The Venture Codex

Participated · Seed · Feb 2025

HouseWhisper is an AI-powered assistant for real estate professionals that automatically records tasks, updates status, sends reminders, drafts personalized messages, books meetings, and syncs transcriptions and lead details with major CRMs. The product has been in beta for about eight months and is already used by over 4,000 agents nationwide. Founders Luis Poggi, Spencer Rascoff, and Alex Kutner built the service to target pain points where agents need the most support, including transaction coordination and follow-up workflows. The company plans to use the new funding to drive product development, expand the team, and enhance its AI capabilities. HouseWhisper also intends to introduce new AI solutions tailored for transaction coordinators, loan officers, and brokerages to broaden its impact across the real estate industry. The recent financing strengthens its position as it scales from beta to wider adoption.

Participated · Series A · Jan 2025

Baton operates a marketplace for small- and medium-sized business acquisitions, offering tools that help sellers prepare listings and buyers underwrite deals quickly. The platform provides a free valuation and Private Listing, and paid plans that deliver reconciled financials, a native data room, and guided support through negotiations. Buyers can browse listings across all 50 states and benefit from higher-quality, verified data compared with traditional listing sites. Baton also partners with lenders, accountants, lawyers, and other professionals to streamline each stage of a transaction. The company reports a 10x higher success rate than previous top solutions, a 70% close rate for sellers, and claims 50% cost savings versus traditional alternatives. With new funding, Baton plans to accelerate growth of its marketplace to support more small business owners through upcoming ownership transfers as baby boomers retire.

Participated · Series B · Aug 2024

Setpoint provides infrastructure software (Asset OS and Capital OS) that digitizes, organizes, and verifies asset and funding data to automate credit facility management. Its platform targets originators, lenders and capital markets participants across auto, consumer, SMB and real-estate asset-backed lending. Setpoint reports 6x year-over-year revenue growth and facilitates nearly 100,000 transactions annually; its affiliated capital provider has funded over $3.5 billion in real-estate transactions managed on the platform. The company is approved by major rating agencies including Moody’s, DBRS, KBRA and S&P. Setpoint aims to reduce errors and inefficiencies caused by manual processes and to make credit transactions faster and more accurate. Going forward it plans to expand engineering and data-science teams and leverage machine learning and large language models to improve asset-data verification and calculations. Setpoint has built software that acts as an operating system for originators, aiming to be the “Stripe for credit” by making loan transactions instant, automated and error-free. Its platform verifies and stores documents, automates interest-rate calculations and digitizes assets such as homes to speed closings. The company initially focused on proptech and real estate transactions and counts customers including Opendoor, Offerpad, Orchard, Backflip and Wander. Setpoint also operates as a lender, and has loaned or guaranteed over $2 billion in capital to companies like Homeward, Opendoor, Flyhomes and Houwzer, while using its software to reduce capital risk. The SaaS business reported revenue growth of 13x year-over-year through Q3 2022 and net dollar retention of +224% per quarter in its first five quarters. It is expanding beyond real estate into broader asset-backed lending, including single-family rental, fractional models and rent-to-own, and is scaling its engineering and operations teams. The company said it was on track to power 25,000 home transactions this year and expects to power more than 100,000 in 2023. Setpoint provides a flagship SaaS platform that automates and accelerates modern real estate transactions for proptech companies, offering workflow tools for document collection and verification, collateral management, treasury services, facility management, and expedited valuations. The company pairs that technology with $615 million in bridge debt capital, which it lends to proptech partners to finance transactions and enable contingent-free cash offers. Setpoint's platform powers “Buy with Cash” and “Buy Before You Sell” options and is already used by Homeward, Flyhomes, Reali, and Houwzer. The company announced general availability of its technology and said it is on track to help power 25,000 home transactions in 2022. Setpoint says its tools can reduce closing times from weeks to as little as 40 minutes once parties are in contract. Founded in 2021, Setpoint aims to make homeownership more accessible by combining out‑of‑the‑box infrastructure and flexible capital to scale alternative real-estate financing models.

Participated · Equity · May 2023

HostGPO is a members-only marketplace and group purchasing organization serving vacation rental, short-term rental, and hospitality operators. The company provides a digital platform that enables operators to procure goods and services—furniture, appliances and home goods—at significant discounts and offers digital tools to streamline procurement and design. HostGPO works closely with a curated group of suppliers to aggregate demand and bring them customers within its target segments. The company is led by CEO Jeff Iloulian and is based in Los Angeles, California. HostGPO raised $6M in funding and intends to use the proceeds to accelerate its market position by expanding expertise across technology development, real estate marketplaces, procurement know-how, and supply relationships. Investors include Navitas Capital (lead), OMNIA Partners, 75&Sunny, Brian Lee and PAR Capital Ventures.

Participated · Series A · Aug 2022

Invisible Universe is a Los Angeles–based, internet-first animation studio led by CEO Tricia Biggio that creates original animated character IP and franchises for social media. The company operates a distributed animation studio model and partners with high-profile celebrities and influencers to develop and amplify characters. Its franchises include Qai Qai, Squeaky & Roy, Clydeo, Ember and others, with current partners such as Serena Williams, Jennifer Aniston, and the D’Amelio family. The studio plans to launch new animated IP across social media and web3, expand its footprint to new platforms, and further monetize its existing suite of franchises. Invisible Universe will debut its first web3 franchise, The R3al Metaverse, a community-driven NFT project that lets holders influence storytelling and potentially have their NFT characters animated in the series. Invisible Universe develops and debuts original animated character IP on social media in partnership with high-profile celebrities, influencers, and brands. Its core product is celebrity-backed animated characters—including Qai Qai, Squeaky & Roy, Kayda & Kai, and Crazynho—launched natively on platforms like TikTok and Instagram and produced using proprietary workflow optimization software and a global network of illustrators, 3D artists, and animators. The company says it produces content in-house at a fraction of traditional studio cost and iterates storylines in near real time based on fan feedback. Its first breakout character, Qai Qai, has over 3.2 million fans across social channels, has generated tens of thousands of doll sales, and is a best-selling 5-star toy on Amazon. Invisible Universe aims to create the "next 100-year animated franchise" and intends to extend franchises into books, toys, TV, and Web3, with new celebrity-backed characters planned (including a Jennifer Aniston collaboration launching this fall). Leadership includes founder John Brennan and CEO Tricia Biggio, and Katelin Holloway of Seven Seven Six recently joined the board. The company has raised $8 million to date and is positioning itself for partnerships with publishers, streamers, and ecommerce companies.