– Park Bench Solutions from Tampa, FL provides software that enables voice service providers using BroadWorks to evolve with new features, functionalities, and integrations.
– The company raised $1.5m in funding.
– The round was led by the company’s original angel investor from 2014.
– The new investment will be used to expand the company’s team in customer success, project management, API / web development, and marketing roles.

– Batgroup, the parent company of Batmaid, a Lausanne, Switzerland-based provider of online cleaning services, raised €23M in Series B funding.
– The round was led by Aevis Victoria.
– The company intends to use the funds for its international expansion into 21 cities in 15 countries.

– 401GO from San Francisco raised $9.2m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by Impression Ventures with participation from Signal Peak Ventures, and Stout Street Capital.
– The company intends to use the funds to scale operations, further enhance its platform, allow for new integrations with other small business services providers, and accelerate its financial advisors partner program.

– Blue J, the leading provider of predictive analysis tools for tax positions, announces that the company has raised US$9M in Series B financing led by Generation Ventures. The round includes participation from returning investors Relay Ventures, Mistral Venture Partners and LDV Partners.
– In conjunction with the financing, Geoff Beattie, Chairman of Generation Ventures, is joining Blue J’s board of directors.

– Deepbrain AI (formerly Moneybrain), a conversational AI startup based in Seoul, South Korea, has raised $44m in a series B round led by Korea Development Bank at a post-money valuation of $180m.
– The capital will be used to expand the company’s customer base and operations globally, CEO Eric Jang said in a statement, with a particular emphasis on the U.S.
– Deepbrain provides a range of AI-powered customer service products, but its focus is on “synthetic humans,” or human-like avatars that respond to natural language questions.

– LawVu, a cloud-based platform for legal teams, raised $17m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by Insight Partners with participation from returning investor AirTree Ventures.
– The company plans to hire key leadership roles in the U.S. for its global go-to-market strategy and open U.S. offices as it continues developing LawVu’s technology.

– CharismaQ is a coaching and communication platform based in Germantown, Wis.
– Company raised $1m in seed funding.
– Wisconsin-based insurance carrier West Bend Mutual Insurance provided the funding.
– The new capital will be used to accelerate platform development, marketing, sales, and coaching which will create the foundation for rapid growth and scale.

– Homebase announced its $71m Series C funding round to expand its products and services.
– With $109m in total funding to date, Homebase is also launching new innovative tools for HR and payroll that broaden its offering for small business owners and accelerate the company’s growth and expansion.
– This funding round was led by new investor, GGV Capital, and includes existing investors Bain Capital Ventures, Baseline Ventures, Bedrock Capital, Cowboy Ventures, and Khosla Ventures, and additional investor PLUS Capital.

– Comet Bio from London, Ontario CA- and Schaumburg, Illinois-based food technology company raised $22M in Series C funding.
– The round was led by Open Prairie with participation from Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), BDC Capital, Sofinnova Partners.
– The new investment will be used to meet the market demand for its ingredients.

– Belay, an Atlanta, GA-based virtual staffing company that offers assistants, bookkeepers, social media strategists, and website specialists services, received a strategic investment from private equity firm Tenex.
– The amount of the deal was not disclosed.
– The investment will enable the company to continue to expand operations and its business reach.

– Thumbtack, the modern home management platform, announced it has secured a $275 million investment at a valuation of $3.2 billion.
– The round was led by Qatar Investment Authority and joined by Blackstone Alternative Asset Management as well as G Squared.
– Prior investors Baillie Gifford, CapitalG, Founders Circle Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Tiger Global Management also participated.
– The new funding will be used to accelerate innovation, fuel the company’s growth, and drive continued adoption.
– The modern home is more connected, but home services remains one of the largest markets still in the early stages of moving to digital.

– YellowBird is a gig economy marketplace that matches vetted Risk and Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Professionals with businesses on-demand.
– The company raised $1.7m in convertible note seed funding.
– Backers included Ridge Peak Partners and Revelry Venture Partners.
– The company intends to use the funds to grow both internally with hiring and externally scaling markets across the country and further develop its Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform.

– Sharebite, the leading mission-driven food ordering platform built exclusively for workplaces, announced the completion of its $15m Series A funding round to drive exponential growth and further strengthen its leadership in the corporate food ordering space.
– Impact-driven and minority-led investment firm Lafayette Square led this round along with the founders and former executives of Seamless (now part of GrubHub) and Delivery Hero, the leading European food delivery platform.
– Sharebite’s laser-focus on developing food ordering solutions for the workplace has allowed it to establish a strong foothold within the larger food delivery space.

– Enterprise-focused email security company Tessian has raised $65m in a series C round of funding and announced plans to expand into communication conduits beyond email.
– Founded in 2013 as CheckRecipient before rebranding five years later, London-based Tessian solves a number of security headaches for enterprises like Arm, Prudential, Schroders, and Dentons.
– In its original guise, Tessian was largely focused on the misaddressed email problem, whereby a company employee accidentally sends an email to the wrong person.
– Today, Tessian offers a range of solutions across the email security spectrum, including threat prevention tools that cover business email compromise (BEC), account takeover (ATO), phishing, impersonation attacks, and more.

– Pilot, the largest provider of back office services for startups and small businesses in the U.S., announced today that it has closed on additional funding led by Bezos Expeditions (the personal investment company of Jeff Bezos) and Whale Rock Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, that increases the Series C to $100 million and doubles the company’s valuation to $1.2Bn.
– The additional funding enables Pilot to further expand its breadth of back office services that offload day-to-day distractions and allow small business owners and founders to focus on growth.

– BQE, a leading cloud-based software provider to professional service firms, recently announced that the company received a significant investment from Serent Capital, a growth-focused private equity firm that invests in technology and tech-enabled software companies.
– Founded by Shafat Qazi in 1995, BQE Software quickly became a leader in time billing and project management for professional service firms with its original product, BillQuick.
– After acquiring ArchiOffice and EngineerOffice in 2009, BQE solidified its foothold in the architecture and engineering industries, while expanding the company’s offerings to include project accounting and human resource management.

– Zego, an insurtech that got its start by offering flexible motorbike insurance for gig economy workers but has since expanded with a range of tech-enabled commercial motor insurance products, has raised $150m.
– The funding round was led by DST Global and joined by General Catalyst, whose founder and MD, Joel Cutler, joins Zego’s board.
– Notable investors include Wise’s Taavet Hinrikus, who is also on the Zego board, and Target Global, Balderton Capital and Latitude.
– The insurance company says it will use the funding to “rapidly expand across Europe and beyond”.
– It will also double its workforce, which currently stands at 265 employees, to over 500 employees by the end of 2021, and continue to invest in technology.

– Startek has successfully completed a debt refinancing with a newly secured $185m senior debt facility, comprising a $165m term loan and a $20m revolving credit facility.
– Borrowings under the new senior debt will bear a tiered interest rate, which is based on the Company’s consolidated net leverage ratio and is initially set at LIBOR plus 450 basis points.
– The term loan will have a moratorium on principal repayment for 21 months and will amortize quarterly thereafter, beginning November 2022.
– The loan is subject to certain standardized financial covenants.
– ING Bank N.V. and DBS Bank Ltd. served as underwriters for the new senior debt facility and were the lead lenders of the previous senior debt facility, which is now repaid in full.

– Pilot is a back office services company.
– The company raised $60m in Series C funding.
– Sequoia Capital led the round and joined by Index Ventures and Stripe.