While Newark Venture Partners’ (NVP) Demo Day featured 9 tech startups representing 9 countries, the NVP team’s remarks did not just extoll its global reach, rather they touched on community, women, outreach, and success. Managing partners Thomas Wisniewski and Dan Borok welcomed a highly enthused audience to Audible’s newly opened Innovation Cathedral this past Tuesday, sharing the key drivers that has made NVP successful.
The NVP team quantified its success, touting 65 portfolio company investments since its’ founding, of which 70% have raised follow-on capital and 26 have received either seed or Series A funding with $253 million raised. Those accomplishments and milestones has helped to solidify NVP’s key place in Newark’s growing entrepreneurial tech ecosystem. A number of companies having benefitted from NVP’s accelerator program are planting roots in Newark—part of NVP”s ongoing efforts to catalyze Newark as a tech hub while also supporting the needs of the local community.
The presenting graduates of NVP Labs 3-month bridge-to-seed program were: Augmented Review, EVŌ, PeduL, Riskcast, SensorTransport, SIRL, TalentWall, Time Study, and Vectorly. They represented a range of industries including HRTech, InsurTech, Video Compression, HealthTech, Supply Chain Tech, Marketplaces, Augmented Reality, and Wayfinding. These standout startups were selected from over 2,100 applicant companies.
The opening of The Innovation Cathedral under the leadership of Don Katz, Audible’s CEO, just a few blocks from NVP’s co-working space is part of Newark’s transformation and renewal to be a center of invention. The Cathedral, NVP Labs, Rutgers University, NJIT and the ongoing entry of co-working spaces such LaunchPad, Equal Space and others has injected energy into the local community that has made significant strides under the leadership of Mayor Ras Baraka.
The Demo Day prominently displayed the role of women, as Borok and Wisniewski noted that approximately 50% of the NVP portfolio has a woman as a founder or in a leadership position. In addition, the NVP team itself expanded to include two women in key roles: Allison Williams, Director of NVP Labs and Joanne Lin, a principal. Each had an opportunity to speak about the program and the important role of women in technology and entrepreneurship, while a panel about women leadership in startups included Anne Erni, Audible’s Chief People Officer; Lauren Sallata, CMO of Panasonic; Jen Valez, Executive VP of Community & Health at RWJBarnabas Health; and Shadae McDaniels, City Leader for the AllStars Project.
With so many elements pulling together, the NVP team shared its excitement about their future initiatives that will include a more intense and greater outreach across the country to bring the best talent to NVP and Newark. This aligns with one of NVP’s top goals which is to have a growing portfolio of successful startups that will bring jobs to the local community. NVP has furthered this goal through its earlier initiatives such as establishing relationships with over 500 mentors, creating corporate partnerships and building an investor base comprised of Audible, Prudential; Panasonic; Horizon; Rutgers University; RWJBarnabas; TD Bank; Dun & Bradstreet and others.
