Augur Technologies raises $912,000 seed round to boost development

BOULDER — Having pivoted to a new business model earlier this year, Augur Technologies Inc., closed recently on a $912,000 seed round that the company will use to hire engineers and continue development of its product.

Paul Foley, co-founder and chief operating officer of the Boulder-based startup, said Thursday that the plan is for the five-person company to roughly double in size by the middle of next year

Augur, part of the 2013 Techstars Boulder accelerator class, makes a device-recognition platform used by web-security and advertising technology companies to identify Web users.

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For security firms, Augur’s platform assigns an identification number to computers and mobile devices. If, say, a smartphone user tries to log in to his bank account, Augur’s platform lets the security firm know that the device has been used to log in to that account before and that it’s OK. Conversely, if a hacker is trying to log in to the same person’s account, the security company would be alerted that an unknown device that has never logged in to the account before is trying to do so, prompting the requirement of some other authentication, such as response to a text message from the bank.

For ad tech companies, meanwhile, Augur’s technology helps them do a better job of personalizing ads to Internet users.

Rho Ventures and Igan Ventures led the Augur funding round.

“It allows you to grow a lot quicker than you would otherwise,” Foley said. “We’re pretty excited.”

Founded in 2013, Augur’s original idea was to create personalized landing pages for websites that would tailor the content shown based on who was viewing the site. That idea didn’t end up panning out, Foley said, leading to two of the original three founders of the company leaving earlier this year. That’s when Foley and Brandon Jimenez joined original co-founder Nawar Alsafar to launch the current iteration of the company.

Augur launched its new platform with 10 beta customers in January, with the official public launch in June of this year. Foley declined to disclose revenue so far, but said Augur now has 40-plus customers, including the likes of sovrn Holdings, Trade Desk and Rapt Media.

Augur is based at Galvanize’s Boulder campus at 1035 Pearl St., and Foley said the company doesn’t have plans to move beyond that right away.