RALEIGH – Venture investors like successful serial entrepreneurs, and that’s one reason AXA Ventures, backed by the second largest financial services company, led K4Connect’s recent $12 million B round with participation from Intel Capital, and Silicon Valley-based Sierra Ventures.
Raleigh-based K4Connect’s first product, K4Community, is designed to serve the residents, staff and operators of senior living communities. Integrating smart home, smart wellness and smart living technologies into a single easy-to-use system, K4Community makes any senior living community a “Smart Community.”
K4Community, the company says, brings together a plethora of advanced device, application and service technologies, making them accessible through both touch and voice technologies. It has filed for 20 patents on its platform technology.
Asked how he attracted Silicon Valley money to K4 Connect, F. Scott Moody, CEO and co-founder quipped, “I’d like to think it’s because of my unbelievable good looks and intelligence.”
Actually, however, the connections he made while CEO, co-founder and board chair of Florida-based AuthenTec, which raised $70 million, went public in 2007 and sold to Apple in 2012, helped bring Sierra aboard to lead K4’s seed round and continued support.
“Sierra invested in a team they knew had been successful,” Moody said. With the latest round, K4 Connect has raised a total of $22 million.
Previous investors that also joined the current round include: Stonehenge Growth Equity, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Traverse Venture Partners, Better Ventures and RGAX, LLC, a subsidiary of Reinsurance Group of America.
F. Scott Moody. K4 Connect photo.
AXA, a $275 million fund, invests in digital health technologies, among other tech sectors. “They focus on smart home, smart wellness, and smart living technologies, ” Moody said.
K4’s pitch: “By connecting with others, you lead a healthier, happier life.” A number of studies have shown that “The happier you are, the healthier you are.”
A mission oriented company
“The health and well-being of the world’s aging population is a key focus for us,” said Manish Agarwal, a general partner with AXA Venture Partners, in a statement. “We’ve looked at a number of impressive technologies designed specifically for older adults over the years, yet K4Connect is the first company we’ve seen that can bring all these disparate technologies together into a single solution, not only for the senior living community operators, but also for the residents and their families.”
“We’re a mission oriented company,” Moody said.
AXA will help K4 expand both nationally and globally, Moody said. Its current customer base includes over 13,000 residents across dozens of senior living communities from Florida to California
K4, which tripled its revenue and increased its headcount by 40 percent to 55 employees over the past year, expects to keep hiring, mostly locally, Moody said. “We have ten openings now.”
It also plans to use the new funds to further development of two other products K4Home, designed for older adults living in their own homes, and K4HomeCare, designed for care agencies.
Previously on WRAL TechWire:
Raleigh startup K4Connect raises $12M, will expand ‘smart home’ living center technology
