Contour Venture Partners

Syndio, a pay equity SaaS startup, has raised $5.2 million in seed funding. The investors were Sirius Partners, Contour Venture Partners and Frontier Venture Capital. In addition to the funding, Syndio has named Maria Colacurcio as CEO. She is the co-founder of SmartSheet, which went public last April and is also a former director at Starbucks.

GTCR has agreed to buy a majority stake in Fort Worth, Texas-based Simpli.fi, a provider of a programmatic platform for local advertising. The sellers include Contour Venture Partners and Frontier Capital. No financial terms were disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in late September 2017. Petsky Prunier LLC and LUMA Partners LLC served as financial advisers to Simpli.fi.

Raleigh, North Carolina-based Pendo, a data-driven platform that helps companies understand and influence how users interact with their software applications, has raised $20 million in Series B financing. Spark Capital led the round with participation from return backers Battery Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, Core Capital Partners, IDEA Fund Partners and Salesforce Ventures. In addition to the funding, Spark Capital General Partner Megan Quinn has been added to Pendo’s board of directors.

Bain Capital Ventures led a $16 million Series B up-round in Bench, an online bookkeeping service for small businesses. The financing was joined by Altos Ventures and Contour Venture Partners, both series A investors in Bench, and will go toward product development.

Bench said it raised $16 million of Series B capital in an up ­round led by Bain Capital Ventures and joined by existing investors Altos Ventures and Contour Venture Partners. The company has now raised $33 million.

New York-based Contour Venture Partners, an investor in Datadog, OnDeck and Ticketfly, announced it has raised $81 million combined for two new funds. This includes $56 million for its third early-stage fund, which beat its $50 million target, and $25 million for its first opportunity fund.

New York-based Routehappy, a product differentiation platform for air travel, has raised $3 million in Series B funding. The investors were PAR Capital Ventures, iNovia Capital and Contour Venture Partners.

Altos Ventures has led a $7 million Series A funding round in online bookkeeping service Bench. Contour Venture Partners also participated in the funding round.

CalPERS' fourth CIO since 2014 comes from an institution without significant pedigree in private equity. Plus: European software specialist Main Capital holds a double close; and Intermediate Capital Group has raised $1bn for LP-leds. Here's today's brief, for our valued subscribers only.

New York State Common Retirement Fund revealed four new private equity commitments in its latest report.

The US pension fund has outlined new commitments.

Octane Lending Inc, a provider of digital products supporting consumers, dealerships, and OEMs, has raised $52 million in Series D funding.

Vancouver-based financial technology company Bench has secured $60 million in a Series C financing.

Wunderkind, formerly BounceX, a performance marketing channel, has acquired SmarterHQ, an advanced segmentation and orchestration engine for enterprise ecommerce.

New York City-based Movable Ink, a software company powering creative personalization for brands, has raised $30 million in Series C funding.

WayScript, a scripting platform for developers, has raised $5 million in seed funding.