• Bespoke Post

  Participated · Seed · Mar 2013

  Bespoke Post is a NYC-based multi-category e-commerce retailer that delivers curated goods and guidance through a monthly membership and an e-commerce shop. The company was founded in 2011 by Steve Szaronos and Rishi Prabhu. It serves a membership base of more than 300,000 members. Bespoke Post combines curated product boxes with an online storefront. The company intends to use new funding to seek out small brands, launch retail partnerships, and invest in its data science capabilities. The recent fundraise is intended to support those strategic initiatives. Bespoke Post curates 10–20 themed boxes each month featuring artisanal products across categories like style, travel and cocktail-making, and recommends different boxes to members based on their interests. Members receive a new box suggestion monthly with no obligation to buy; boxes cost $45 while the contained products have a retail value north of $70. The company emphasizes curated selections from brands not typically found on mainstream shelves or large marketplaces. Bespoke Post launched in 2012 and grew to a team of nearly 40 people with more than 100,000 subscribers in the U.S. and Canada before raising its Series A; about 93% of subscribers are men. The startup plans more hiring, expanded product offerings and additional partnerships. Current operating metrics disclosed in the article are subscriber count, team size and the male-dominant customer mix. Bespoke Post offers themed monthly boxes (the "Box of Awesome") for about $45/month with shipping included, each box typically retailing for over $70. Customers receive an email about the current box and can opt out as often as they want, a modification of the traditional subscription model. Past boxes have included shave kits, travel themes, cocktail sets, shoeshine kits and weekender packs; the company works with large brands (including Diageo) and smaller designers, sometimes custom-making products. The service expanded into Canada, where prices increase by $15–$25 depending on location to cover shipping, duties and taxes. Though focused on men, 10–15% of subscribers are women. The company has grown its team from two to seven and is hiring; the founder previously hinted at an approaching $1M annualized run rate, said subscriber count has more than doubled since that time, and reported consistent double-digit growth. Bespoke Post plans to introduce a higher-price box option and eventually expand from subscription into a broader e-commerce offering where customers can buy individual products or experiences.

• AdverCar

  Participated · Seed · Oct 2012

  adverCar offers an out-of-home advertising product that mounts easily removable stickers the size of standard ad units on drivers' cars, priced at about $280 for a monthlong campaign. The company matches advertisers to drivers based on desired audiences and installs a GPS in participating cars for the campaign so advertisers receive maps of where their messages were seen. adverCar says it uses methods based on Traffic Audit Bureau standards to estimate how many people saw each ad. The startup positions its sticker approach as a lower-cost alternative to full vehicle wraps, which can cost thousands of dollars. adverCar has worked with dozens of advertisers and more than 5,000 drivers, and has even created a fleet of “adverMoms” to target other mothers. Neil Turner is founder and CEO and regularly demonstrates the product himself by driving cars covered in ads.

• Songza

  Participated · Convertible Note · Aug 2012

  Songza is a mood-based music streaming service that surfaces curated playlists tied to moments and moods. The company pairs sponsored playlists with banner ads and a 15-second video to create native advertising experiences for brands. It is developing native advertising further and scaling its sales team after hiring a dedicated brand manager. Songza has run campaigns for Taco Bell, Samsung, Nissan, and Vitaminwater and reports sponsored playlists receiving favorable feedback compared with organic playlists. The company also introduced Club Songza, a paid ad-free tier at $0.99 per week, and is exploring curation beyond music into short-form news and podcasts. Songza’s strategy emphasizes making ads feel like a natural part of the user experience rather than intrusive interruptions. Songza is a music streaming app built around Concierge, a feature that automatically matches playlists to users' activities, device, preferences, time and date. Since launching in September 2011 the service has expanded to iPad and Android and surpassed 1 million iOS downloads in 10 days. The company reported more than 2 million new users from the U.S. and Canada since June 1st, and overall retention is strong — over half of all users who have ever used Songza remain active. Songza collects activity and preference data to improve playlist relevance and plans to use location signals (for example, detecting a gym or beach) to serve context-appropriate playlists. The company also runs a guest DJ initiative that lets brands and celebrities create featured playlists and intends to expand that program. Songza provides free mobile apps for iOS and Android that let users create, store and share personalized music collections in the cloud. The service emphasizes expert and social curation, offering over 75,000 playlists created by music experts, celebrities, artists and record labels, plus user-created playlists. Songza’s library includes more than 14.5 million songs, and the service is free of audio advertisements and has no monthly listening limits. The mobile apps add social discovery via Facebook so users can tap into playlists their friends are listening to. CEO Elias Roman describes the product as a “music concierge,” positioning Songza around expert- and friend-driven playlist discovery rather than purely algorithmic recommendations. The company traces part of its recent history to Amie Street’s prior involvement: Amie Street sold to Amazon and had previously acquired Songza in 2008.

No current team members are available.