• Lean Financial

  Participated · Seed · Sep 2021

  Lean is a platform that partners with gig and independent marketplaces to provide workers access to financial products and benefits tailored to their needs. Founded by Tilak Joshi with co-founders Eden Kfir and Ramki Venkatachalam, the company offers services such as no-cost capital, instant payouts, mortgages, low-to-no-cost borrowing, HSAs and insurance. Lean works with marketplaces that employ 1099 or W2 workers across industries including ride-hailing, courier, healthcare and construction and says its platform can integrate with any marketplace in less than two weeks. There is no cost for marketplaces or workers; Lean expects to earn revenue through fees associated with the movement of money on its platform. The startup has inked deals with half a dozen marketplaces, has another half dozen in the works, and expects to roll out to "hundreds of thousands" of gig workers over the coming months. Lean plans to use new capital to expand its offering and continue scaling across marketplaces. Financially, the company has raised $4.5M in a seed round and nearly $6M in total to date.

• Airblack

  Participated · Series A · Jun 2021

  Airblack is an outcome-focused skill-learning platform that emphasizes mobile-first delivery and a learning-by-doing pedagogy, with courses accredited by the Government of India’s Beauty & Wellness Sector Skill Council and Skill India. The company focuses on beauty upskilling to empower women to become micro-entrepreneurs and access local jobs. Since launching three years ago, over 35,000 students across 300 cities have enrolled in its courses. Airblack plans to launch new virtual offerings, introduce new programmes, and open hybrid learning centres in 10 cities over the next year to broaden its geographic reach. The company says it has doubled down on driving student outcomes across Tier-I and Tier-II cities. Management has stated that expanding impact and becoming profitable are top priorities following the fundraise. Airblack operates a ‘do-it-together’ beauty skilling platform where curated experts teach live workshop-format courses to help learners upskill and become micro-entrepreneurs. The company says more than 25,000 learners have attended courses across 500+ cities and it delivers over 45,000 hours of live classes per month. Courses run from one day up to 120 days (long courses 30–120 days) with fees starting at Rs 150 for short courses and Rs 10,000 for long courses; Airblack reports an 80% course completion rate. The 100-member team is majority female (over 75%) with women holding 50% of leadership roles. Airblack reports an NPS of 72 and that over 35% of members purchase another course after completion. The company will use the Series A capital to accelerate expansion of its Beauty Club, launch new clubs, and invest in product, engineering and brand.

• Beacons

  Participated · Seed · May 2021

  Beacons provides creators a single, customizable mobile landing page to aggregate links, sell content, and surface monetization options like donations, affiliate links, a digital storefront, and requests. The product offers free and premium tiers; the $10/month “entrepreneur” plan adds custom domains and extra content blocks, while transaction fees are 9% on the free plan and 5% on premium. Beacons supports commerce-focused blocks such as a shopping-enabled TikTok feed, video and e-book storefronts, a requests block, analytics, and email/SMS marketing. The company emphasizes deep page customization and recently added a “community block” to highlight collaborators; high-profile users include Sia, Green Day, and Russell Brand. Beacons says its user base has grown 70% month-over-month since its October launch. The team plans to use new funding to hire additional engineers and designers and to expand the product toward a platform/ecosystem for creators.

• Pearpop

  Participated · Seed · Apr 2021

  Pearpop operates a marketplace that lets creators and brands buy collaborations with celebrities and influencers, and run engagement-based “challenges” on TikTok and Instagram. Since launching in October 2020, the platform has grown to over 200,000 creators and has paid out more than $10 million to creators, with 71% of earnings going to creators with under one million followers. The company has attracted brands such as Amazon, Netflix, Chipotle, Rakuten, Universal Pictures, Sonos and Beyond Meat, and celebrities including Doja Cat, The Weeknd, Madonna, Shawn Mendes and Post Malone. Pearpop is expanding its product suite with two new offerings, Ovation (to mobilize brand advocates) and Passport (blockchain-backed cross-platform engagement visibility), and previously launched Pearproof, a web3 NFT product on Solana. The company plans to use the new funding to accelerate tech and engineering hiring, advance product functionality, leverage data and intelligence, and build out sales and partnership teams. pearpop operates a marketplace that enables social collaborations between creators, matching talent for paid creator interactions and partnerships. The platform launched in October 2020 and has since attracted almost 10,000 creators, including Heidi Klum, Loren Gray, Snoop Dogg and Tony Hawk. Creators on pearpop collectively reach more than a billion followers, and hundreds of users have over a million followers on TikTok alone. Financially, pearpop has completed a $16M funding package made up of a $10M Series A and a prior $6M seed. The company’s Series A was led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners. The earlier seed was co-led by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures and Slow Ventures, with additional participation from Atelier Ventures and Chapter One Ventures. Angel investors include a large roster of entertainers and creators who also back the platform. PearPop operates a marketplace that allows TikTok celebrities to set prices and accept bids from fans to share screen time and create joint videos. Creators can preview and approve content before posting, and payments are processed and verified through Stripe. The company reported rapid early traction—nearly 25,000 users in less than a month, including 3,000 users from a single post by TikTok star Anna Shumate. Founder Cole Mason built the product to simplify fan access and creator monetization, positioning it as an alternative to manager-mediated deals or Cameo-style messages. PearPop has an advisor in Spencer Markel and plans mobile launches, with Android and iOS versions expected in November. The company says it has secured seed funding from Rocket One Capital and aims to reach 100,000 users in the coming months before pursuing further fundraising.

• Copy.ai

  Participated · Seed · Mar 2021

  Copy.ai is a GPT-3–powered platform that generates copywriting tools for business customers, producing outputs like blog outlines, ad link descriptions, and company mottos. Its core product is a subscription service priced at $35 per month and includes features such as Editor for organizing and editing ideas; the company is building long-form content tools and a teams product that personalizes output as the AI learns about a business. The company grew from three employees to 13 and operates as a fully remote team. Copy.ai is not yet profitable but reached $2.4 million in annual recurring revenue. It has over 300,000 marketers using its tools, more than 250,000 free-trial signups since the seed round, and over 5,000 premium customers. Management says the company will use new capital to hire additional engineers and expand product features while continuing to improve text quality and the core app experience. Copy.ai offers AI-powered tools that generate multiple text options for business writing use cases such as blogs, product descriptions and headlines, with a human-in-the-loop editor choosing and refining results. The product was built from earlier experiments (taglines.ai, Simplify.so and a slackbot) and leaned on Twitter for distribution and building in public. The company reports monthly recurring revenue (MRR) of $53,600 (up 46% from January), implying ARR of $643,200. Copy.ai uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 as the underlying model and is part of a cohort of startups building atop that technology. The founders monetized after early traction—2,000 sign-ups in the first two days after its October 2020 release—and have expanded the concept to multiple writing scenarios. The startup shares usage and social metrics publicly as part of its growth approach.

No current team members are available.