents to become citizens by participating in taking care of and improving their neighborhoods. We allow anyone to:

• See – see a non-emergency issue in your neighborhood
• Click – open a ticket describing the issue and what can be done to resolve it
• Fix – publicly report the issue to everyone for resolution

Top Floor Capital’s Miles Lasater is chairman of SeeClickFix and Top Floor Capital participated in the company’s seed financing round.