Led · Debt Financing · Oct 2023

Los Angeles–based Metropolis has built an AI and computer-vision platform that recognizes people and vehicles in real time, enabling checkout-free payments and personalized experiences across parking, retail, hospitality, mobility and fueling locations. The company processes more than $5 billion in annual transactions for 50 million customers and has nearly 20 million registered Members, with more than one million new Members joining each month. Its network spans over 4,200 locations in 40 countries and, following the 2024 take-private of SP+ and the 2025 purchase of biometrics firm Oosto, Metropolis is now the largest parking network in the United States. The platform underpins what the company calls the “Recognition Economy,” replacing friction with presence-based recognition to streamline real-world commerce. Current expansion efforts target quick-service restaurants, refueling stations, hotels, stadiums and other high-traffic venues. Management positions the company as one of the fastest-growing tech firms in the U.S., supported by deep partnerships with retailers, asset owners and real-estate operators. The newly raised capital will fund further product development, geographic expansion and additional vertical integrations.

Led · Series B · Nov 2022

Vivrelle operates a membership model that provides access to a shared closet of coveted designer handbags, jewelry and diamonds with flexible borrowing and members-only purchase options. Since founding in September 2018 by Blake and Wayne Geffen, the company has expanded to four membership tiers, opened a 14,000-square-foot showroom in New York City, and launched a multi-city partnership with Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. Vivrelle recently debuted a Bridgehampton retail pop-up and plans further showroom expansion into new markets. The company intends to use new capital to scale operations, deepen inventory, enhance its product assortment, and develop technology, including AI, to improve the member experience. Vivrelle positions itself around making luxury accessories more accessible through experiential membership perks and a try-before-you-buy approach. Vivrelle is a New York-based membership club that provides members access to a shared closet of coveted designer handbags, jewelry and diamonds for a monthly membership fee. Members can borrow items with no return date. The company was founded in September 2018 by Blake and Wayne Geffen. Vivrelle raised $35M in Series B funding to accelerate growth. The round was led by 3L Capital with participation from Origin Ventures, Chapford Capital Group, Plus Capital, Lily Collins, Nina Dobrev, and Morgan Stewart McGraw. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth across all verticals of the brand’s business. Vivrelle operates a membership model that gives members on-demand access to a shared closet of coveted designer handbags, jewelry, and diamonds for a monthly fee. Members can borrow items with no return date, swap items monthly, and purchase pieces at members-only discounted prices. The service positions itself at the intersection of the sharing and resale economies and emphasizes sustainability, flexibility, and affordable luxury. Vivrelle offers exclusive club perks and a try-before-you-buy experience designed for Millennials and Gen Z digital natives. The company reported triple-digit growth in 2020 and has a growing waitlist from which it plans to admit thousands of additional members. With the new financing, Vivrelle plans to expand its product offering, amplify marketing and partnerships, and scale services, operations, and internal teams.

Participated · Equity · Sep 2022

Planck provides an AI/ and machine-learning-driven platform that delivers real-time risk insights to commercial insurers to support underwriting decisions and automation. The platform is designed to streamline underwriting workflows, reduce manual errors, improve efficiency, and help carriers grow premiums while reducing loss ratios. Planck works with insurance carriers to automate underwriting processes and deliver faster, better-informed decisions. The company is pursuing geographic expansion into the Australian and New Zealand commercial insurance market through a partnership with IAG Firemark Ventures. Planck expects collaboration with regional leaders to enable embedding its technology within carrier brands and to broaden adoption across the insurance industry. The articles do not disclose Planck’s financial metrics or funding amounts. Planck provides an AI-powered data and analytics platform for commercial insurance that generates up-to-date insights from just a business name and address. Its platform supports carriers, MGAs and insurtechs with submission prefilling, prioritization, underwriting new business and renewals, premium auditing and other underwriting and service workflows. The company has launched products including an underwriting risk search engine and Prospect Intelligence to improve research and help carriers expand into new markets and lower acquisition costs. Planck plans to use the newly raised funds to develop complementary products and to continue geographic expansion. Customers include six of the top ten commercial insurance carriers in the U.S., and leading carriers in Europe and Japan. The company employs almost 100 people globally and is led by CEO Elad Tsur. Planck is an AI-based data platform for commercial insurance underwriting that aggregates online images, text, videos, reviews and public records into a searchable database. Its platform delivers real-time analytics to help insurers determine premiums, process claims, and provide faster quotes by simply entering a business’s name and address. The system covers more than 50 business segments, including restaurants, construction, retail and manufacturing, and serves dozens of U.S. commercial insurance companies, including more than half of the top-30 insurers. For example, Planck can surface details such as equipment, drugs prescribed and types of surgeries to inform underwriting for healthcare businesses. The company said it will use the new funding to build its U.S. team, expand into global markets and add products for new business segments, and has hired Ernie Feirer as head of U.S. business. Financially, Planck has raised $48 million to date, including a $16 million Series B announced in June 2020 and the new $20 million growth round. Planck is a New York–based AI data platform that provides insurance underwriting analytics to commercial insurers. Its platform ingests images, text, video, reviews and public records to generate risk insights from a business's name and address. Planck covers more than 50 major business segments and multiple insurance lines, and works with dozens of U.S. commercial insurers, including more than half of the top-30 — clients include Chubb, Republic Indemnity and AIG’s Attune. The company returns both simple insights (e.g., presence of ER operations) and complex signals (e.g., types of equipment or procedures) to inform underwriting. Planck says its real-time insights help carriers handle increased submission volume and operational changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The startup was launched in 2016 by Elad Tsur, Cohen and David Schapiro and plans global expansion, beginning with Germany next year. Planck Re offers an AI-driven data platform that aggregates small and medium businesses’ digital footprints to produce detailed customer profiles for commercial underwriting. The platform uses open-web data‑mining and AI — including image processing and semantic analysis of unstructured data — to gather information from images, text, videos, social media and public records. Its goal is to streamline the commercial underwriting process by automatically and accurately completing onboarding questionnaires and generating insights that inform risk assessment. Planck Re reports that, based on pilots with several top-tier U.S. carriers, its platform automatically completes over 90% of the fields in onboarding questionnaires. The company was founded in 2016 and lists offices in New York and Tel-Aviv. It plans to initially focus on the U.S. commercial insurance market.

