Participated · Series A · May 2025

Palla operates a platform that enables partners to embed real-time international payments into existing digital channels via APIs, white-label apps, and embeddable components. The product allows financial institutions to offer international payments directly within their native applications or via Palla’s hosted infrastructure. Palla has established partnerships with more than 30 financial institutions and distribution partners, and expects additional partners to launch before year-end representing a combined end-customer base of over 150 million individuals across LATAM and the Caribbean. The company announced a $14.5 million Series A and will use the funding to broaden existing payment corridors, expand into new sending and receiving corridors, and introduce additional product lines and money-movement mechanisms. Leadership changes tied to the round include the addition of David Golden and Heidi Miller to Palla’s board, supporting planned growth and global expansion.

Led · Series A · Apr 2025

Swivel (formerly PilotDesk) offers a no-code AI workflow automation platform designed to remove repetitive work in ad operations and account management. The company focuses on AI-driven orchestration, unified analytics, and seamless integrations with ad servers, DSPs, SSPs, and OMS platforms. Swivel says its automation engine has already produced measurable results — in a deployment with LG Ad Solutions it performed over half a million automated actions, equating to roughly 25,000 hours of manual ad-operations time saved and moving from pilot to a long-term partnership. The team includes co-founders Joe Hirsch, Matt Dearborn, and Rich Lin, plus President Frans Vermeulen and CTO Geir Magnusson Jr., bringing deep adtech and technical experience. The company rebranded from PilotDesk to Swivel as it shifts to building more intelligent systems to eliminate the need for staff to "swivel-chair" between multiple ad platforms and to enable automation in revenue operations at scale. Funding announced in April 2025 will support team growth and accelerate product development focused on deeper AI orchestration and integrations. UnVale is a platform for storytellers to develop entire worlds of content, enabling writers, illustrators, and animators to grow an audience and publish long-form work in serialized pieces. The product breaks down long-form content into easy-to-digest releases so creators can expand their fanbase with each update. The company positions itself as an alternative to short-form influencer-focused social platforms, emphasizing public worldbuilding and story craft. Operating metrics cited in the announcement include 150k users (700% growth year-to-date), 1M pieces of original content, and 3M social interactions (28x growth YTD). UnVale said the $1M pre-seed raise will accelerate growth through 2025. The company is actively hiring backend engineers and aims to use its momentum to help creators self-publish and signal audience interest to publishers.

Participated · Series B · Apr 2025

Crux operates a finance platform focused on tax-driven investments and broader financing solutions—including debt, preferred equity, and tax equity—for clean and critical infrastructure. The company deploys hybrid partnership flip structures to monetize tax credits and reports hybrid tax equity now represents more than 75% of tax equity investments in its market data. Since launching its tax and preferred equity offering, Crux says it has executed more than $1 billion in signed term sheets and issued more than $9 billion in indications of interest. Publicly announced transactions include a $340 million tax equity investment supporting a 413 MWdc utility-scale solar project in Texas. Crux describes itself as using market-leading data and an AI-powered platform to underwrite and execute deals across a diversified pipeline. The $500 million facility from Nuveen EIC is intended to scale Crux’s ability to act as a general partner and accelerate clean energy deployment amid rising electricity demand.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2025

Pickleheads operates a leading website and mobile app that helps players find courts, organize games, collect payments, run round robins, and recruit local players. The company is positioning itself as a complete platform to power recreational play and is introducing level-based formats to create balanced, competitive games. Pickleheads reports 9 million visits last year, is the #1 mobile app for pickleball, and served nearly 1 million players per month. It has 354,000 registered users, growing 405% year-over-year, and is the official court and game finder of USA Pickleball and the Global Pickleball Federation. The company says the funding will help enhance the on-court experience through technology and expand its product beyond a court finder into structured programming. Pickleheads is hiring for remote roles as it scales its team. Pickleheads is an Atlanta-based startup that offers a platform to help pickleball players find local courts and connect with nearby players. The company first introduced a court finder last summer and says thousands of players use the site every day. On Feb. 21, 2023 Pickleheads released new scheduling and group management tools that let organizers post schedules, collect signups, and manage waitlists. The startup quietly raised pre-seed funding last fall from Ardent Venture Partners, Overline, and Kevin Durant's and Rich Kleiman's Boardroom Pickleball to support growth and its technology roadmap. Planned roadmap items include flex leagues, an instructor marketplace, and other tools to enhance the on-court experience. The company was founded by Max Ade, Brandon Mackie, and Ian Langworth and positions itself as a digital home and operating system for pickleball players and organizers.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2025

Method provides an API that enables fintech apps to aggregate consumers’ debts and execute balance transfers, bill pay, and payoffs on users’ behalf. It leverages consumer credit access protections from the Dodd-Frank Act by combining identity verification data from credit bureaus and telecoms with data from core banking systems. Users connect by providing a phone number; Method reports over 30 million account connections for 4 million users and has facilitated more than $500 million in liability repayments to date. The company says it collects only 'minimum user information' and does not sell data, and it plans to launch a portal for users to manage data they’ve shared with Method customers. Method has added credit-card support, underpins Bilt’s card-linking tool, and competes with vendors such as Plaid, MX, Spinwheel, and Dwolla. Near-term product plans include deepening banking relationships and rolling out credit-card network integrations for retail and travel customers. Method offers a turnkey API that aggregates and writes to a consumer’s liabilities by tapping identity verification data from credit bureaus and wireless carriers plus real-time data from financial institutions’ core systems. The platform can collate liabilities across more than 60,000 U.S. institutions and exposes a payment API that handles money movement end-to-end so apps can push funds to loans, credit cards and bills. Method leans on consumer credit access protections from the 2010 Dodd‑Frank Act to enable its approach and plans a user portal for consumers to manage shared data. The company says it has 35 customers, over 75,000 users and approximately $2.25 million in annual recurring revenue. Method competes with Plaid, MX, Spinwheel and Dwolla and plans to roll out features including real‑time credit card transactions, instant balance transfers and enhanced live liability data. Its privacy policy emphasizes collecting only minimum user information and not selling data to third parties. Method Financial (originally GradJoy) provides an API and repayment rail that lets fintechs and lenders validate consumer debt with a creditor and initiate payments without mailing checks. The product was developed after founders worked directly with lenders and providers such as FIS to build a flow that covers repayment for student loans, mortgages, credit cards, and other consumer debt. Method reports coverage of over 95% of consumer credit in the U.S. and connectivity to more than 3,000 financial institutions. After a beta launch in late 2021, the company processed over $1 million in payments in January 2022 and charges a flat per-transaction fee, generating $0.65 in revenue per transaction. The team plans to grow its Austin, Texas headcount with hires in sales, marketing, and engineering and to build more embeddable developer components such as payoff prioritization tools and credit-report access.