Startup helps streamline those tedious office tasks
Envoy automates process of sorting, delivering parcels
Editor’s note: Here are three Bay Area startups worth watching this week.
San Francisco startup Envoy wants to modernize the mundane.
Its main product is a digital visitor registration form for office buildings, which replaces paper sign-in books. Its latest project: delivering packages.
Envoy Deliveries, which began this month, streamlines the task of sorting through packages and delivering them to employees. With Envoy, office managers can take a picture of the shipping label through an app, which will then automatically notify employees when they have a package.
Customers for Envoy Deliveries include Bay Area startups Lyft, Box and Slack.
“It’s another mundane task that before was super manual and not a very good experience,” said Jordan Stein, the company’s product marketing coordinator. “And that’s what Envoy does — we try to take these manual tasks and automate them.”
Enovy, founded in 2013, has 50 employees and $16 million in funding. It is not profitable, but CEO Larry Gadea said in an email that “we can be if we wanted to.”
“We have plenty of runway, and we’re aggressively investing in build-
“We’re aggressively investing in building out our current products ... and unifying everything.”
Larry Gadea, Envoy CEO
ing out our current products, more of them, and unifying everything,” he wrote. “It’ll be really exciting.”
Also trending:
Vungle
What it does: Helps developers place video ads in their apps.
What happened: Vungle has been in the news because CEO Zain Jaffer is facing serious criminal charges, including assault and sexual abuse of a child. The company said it ousted him swiftly after it learned of the charges.
Why it matters: After news of the charges broke this month, the company issued a statement saying that Jaffer’s actions were in “no way reflective of the almost 200 dedicated and hardworking people who work for Vungle.” How the company moves on will be closely scrutinized. It could not be reached for comment. Headquarters: San Francisco Funding: $25.5 million, according to Crunchbase.
Employees: 200.
SunFunder
What it does: Helps solar energy companies in developing countries through debt financing. What happened: SunFunder led its first syndication this month for an off-grid solar company, called SolarNow, in Uganda, according to Cindy Nawilis, the company’s director of investor relations and operations. Why it matters: More than a billion people around the world don’t have reliable access to electricity. Nawilis said SunFunder has made 100 loans to 30 solar companies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, leading to millions of people having clean and affordable solar power. Headquarters: It has a team of employees who work remotely spread throughout the Bay Area. Funding: $22.8 million, according to Crunchbase. Employees: 22.
Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani
“We try to take these manual tasks and automate them.”
Jordan Stein, Envoy product marketing coordinator