Wake

What Wake does

Wake is a private software company that built and operated a design collaboration application providing teams with a private space to share and discuss design work. The company was founded in 2013, headquartered in San Francisco, and operated with a headcount in the 11-50 range, targeting design teams that needed secure, structured environments for review and feedback workflows on creative projects. The product took the form of a web-based collaboration platform served from wake.com.

The company completed a single disclosed funding round on August 18, 2015, raising $3.8 million in a round that included Alliance VC, Designer Fund, First Round Capital, and Slow Ventures. Tobias Bæck is identified as a co-founder. No pricing model, revenue figures, customer counts, partnership agreements, product launches, follow-on financings, or leadership changes are disclosed in the available source material beyond the 2013 founding, the 2015 round, and the single founder listed. There is also no disclosure of underlying technology architecture, feature set, or competitive positioning.

A notable signal in the source material is that the wake.com domain is currently listed for sale on Spaceship.com, indicating the company's primary web property has been abandoned or is no longer in active use. This is consistent with the absence of any post-2015 strategic activity in the available data. Several aggregated source blocks in the input describe a separate Seoul-based entity also named 'Wake' (a beanless coffee startup using traditional Korean fermentation and molecular techniques); these have been treated as a distinct company and excluded from this analysis, because the firmographic description, the funding-round investors, and the named co-founder are all consistent with the San Francisco design collaboration company rather than the Seoul-based one.

Name

Wake

Legal name

Wake

Website

https://wake.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2013

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Wake is a private, San Francisco-based software company founded in 2013 that built a web application giving design teams a private space to share and review design work, operating with 11-50 employees.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Beanless Coffee Products: Wake generates revenue from selling its beanless coffee product, which is positioned as a cheaper alternative to traditional coffee with lower environmental impact

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels1 record

Core offering

Wake is an application that provides a private space for teams to share and discuss design work. It is a software tool focused on facilitating design collaboration, review, and feedback among creative and product-design teams. The offering is delivered as an online application accessible via the wake.com domain.

Product overview

Wake is a Seoul-based startup offering a single core product: beanless coffee. The company uses traditional Korean fermentation methods combined with molecular techniques to create a coffee alternative that significantly reduces water usage and carbon emissions. Wake's product is designed to be climate-proof and more affordable than traditional coffee, with plans to scale manufacturing and expand into new markets including New York.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Wake Wake is a software application that provides a private space for teams to share and discuss design work. It is designed for design and creative teams that need a dedicated environment to collaborate on design artifacts, exchange feedback, and coordinate design reviews.

Quantifiable outcome

• Significantly reduces water use compared to traditional coffee production
• +2 more outcomes

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature1 record

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves2 records

Expansion highlights2 records

Broad incumbents

• Blue Bottle Coffee: Blue Bottle operates company-owned specialty coffee retail (including a major New York footprint) with a strong sustainability narrative — the same retail format and climate-conscious consumer positioning Wake is targeting in New York.
• Stumptown Coffee Roasters: Stumptown is an established specialty roaster owned by a major conglomerate, with deep US retail and wholesale distribution — a benchmark for the US specialty shelf-space Wake would need to win.
• La Colombe Coffee Roasters: La Colombe combines company-owned cafés, wholesale, and ready-to-drink distribution — directly relevant as a US-based specialty operator with both physical retail and DTC channels that Wake's beanless coffee would compete against for café placement.
• Nestlé Nespresso: Nespresso operates a global premium coffee capsule business with sustainability programs targeting carbon and water footprint reductions — directly competitive with Wake's sustainability and convenience narrative at vastly greater scale.
• JDE Peet's: JDE Peet's is one of the largest global coffee companies and has publicly explored sustainable and alternative coffee sources — a competitor with the capital to out-resource Wake in any beanless/coffee-substitute category.

Emerging players

• Cometeer: Cometeer is an emerging DTC coffee brand that uses proprietary flash-frozen capsule technology to differentiate on convenience and quality — illustrating the kind of tech-enabled, DTC-led specialty coffee brand Wake may compete with for shelf and mind share.
• Teeccino: Teeccino is an established coffee alternative brand (herbal/café-style roasted beverages) targeting health- and sustainability-conscious consumers — overlapping Wake's environmentally conscious consumer segment but with a much longer retail track record.

Direct peers

• Atomo Coffee: Atomo produces 'molecular coffee' — a beanless coffee alternative built via reverse-engineering of coffee's flavor compounds — making it the closest direct peer to Wake's beanless/molecular-hacking approach.

Regional players

• Cafix: Cafix is a long-standing grain-based coffee alternative — a category analog that demonstrates the consumer acceptance ceiling for non-coffee 'coffee' substitutes and the distribution footprint required to reach grocery shelves.

Others

• Plunge: Plunge is a DTC wellness brand sold through company-owned retail and online channels targeting performance- and sustainability-minded consumers — illustrative of the kind of retail-expansion and DTC playbook Wake is attempting in the wellness-adjacent coffee category.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat2 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/wakeinc
• Facebookfacebook.com/wake
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/wake

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors4 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Wake