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SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 18, 2021 — RosterLab, a newly-formed rostering software company, has closed NZ $150,000 in Pre-Seed funding from Quidnet Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund based in New Zealand. The NZ $500,000 total round was led by Matū Fund, with participation from Quidnet Ventures and the University of Auckland Investors’ Fund. This funding will support the company’s software application development and initial product launch targeting New Zealand’s healthcare market.
"We are tremendously excited to work with Quidnet Ventures to bring our revolutionary rostering A.I. to New Zealand and then the world. Our aim is to create effective rosters that will improve the lives of rostered people around the world," states Isaac Cleland, the co-founder of Roster Lab.
RosterLab offers an automated rostering platform, based on advanced techniques developed at the University of Auckland, to a variety of high-intensity sectors, including healthcare providers. RosterLab’s core technology seeks to address weaknesses in existing rostering solutions, including the inability to account for staffing complexity. RosterLab enables rapid generation of optimised rosters that comply with challenging, industry-specific requirements at scale. RosterLab is initially targeting healthcare clients such as hospitals and aged care facilities, where poor staffing compliance as well as time/labour inefficiencies incurs direct costs.
"Early in my career at IBM I was involved in the early stages of this sort of complex scheduling solution so I am particularly excited to see the advances in optimization that have been pioneered at University of Auckland being applied to a real world problem by Isaac and his team at RosterLab," states Mark Bregman, the General Partner of Quidnet Ventures.
RosterLab’s underlying IP was borne out of co-founder Isaac Cleland’s PhD thesis in Engineering Science, and was recognised for its success in the International Nurse Rostering Competition. Along with co-founders Daniel Ge and Sunny Feng, the team won the Velocity $100K Challenge in 2020, and has since completed the VentureLab programme at the University of Auckland’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Quidnet Ventures, Matū Fund and the University of Auckland Investors’ Fund are all looking forward to working closely with the team as they look to launch their first product in New Zealand, and develop plans for expansion into overseas markets.
"Matū is really excited to lead this round because we believe that better rostering will lead to improved outcomes for both patients and staff. We’ve seen through the COVID-19 pandemic just how important our healthcare workers are, and it would be great to help them achieve better balance and to improve staff morale," states Andrew Chen, a partner at Matū Fund. "It’s been great to co-invest again with Quidnet Ventures, who are committing strongly to supporting great Kiwi start-ups – it’s always helpful to have reliable partners."
About Quidnet Ventures – Quidnet Ventures is a seed and series-A fund investing in New Zealand-based founders building impactful companies. The fund focuses on companies that have global ambition and leverages the general partner’s 30 years of experience in the global tech industry and 20 years of experience with the New Zealand startup ecosystem, as well as an extensive network of advisors, to help these companies get established and grow in the U.S. Market.
About Matū Fund – Matū is a venture capital fund investing in early-stage science and technology commercialisation from education and research institutions and the private sector. As an open and evergreen fund, Matū takes a long-term investment view and is aimed at turning ground-breaking ideas into globally focused, IP-rich companies. Matū provides intelligent capital with active governance, executive management, operational support, and mentorship for founding and executive teams: www.matu.co.nz
About University of Auckland Inventors’ Fund – The University of Auckland Inventors’ Fund is an evergreen, open-ended $20 million investment fund owned and managed by UniServices, the commercialisation and research impact company wholly owned by the University of Auckland. The fund provides pre-seed and seed capital for University of Auckland spin-outs: www.uniservices.co.nz
Contact:
Skye Grayson
[email protected]
Related Links :
http://www.quidnetventures.com
