Participated · Series F · Dec 2025

Founded in 2014, Octane offers an end-to-end digital buying experience for powersports, RVs, boats, personal watercraft, and outdoor power equipment. Its platform pre-qualifies consumers online, routes them to dealerships for quick closings, and services the loans it originates. The company’s financing portal and underwriting engine have helped it originate more than $7 billion in loans, issue over $4.7 billion in asset-backed securities, and sell or commit to sell $3.3 billion of secured consumer loans since December 2023. Octane grew originations by more than 30 percent from Q3 2024 to Q3 2025 and operates on a GAAP-net-income-profitable basis. It works with 60 OEM partner brands and over 4,000 dealer partners, addressing markets worth a combined $150 billion. Recent product launches have further sped up customer acquisition for merchants and improved flexibility for borrowers. The company employs about 600 people across remote and hybrid roles.

Led · Seed · Feb 2022

Autio offers a location-based audio storytelling app that uses a user’s GPS location to deliver narrated stories about nearby landmarks, cities, and towns. The company was founded by Woody Sears, Bill Werlin, and Kevin Costner and is based in Santa Barbara. It originally launched in August 2020 under the name HearHere. On March 29, 2023, Autio announced it had raised $5.9 million in a funding round. The round was led by iHeartMedia. The article does not disclose additional operating metrics, valuation, or other participating investors. HearHere is a GPS-powered audio entertainment app that delivers immersive, location-based storytelling to road-trip travelers. Launched in August 2020 and based in Santa Barbara, the app pushes three- to five-minute stories to users as they drive, surfacing history, natural landscape, sports, music and local insights. HearHere currently has more than 100,000 registered users and offers over 8,880 stories across the continental United States; free accounts include five stories while paid subscriptions cost $36 per year for unlimited access. The company maintains a 26-person content team of researchers, writers, editors and narrators (primarily contractors), and actor Kevin Costner joined in 2020 as a co-founder, narrator and investor. HearHere plans to expand its content library, add offline listening, launch an Android app, and extend availability to Alaska and Hawaii later this year. The new funding will also be used to grow the team and expand functionality. HearHere produces short (three- to five-minute) narrated audio stories that trigger with users’ permission while they drive, surfacing local history, sports, music and lesser-known points of interest. The company has banked 5,500 stories across 22 states and plans to be nationwide by summer. It operates a content team of 22 researchers, writers, editors and narrators and currently has a five-person core team. HearHere offers five free stories per month and unlimited streaming for $35.99 per year. The roadmap includes opening to third-party contributors and incorporating AI and machine learning for language support and better personalization. HearHere has formed distribution and promotion partnerships with AAA, Camping World, Outdoorsy, RVshare and Cruise America.