• Joro

  Participated · Series A · Oct 2022

  Joro is a personal carbon‑cutting app that tracks users’ carbon footprints and helps them reduce and offset emissions. Users can connect financial accounts via Plaid so Joro can estimate emissions from spending (e.g., gas, airfare) and offer personalized suggestions. The app offers paid subscriptions for offsetting emissions, with most users paying about $30 per month (ranges reported from ~$10 to $1,000). Joro vets offsets regularly for additionality, verifiability, permanence and “transformative potential,” and aggregates purchases so users can access higher‑quality offsets. The company charges a 17% fee on monthly subscription revenue to cover services and offset vetting; offsets in its portfolio range from $12–$600 per metric ton and average about $25/ton. Joro has recently tripled its monthly active users and reported an average compound monthly growth rate of 25%. Joro is a consumer-facing app that uses spending data integrated via Plaid to estimate users' personal carbon footprints and recommend actions to reduce and offset emissions. The product combines automated footprint tracking with community features such as sustainability challenges, classes and a social network to drive behavioral change. Founder Sanchali Pal built the company after work in international development and while at Harvard Business School; she co-founded Joro with J. Cressica Brazier. The app's community reported reducing nearly 6 million kilograms of CO2 in 2020, though the company has not disclosed total user counts. Pal estimates that better consumer choices and behavioral changes can cut an individual's footprint by up to 30%. Joro raised external capital to scale the product and community, securing seed funding to further develop its measurements, education and engagement features.

• Landis

  Participated · Series B · Oct 2022

  Landis operates a program that buys a home in an all-cash offer on behalf of a client, rents the home to that client, and provides personalized coaching to help the client qualify for a mortgage and repurchase the property. The company was founded in 2018 by Cyril Berdugo and Tom Petit and is based in New York. Landis runs a two-year coaching program focused on improving credit and savings milestones; it does not charge for coaching and earns revenue when it buys and later sells homes. The company declined to disclose revenue metrics but said its valuation increased with the new round. Since 2021 Landis has expanded from operating in 29 cities across 11 states to over 50 markets, its team has grown threefold, and applications to its program have increased more than seven times year-over-year. The new capital will be used to expand the coaching program (including a $2M allocation), enter new markets, and grow the team. Landis buys homes for prospective buyers who cannot yet qualify for a mortgage, rents the homes to them, and helps clients save, build credit, and become mortgage-ready within 12–24 months using underwriting technology and individualized coaching. The company provides a Landis Homeownership Coach mobile app (now free on iPhone) that dashboards credit, down payment savings, and debt with actionable insights. Clients are typically referred by real estate agents and mortgage lenders and are often held back by poor credit, lack of down-payment savings, or existing debt. Landis emphasizes financial literacy and partnership-style relationships rather than traditional landlord-renter dynamics. The company operates in 29 cities across 11 states and plans to expand to 20 states by next year. Founders Cyril Berdugo and Tom Petit launched Landis in 2018 and are focused on expanding headcount and improving user experience to scale impact. Landis operates a New York City marketplace enabling institutional investors to source and acquire portfolios of single-family homes. The company uses advanced data science and machine learning to source off-market portfolios and match them with relevant buyers. Typical portfolios comprise 10 to 50 properties, allowing buyers to scale quickly in target geographies. Landis counts as clients the largest residential investors in the U.S., which collectively have $200 billion of assets under management. The company was co-founded in 2017 by Cyril Berdugo and Tom Petit and recently acquired competitor GoldenKey. It plans to use new funding to build its team, improve its technology and better communicate its value to real estate owners.

