| Welcome to the Refinery Ventures Newsletter! We’re excited to bring you an announcement of our first Fund III investment. You’ll also find the team’s year in review and updates on our portfolio companies. Enjoy this month’s edition! |
Fund III First Investment: Champion HQ
We are excited to announce our first investment out of our third fund! Champion is a promising customer marketing platform startup based in Indianapolis, Indiana, that is leveraging AI insights to redefine customer advocacy in the B2B marketing space. The company provides an AI-powered platform to help businesses harness the power of their most loyal customers. Through this platform, companies can activate customer advocates to drive referrals, close deals faster, and enhance customer retention. Ultimately, Champion’s mission is to drive growth through existing customer bases. Champion’s tools enable marketers to build authentic relationships, scale customer-led growth, and unlock dormant revenue streams.
“We’ve known the Refinery team for a while and we really like their focus on hypergrowth leadership. We are excited to have them on board and think they can add a lot of value while helping us maintain all of our incredible momentum.”
– CEO Jeff Reekers
Champion was co-founded by Jeff Reekers, Gianna Scorsone, and Courtney Crispin. Prior to his work with Champion, Jeff was CMO at Aircall, a unicorn startup based out of New York. While he was there he worked with Gianna, who has similar hypergrowth experience. Courtney has been building transformative technology for decades.
The startup recently raised $3.3 million in seed funding, led by Flyover Capital and supported by other notable investors such as High Alpha and Bread & Butter Ventures. This funding will support further development of its AI infrastructure and expansion of its market presence.
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At the start of the year we saw one of our Fund II companies, Redi Health, raise a $14M Series B. We also had a great time co-hosting a Paradoxical Leadership Workshop with Dean Marianne Lewis from the University of Cincinnati for over 30 company leaders.
We spent the Summer months transitioning office spaces to our new office at 1434 Vine Street and settling into our new meeting spaces. Peter Schmidt took on a new role as Principal with Refinery. In August, we celebrated our Annual Meeting with our investors, leaders, and friends.
Fall brought a panel with Cincinnati leaders about the future of our region as part of Startup Cincy Week. The team traveled around the country, sharing Refinery in NYC, Chicago, Dallas, and the Bay Area. We also saw an exciting deal for one of our Fund II companies, Bitewell, and Kroger Health. We are closing out the year with our first investment of our third fund, Champion.
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News Across the Portfolio
Pete DeJoy Joins theCUBE at NYSE
Astronomer Co-Founder Pete DeJoy recently appeared on theCUBE at NYSE to discuss why DataOps is the new DevOps.
Story Cuts Announced
StoryTap has released their new searchable library of UGC videos that can be edited and compiled.
Coach Advisory Board Announced
Torch announced their new Coach Advisory Board that will support their coaching community, refine coaching strategies, and redefine great leadership.
New Gen AI Assistant Launched: Aime
TealBook introduced their new Gen AI assistant, Aime, built to enable procurement teams to manage and scale operations with actionable insights.
New VP Commercial Sales & Marketing
Armen Keuleyan has joined Vantage Robotics as the Vice President of Commercial Sales and Marketing. Armen brings two decades of experience selling drones and aerospace products.
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