The 2020 Year in Review

We all know 2020 has been a unique and challenging year for all of us. With the alarming speed of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our plans had to change instantly. However, it was also the first episode of our ScaleX journey. We are very glad that we shared our first year with you all.

As ScaleX, it was a year in which we laid the foundations of our fund, grew as a team, made our first investments, and took great steps towards becoming a huge family. To host our emerging family, we moved our new office at the beginning of 2020 with great enthusiasm, yet this excitement had lasted for a very short time and we shifted remote working. Despite not being at our office, we grew our team with our new members.

We are very happy that our team has grown!

We are growing not only as a team but also as the ScaleX family with our investments that we have excitedly announced throughout the year.

We finalized our investments in Invidyo, Hipporello, Locomation and two more in stealth mode. Keep following for more great news! 👀🥳

Invidyo was our first investment of 2020. The offers a solution to watch babies with the video reaching a significant consumer base around the world by supporting facial recognition technology with artificial intelligence (AI). We have witnessed a promising growth in “Advanced Baby Monitors” industry, and the positive outlook remains for 2021. Check out the link for further details.

Our second investment in 2020 was Hipporello, a seed-stage start-up, led by a proven founder with a global vision. The startup currently offers a low-code automation solution, which enhances Trello users’ capabilities, creating advanced use cases. We are also glad to note that Atlassian Ventures was our co-investor in Hipporello’s first investment round, proving that they will be supporting company’s traction in the future.

Our third investment in 2020 was Locomation. The company is an autonomous trucking startup headquartered in Pittsburgh, being the world’s first trucking technology platform to combine AI-driven autonomy with driver augmentation. Locomation’s core technology, Autonomous Relay Convoy (ARCTM) allows one driver to pilot a lead truck equipped with technology augmentation while a fully autonomous follower truck operates in tandem. As ScaleX, we invested in Locomation because we believe the autonomous truck industry will be disruptive in the coming years. The collective experience of the team in cutting-edge AI & autonomous tech and their success in creating ready-to-use solutions and a commercial mindset was a very important distinction for us.

We are also proud to announce that Locomation recently signed the world’s first autonomous truck purchase order with Wilson Logistics, an industry-leading transportation logistics company. Under the terms of the deal, a minimum of 1,120 Wilson Logistics tractors are to be equipped with Locomation’s groundbreaking Autonomous Relay Convoy (ARCTM) technology.

We are closing 2020 with the excitement of making our new website on air. Don’t forget to take a look!

After a year full of incredible moments and important milestones for ScaleX Ventures, we’re grateful for the opportunity we have to support founders reach their dreams, and looking forward to investing, supporting entrepreneurs, and having fun for many more years. We thank our entire community, and our portfolio company founders, their teams, our internal stakeholders and extended networks — for joining our ScaleX family!

Finally, we would like to share a few books that ScaleXians have enjoyed this year and one special book we look forward to reading over the break…

• Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies by Geoffrey West
• Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself by Wes Bush
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
• Never Split The Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss
• The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Zuckerman, Gregory
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United by Alex Ferguson and Michael Moritz
• The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy by Mariana Mazzucato
• High output management by Andrew Grove (for new founder and CEOs)

Wishing you health & happiness in 2021!

And don’t forget, “What the New Year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the New Year” — Vern McLellan