• Stuf

  Participated · Series A · Feb 2023

  Stuf partners with property owners to turn basements, garages and other spaces in commercial buildings into rentable storage, creating cash-flow opportunities for landlords and convenient amenities for nearby customers. Its digital-first platform lets users book, pay for and access storage via mobile devices, while the company employs IoT, access control and security solutions to remotely manage its national portfolio. Founded in 2020 and led by CEO Katharine Lau, Stuf combines real-estate partnerships with technology to scale physical storage capacity without heavy property ownership. The company plans to use its recent funding to expand nationally and grow its footprint in existing and new markets. It also intends to invest in brand awareness among consumers and landlords and to expand its teams across real estate, engineering, marketing and operations. The business model emphasizes turning underused commercial building spaces into monetizable storage assets through a technology-enabled operating stack. Stuf transforms basements and other unused spaces into self-storage locations by signing revenue-sharing deals with landlords and converting the spaces for use. The company emphasizes interior design to create a warm, inviting environment rather than the sterile feel of traditional facilities. Stuf can tour a site and open it for storage in four to six weeks. It currently operates three locations in San Francisco and New York, and its initial spaces reached roughly 90% capacity within three months. Pricing is reported to be on par with traditional self-storage (example Brooklyn listings: $172.51/month for a 10×6 and $43 for a 5×3). The startup aims to open new locations nationwide and launch more than 100,000 square feet of storage space in 2021.

• Upgrade

  Participated · Seed · May 2022

  Upgrade targets the $13 billion wig and hair-extensions market with a two-sided platform. Consumers browse an online marketplace, choose a stylist, and receive colored or customized wigs—high-profile looks like Mary J. Blige’s Super Bowl style were produced through the service. Stylists pay a $30 monthly subscription plus transaction fees to access features such as order management, customer messaging, analytics, integrated shipping, payments, BNPL options, and ratings. The company currently supports 30 stylists and has a waitlist of 300, operates a Houston flagship that functions as warehouse, showroom, and rentable suites, and has 10 employees with plans to double headcount next year. Revenue from wig and hair sales tripled over the past year. Future plans include rolling out micro-loans, tax-filing assistance, and additional financial tools for stylists by year-end to deepen the platform’s fintech capabilities.

• Juno

  Participated · Series A · Sep 2021

  Juno develops mass-timber, all-electric multifamily buildings using a productization approach that treats housing development like product development and assembles an OEM ecosystem for ground-up construction. The company emphasizes sustainability—lower waste, low-carbon timber construction, exposed wood, gasless buildings—and says its design process is 60% faster than traditional development. Juno has broken ground on its first project in East Austin (slated to open in 2022) and has more than 400 units in development, with additional sites planned for Seattle and Denver. It is partnering with Swinerton and Ennead Architects to implement its model and aims to create repeatable components, supply chains and learning systems to scale building production. The startup plans to use new capital to continue building its product, break ground on its first cohort of projects and engage with more developers.

• Zingbus

  Participated · Series A · Jul 2021

  Zingbus is a technology solutions platform that aggregates small and medium-sized intercity bus operators under a branded marketplace to standardize India’s intercity bus travel. The company helps partner operators increase profitability and deliver a more reliable experience to travelers. Since its 2019 founding, Zingbus has served more than two million users across 300 Indian cities. It has a commercial agreement with Jio-bp pulse to utilize EV charging networks and convenience sites for bus operators on its platform. The company intends to use the Series A proceeds to scale operations and grow its team. Founders are Prashant Kumar, Mratunjay Beniwal and Ravi Verma. Zingbus is an intercity-mobility company focused on providing intercity bus services. The company was founded in 2019 by Prashant Kumar, Mratunjay, and Ravi Kumar Verma and participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 class. It raised $6 million in a pre-Series A round led by Infoedge Ventures. Funders Club, Pioneer Fund, Anim Fund (Founders Fund Scout), Locus Ventures, and Liquid 2 Ventures participated in the round; Advantedge Technology Fund, 9Unicorns, and Venture Catalyst are listed as existing investors. CEO Prashant Kumar said the pandemic created a unique opportunity to rapidly build in a fragmented, largely unbranded market and has raised customer expectations around hygiene and safety. The article also references Flixbus—noting $650 million invested by General Atlantic, BlackRock, Silver Lake, and Canyon Partners—as a worldwide equivalent for context.

• Ziina

  Participated · Seed · Jun 2021

  Ziina began as a P2P bill-splitting app and has expanded into a two-segment platform: Ziina Personal and Ziina Business, offering payment links, a payment gateway, POS QR-code payments, social payments and basic CRM. The company supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, Mastercard and Visa, and integrates its gateway with platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify. Ziina charges straightforward fees (2.6%+1 AED for payment links and POS; 2.9%+1 AED for gateway transactions) and provides a dashboard for reconciliation. It reports 50,000 active retail and business users, 34% month-over-month customer growth over the last year, and revenues that have increased ten-fold year-over-year; transaction volume is on track to ~1.1 billion AED (~$300M) annualized. Growth has been largely product-led (about 55% organic acquisition) though the company is beginning to hire a sales team. With a Central Bank of the UAE stored value facility license, Ziina plans to expand financial services (including an upcoming ZiiCard and expense-management features) and to earn float on stored customer balances. Ziina operates a peer-to-peer payments wallet that lets users send and receive money using just a phone number, avoiding IBANs or SWIFT codes common in the UAE. The company is in the process of obtaining regulation and has a banking partner among the three largest banks in the UAE. Ziina launched a restricted beta and reports thousands of users who transacted more than $120,000 in the past month, plus over 20,000 people on a waiting list. The team includes alumni from Apple, Uber, Coinbase, Revolut, Stripe and others, and the founders intend to use growth capital to hire, acquire customers, and build commercial partnerships. Product roadmap includes expanding P2P payments across MENA and adding products such as remittances, investment and cryptocurrency services. The company plans geographic expansion into Saudi Arabia and Jordan in 2022, with Egypt and Tunisia targeted further out.

No current team members are available.