Led · Series B · Sep 2022

Hone delivers live, small-group, executive-focused instruction with curriculum-based modules, practice labs, peer discussion and reinforcement rather than pre-recorded content or one-on-one coaching. New learners enter a four-week bootcamp selected by their company and then gain unlimited access to classes year-round; the platform also offers automation tools for HR admins such as automatic scheduling and attendance tracking. Hone has integrations with Workday, Rippling and SAP SuccessFactors and says instructors are paid “hundreds of dollars per hour,” reportedly four to five times typical one-on-one coaching rates. The startup cites customer wins including Indeed, ConocoPhillips, Pacific Sunwear, Allscripts, TomTom and Aramark and says the pandemic was a significant tailwind for its growth. The company currently has about 70 employees and plans to hire roughly 30 more by the end of the year. Future plans include experimenting with “intelligent” recommendations and reinforcement, expanding electives and learning pathways, and hosting in-person events for executives. Hone offers leadership training via live, intimate online classes led by coaches, with new students entering a four-week bootcamp and then receiving unlimited access to classes throughout the year. The platform emphasizes practice-based learning for difficult conversations, coaching, and communication skills that benefit managers more than one-off in-person conferences. Hone’s software simplifies scheduling across geographies and time zones for distributed workforces. Co-founders Savina Perez and Tom Griffiths say meeting strong enterprise demand requires work on localization and translation. The company notes scaling is challenging because the product depends heavily on human coaches rather than a pure SaaS model. To date, Hone has over 100 organizational customers, 300 classes per month, 400% year-over-year growth, and a 30-person team (50% female, 43% people of color). Hone combines research-backed, live online classes led by expert executive coaches with a technology platform to reinforce and measure training’s impact at scale. Its hybrid humans-plus-technology approach targets leadership, management, and people-skills training for distributed teams. Customers cited in the announcement include GoFundMe, Rosetta Stone, Casper, World Remit and Dashlane. Launched in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco and New York City, Hone was co-founded by Tom Griffiths and Savina Perez. The company announced a $2.75M seed extension, bringing total funding to date to $6.4M, and said it will use the funds to expand its platform and develop programs to meet rising demand from increasingly distributed companies. Hone offers live, coach-led training modules for leadership and people management, typically delivered as 60- to 90-minute weekly sessions over seven weeks to groups of about eight to a dozen. The company eschews pre-recorded video and traditional workshops, instead working with vetted professional coaches and an underlying platform that tracks attendance, learner feedback and engagement metrics such as questions asked. Hone has run pilots with early, paying customers including WeWork, Clear, App Annie, Dashlane, Omada Health and SoulCycle and says it has used those pilots to refine product-market fit. The platform includes reporting interfaces that allow employers to measure learning outcomes and iterate on modules. Hone is about 10 months old and is opening more widely for business while planning to bake lessons from early customers into future products. The company has not disclosed pricing publicly and works with customers to create customized packages.

Led · Series B · Jun 2022

Metropolis builds payment infrastructure for parking facilities that lets customers "drive in and drive out" using computer vision to recognize license plates and automatically charge linked accounts. The platform powers more than 600 parking facilities, serves over 1.8 million users, and operates in more than 60 cities while connecting to thousands of nearby merchants. Metropolis provides an app where customers review visits and receive receipts, and it surfaces promotions and analytics for property owners and local businesses. The company was founded in 2017 and has pursued M&A and partnerships to accelerate growth, including the acquisition of Premier Parking and an Uber Park partnership. Management says proceeds from the latest financing will fund product development, expand the team, and push into new mobility-adjacent verticals; headcount is planned to grow from about 2,000 to 2,500 by year-end. To date the company has raised $226 million in total and reports strong investor interest as activity in cities rebounds. Metropolis is a Los Angeles-based company that builds computer vision and machine-learning systems to recognize cars as they enter and leave parking garages and power a parking payment and management service. Founder and CEO Alex Israel launched the business in 2017 after selling his prior company ParkMe to Inrix in 2015. The parking payment application is the company's beachhead, and Metropolis intends to layer broader mobility services on top of that foundation. Potential future services include cleaning, electric charging, storage and logistics, with the company positioning itself as an integrator and, in some cases, a direct service provider. Metropolis currently manages 10,000 parking spots for major real estate owners and plans to expand its footprint to more than 600 locations over the next year. The company has raised $60 million since 2017 and is pursuing growth focused on parking infrastructure and mobility.