In The Know
The Inno stories you need to read today.
Making Moves
Inside the people, companies and organizations making moves in Boston.
Lucy: Barack Obama will be in town to speak at The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, the Globe reported. The former president will make an appearance Feb. 23 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
Dylan: If you’ve seen the most recent season of the excellent sci-fi series Black Mirror (think Twilight Zone with a modern tech twist), you may have thought that the robot dog in the “Metalhead” episode looked awfully familiar — like a certain robot dog we know that’s made by a certain local company. As noted by The Boston Globe, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker told Entertainment Weekly recently that Boston Dynamics — the maker of SpotMini and BigDog — served as the inspiration for this episode’s mechanical monster.
Lucy: Local companies Tamr, Cybereason, Neurala and DataRobot made the 2018 “A.I. 100” list as some of the most promising A.I. startups globally, Fortune reported. The list was released by research firm CB Insights.
Dylan: Proletariat, a local video game studio that has raised VC $$ from Accomplice and Spark Capital, has shut down its first project, a mobile game called World Zombination. The company says it’s working on prototypes for new games. It’s also still running Streamline, a “stream-first” multiplayer game, and StreamLegends, a mini-RPG extension for Amazon’s Twitch streaming service.
Lucy: Local startup DetraPel, which sells a repellent spray preventing your shoes from getting wet or dirty, is now a Mark Cuban-backed startup. You may remember its founder David Zamarin as a member of the Babson Summer Venture Program last summer. Yesterday, the Babson undergrad walked out of the tank of ABC‘s “Shark Tank” with a $200K deal from Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner. In a phone interview, Zamarin told me that on Sunday, the revenue of DetraPel to date was a little over $60K. After the episode was aired, the venture registered a jump in revenue to $66.2K in website sales. Read more: Babson Startup DetraPel Lands $200,000 Deal at ‘Shark Tank’
Dylan: Remember Brainwave Science, the Southborough, Mass.-based tech company that once had Michael Flynn on its board of advisers? BBJ has uncovered a lawsuit against the company that was filed in March 2017 for alleged breach of contract. The suit alleges that Brainwave “fraudulently transferred its assets to a foreign corporation of the same name in an attempt to shield itself from legal judgments.”
New Money
Your daily funding roundup.
Dylan: Boston-based fintech company Bison has closed a funding round led by FINTOP Capital. Existing investors Hamilton Lane and GrandBanks Capital also participated in the round. The amount was not disclosed.
Player Personnel
Who’s moving where.
Dylan: HubSpot started out 2018 with a slate of new leadership hires: Michelle Benfer as VP of sales, Andrew Lindsay as VP of corporate development, Lan Marinelli as associate general counsel, Susanne Rönnqvist as VP of international marketing, and Elizabeth Ruscitto as director of developer relations. Benfer was most recently VP of sales for LogMeIn’s LastPass business, Lindsay was previously VP of corporate development at wearable company Jawbone, Marinelli was at Athenahealth, Rönnqvist was VP of business marketing at Klarna, and Ruscitto was at Leap Motion. For a company that has been trying to improve its diversity, this is a big step on the leadership side (you wouldn’t necessarily tell by just the text, but no white men here).
Lucy: Mathieu “Mat” Gagné is the first CFO of retail analytics platform Wiser, which is the combined operations of the companies previously known as Mobee and QuadAnalytix. Previously, Gagné served as CFO at Alert Innovation, EBI Consulting and MyWebGrocer.
Dylan: Wayfair has appointed Jeffrey Naylor, a former TJX Companies CFO, to its board of directors. Naylor has also held leadership roles at Big Lots, Limited Brands, and Sears.
Lucy: Daniel Patt has been appointed CEO of Vecna Robotics. Patt was a deputy director for the strategic technology office at DARPA.
In The Community
The events and happenings to know about tonight and this week.
Lucy: Action Design Boston is organizing an Open Project event with Impact Hub from 6 to 8 p.m. tonight. To help plan your agenda this month, here’s a list of top tech events to attend. Read more: BostInno Approved: January’s Top Tech & Startup Events in Boston
 Featured Jobs
Featured startup and tech jobs on BostInno’s new Careers Directory.
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