CookinGenie was a savory investment for Allison Wood Ventures. Sabah and Abhijit, the co-founders of CookinGenie, came up with an innovative solution to make personal chefs available to anyone on an as-needed basis.

“Most people think personal chefs are only for celebrities,” Sabah said. “We wanted to create a marketplace where anyone can find and book a talented chef in their area in minutes.”

CookinGenie gives clients the option to hire a personal chef — or “Genie” — for an event. Customers choose from a menu of available meals and schedule a date and time. Their Genie does all the rest — from shopping to meal prep, cooking, and cleaning.

Genies can cook for any occasion, from a two-person date night dinner to family gatherings, brunches, and elaborate dinner parties.

Sabah and Abhijit launched CookinGenie in their hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Less than two years later, they’ve expanded it to Columbus and Cincinnati, and have plans to add more cities across the country.

When Allison Wood Ventures met with Vikas, Fereidoon, Yasir, and Rajarshi, we were impressed with how they were helping some of the largest media brands in the world to improve their cloud-based analysis & Quality Control processes for the media content that was being delivered to viewers, whether for traditional TV/cable broadcast or via services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu.

Vikas, Fereidoon, and Rajarshi founded Venera with an aim to automate the otherwise manual process of handling the quality of media content. With the accelerated adoption of cloud-based workflows, automation has become extremely important due to the very high costs of manual QC in such environments. Their Native Cloud QC services – Quasar® & CapMate™, eliminate the need for operators to perform manual validation of the media content and captions/subtitles, saving significant time and cost for these media companies.

Venera’s mission is to automate the content management process as much as possible and remove the manual interventions, which are costly and time-consuming. Their solutions are trusted by over 150 organizations worldwide, including some leading media companies such as Adstream, Disney, Cinedigm, NBC Universal, HBO, AMC Networks, PBS, Hearst TV, NEC, and TOEI Animations.

When Allison Wood Ventures met with Mark, Gil, and Yasir, we immediately saw how their software, Tobi Cloud, would benefit non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) providers—and the patients who depend on them.

Transportation industry veterans Mark and Gil had looked at the software options available to NEMT companies and knew they could create something better. Working with their friend Yasir, a Computer Science PhD with vast technology experience, they created a dispatch and logistics solution tailored to the unique needs of NEMT providers.

The result is Tobi Cloud, a single solution for NEMT dispatching and scheduling. It helps providers get patients to vital medical appointments quickly, using real-time GPS route optimization automation using proprietary machine learning and AI. The software also includes features that help transport teams provide the best possible care to patients during their rides.

Innago’s founders Yasir and Dave met Allison Wood Ventures with the first version of the live product. We liked their concept and energies.

From day one, Innago met and collaborated with small-to-mid-sized landlords to produce an application they actually want to use. Too many property management applications are overwhelming, bloated with features that drive up the cost and turn their software “solution” into a software problem. They avoided unnecessary features and focused on saving customers time. Their mission is to make renting simple, accessible, and affordable for landlords of any size.

Paykii’s founders Fabian and Nelson were introduced by Michael Baptista, of AssemblyCaptitalAdvisors, who is a raving fan of Paykii’s product and strategic direction.

Paykii builds the plumbing that allows international citizens the ability to pay bills back home for themselves, their family and those that are important to them. At last count over 600 billers in 13+ countries have partnered with Paykii to make them the leading provider in the international payment space. Paykii is well on the way to becoming the world’s preferred gateway to border-less payments.

When first cousins Mathew and Marc came up with the idea for a time-saving tool for paint contractors, they turned to Allison Wood Ventures. Mat and Marc were two very experienced contractors and invented a revolutionary tool that allows you to paint and stack doors and trim with ease. Now a contractor or homeowner can create a controlled environment in one area of a room. Stak Rack was founded in 2013 when they needed to paint 20 doors and 400 feet of trim in a condo on the 11th floor. A very rudimentary design was used and has since developed into the amazing product that it is today.

They needed help in registering intellectual property, starting a business, ramping it quickly, and negotiating long-term contracts for licensing and royalties. However, now if you walk down the isle at Sherwin Williams or Home Depot worldwide, you can see why Mat and Marc think they made a great choice when they chose their business partner!