• Draftea

  Participated · Equity · Mar 2022

  Draftea launched from stealth earlier this year with a DFS platform that initially hosted Mexican fantasy soccer matches and has expanded into NFL fantasy through a new partnership. The product emphasizes daily engagement and social competition rather than traditional sportsbook-style betting. The company offers multiple contest structures (head-to-head, top-20% payouts) with weekly payouts that can range from a few thousand pesos to millions. Founder Alán Jaime Misrahi, a former Mexican lower-division soccer player and Stanford MBA, leads the team as it scales hiring in engineering and product. Since its seed round in January the team grew from 34 to 70 employees; the company declined to share exact user or revenue figures but reports players growing "double digits" week-over-week and a resurgence in GMV as lineups per user have risen. Draftea is launching an “NFL by Draftea” product and is aiming to consolidate Mexico while expanding across Spanish-speaking countries and targeting major events like the FIFA World Cup. Draftea operates a daily fantasy sports (DFS) platform enabling fans to earn money using their soccer knowledge by assembling lineups of their favorite teams and scoring points from real-match actions. The app is available for Android and Apple phones and serves sports fans across Mexico. Led by CEO Alán Jaime, the company plans to expand into other sports soon. Draftea raised $4M in funding to accelerate growth. The company intends to use the proceeds to expand across Latin American markets. No other financial or user metrics were disclosed in the article. Draftea is a Spanish-language daily fantasy sports app that charges users a fee to draft lineups and compete for daily cash prizes. The platform is currently in private beta and plans to launch in the first quarter of this year, initially hosting Mexican fantasy soccer matches. The company says it aims to expand across Latin America and eventually offer fantasy games for many sports. Draftea targets the region’s roughly 350 million sports fans and positions itself as a more social, daily-focused alternative to seasonal fantasy and sports-betting platforms. The founding team includes Alán Jaime Misrahi (founder), former product and growth leads from major Latin American companies, and ex-EA Sports and Vercel engineers. Draftea has 34 employees and plans to double its headcount over the next couple months; the team is aiming to scale ahead of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

• Dispense

  Participated · Seed · Sep 2021

  Dispense is a New York-based B2B e-commerce software platform for cannabis dispensaries. Co-founded by Kyla Moore and Tim Officer, the platform enables dispensaries to sell product online, manage operations, build direct customer relationships, and scale their businesses. The platform is currently used by dispensaries in five states, including Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Since its beta launch in August 2020, Dispense has processed over 1.5 million orders with an order value of over $200 million. The company raised $2M in Seed funding and plans to use the funds to hire talent, continue developing and enhancing its product, and scale its sales and marketing efforts. NextView co-founder Lee Hower joined the Dispense board as part of the round.

• Manticore Games

  Participated · Series B · Sep 2019

  Manticore Games operates Core, a creator-focused game engine and discovery platform that emphasizes drag-and-drop creation and remixing of pre-made environments and 3D assets. The platform targets a 13+ crowd that may have outgrown Roblox and aims to grow a creator economy with flexible monetization. Creators can implement their own in-app purchase models and keep a 50% revenue share from their games. Manticore works closely with Epic Games—Epic invested $15 million last year—and embeds game discovery directly into the engine. The company faces platform-level challenges such as stacked revenue shares on consoles and mobile and platform gatekeeping (Sony was singled out). Financially, Manticore has raised significant VC backing to scale its creator multiverse. Manticore Games develops and operates Core, an accessible game construction kit and social game-playing platform built in Unreal Engine that aims to create an "endless gaming multiverse." The platform lowers barriers to game creation and publishing, enabling creators to produce a wide range of multiplayer game genres. Core opened to creators in Alpha and has already seen rapid content creation, including more than 150 Dungeons & Dragons–themed games released during a contest. The company has launched a $1 million Creator Payouts Pilot Program to seed a creator economy on the platform. Manticore positions Core as a metaverse playground where players discover user-generated worlds and creators monetize their work. The recent funding led by Epic Games is presented in the article as validation of Core's vision and progress. Manticore Games is a stealth startup building CORE, a game-making platform designed to let users create and monetize custom experiences without deep technical skills. CORE is built on Unreal Engine and the company describes it as a collaborative social ecosystem that supports a variety of shared online experiences. The founders compare user engagement with creators’ content to platforms like Twitch or YouTube, and position CORE more as a platform than a traditional game engine. Manticore has not disclosed a launch timeline but indicated something will be available soon while remaining in stealth and withholding many product details. Financially, the company has raised at least $45 million in financing to date, all before shipping a product. Founders Frederic Descamps and Jordan Maynard previously ran A Bit Lucky, which was acquired by Zynga in 2012; both stayed at Zynga until launching Manticore. Manticore Games is a stealth gaming studio developing an undisclosed PC multiplayer experience that leverages user-generated content. Founders Frederic Descamps and Jordan Maynard, both former executives who worked at Zynga, are leading the effort. The company aims to tap community-driven innovation to extend gameplay and game design, drawing on player passion. Manticore says its first title will offer complexity and strategic gameplay similar to leading PC hits. The startup completed a $15 million financing round to fund development. Investors include Benchmark, BITKRAFT Esports Ventures, Correlation Ventures, CrunchFund, Macro Ventures, SV Angel and several high-profile gaming and tech entrepreneurs.

No current team members are available.