Led · Equity · Jun 2024

CBI develops, operates and invests across blockchain-enabled video games, commercial applications and selected crypto/NFT projects, and is launching the AlphaVerse metaverse. The company is a listed vehicle on Euronext Growth (E2) and was founded by Frédéric Chesnais. CBI secured an exclusive publishing and distribution agreement for the Web3 game Brilliantcrypto in Europe and South America and will cover promotion and marketing costs for three years. As part of that publishing deal CBI guaranteed a minimum revenue of €5 million for Brilliantcrypto over the three-year period. The transaction and partnership are presented by CBI as validation of its strategy focused on the AlphaVerse metaverse, Web3 video games, and Web3 investments. CBI highlights its ability to generate unique blockchain deal flow through the management team’s expertise.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2021

Shop LIT Live is a social media-powered shopping app and web platform offering interactive live shopping events where users can participate, interact with brands and creators, and purchase products directly in the app. The platform launched on iOS and Android last fall and was timed to address the shift to virtual experiences during the pandemic. It has grown to more than 200 brand partnerships and reports a user base growing roughly 80% month-to-month. Lifestyle brands, particularly in fashion and beauty, have adopted the platform to build trust and increase conversion through direct engagement. The company also runs a creator program to help hosts and brand ambassadors grow and monetize their audiences. Led by CEO Toby Zhang, Shop LIT Live says it will use fresh capital to bring more offerings and drive growth with brand partners, its creative network, and its community of shoppers.

Participated · Series A · Sep 2020

Bunch offers a mobile app positioned as an "AI coach" that delivers daily, short-form tips and tailors content to individual users and leadership goals. The company partnered with academics to define leadership-style archetypes that underpin its content and personalization. Bunch launched its service in November and reported roughly 13,000 signups by the start of the year, growing to nearly 20,000 users at the time of the article. The startup shifted from an earlier product direction (described in 2017 as analytics for company culture) to focus on individual leadership learning. Bunch plans to add community and peer-review features and expand into other content categories while concentrating on its initial niche. It intends to monetize via a freemium model to drive retention and longer-term engagement. Bunch is a party app for multiplayer games that enables players to connect with friends over video chat and jump into their favorite games. Developers can integrate Bunch into their own games to boost engagement by letting players party up and play together. The product is inspired by LAN parties and delivers that experience on smartphones and tablets. Since March 2020 the app saw rapid adoption, growing more than 50 times in monthly active users and expanding its audience to include millennial players who are 60% female. The company will use its Series A funding to grow its user base and accelerate integrations with popular multiplayer games. Bunch is co‑founded by Selcuk Atli, Jason Liang, and Jordan Howlett and has offices in New York and Toronto. Bunch runs a SaaS platform called Team Analytics that plugs into a company’s Slack public channels and analyzes communication to produce real-time overviews of morale, collaboration, psychological safety and related KPIs. The company says these overviews are based on “scientifically valid KPIs” tied to team performance and do not require employee surveys. Bunch also added Teams at Work, a hub for leaders to connect with peers and share best practices. The product launched in May and emphasizes community-driven use where users discuss findings within their organizations. Bunch plans to use its new seed funding to expand into the US market. The company positions itself to become a leader in “collaboration intelligence” bridging management science and everyday leadership practice. Bunch provides an in-game video and voice chat layer for mobile titles, letting friends sync up and talk while playing. Its SDK is used by developers and works with hits like Fortnite and Roblox, and developers of games like Spaceteam are integrating deeper features. The app supports group voice or video chat for up to eight players and can enable advanced behaviors such as pinning friends’ faces to in-game characters when developers build in the SDK. Bunch launched its app in March and has already cracked the top 100 social iOS chart, with a planned Android launch. It is not monetizing yet but plans to sell expression tools like emotes and voice/video filters. The company intends to use new funding to add features (meeting new people, sharing replays) and to ramp user acquisition and developer partnerships. Bunch provides a platform that calculates optimal team makeups, measures each member’s impact on team dynamics, and delivers actionable recommendations to improve team performance. Users and candidates complete an online questionnaire based on the Organizational Culture Profiling method developed at Stanford University, producing profiles across six dimensions: customer-orientation, results-orientation, collaboration, detail-orientation, focus on principles, and adaptability. Employees, teams, and departments can experiment with different team setups using those profiles, and a Slack integration enables continuous, real-time monitoring of team culture. Launched in September 2017 and based in Berlin, the company has been tested by more than 1,000 companies, with customers including N26, Fraunhofer, and Digital Ocean. Bunch is led by CEO Darja Gutnick alongside Charles Ahmadzadeh and Anthony Reo and currently operates a 10-person team. The company intends to use the new funding to continue product development, expand the team, and grow sales.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2018

Vantage Point builds a VR software platform to deliver immersive enterprise training around sexual harassment, diversity and inclusion, and learning and development, aiming to identify and address implicit bias and high-pressure situations. The company plans to use the recently raised funds for product development and hiring to deploy its corporate training platform. Vantage Point intends to launch its platform with the first set of notable customers later this month. The company was founded and is led by solo female minority founder Morgan Mercer. Early customers span technology, consumer goods, consulting services, school districts, recruiting and other sectors. Vantage Point was accepted into The Women in XR Venture Fund’s Cohort 1 in December 2017 and Boost VC in January 2018. The company has expanded operations to Los Angeles and New York City.

Participated · Series B · Dec 2017

Fyusion develops an immersive 3D imaging platform that combines computer vision and machine learning to create interactive 3D images (Fyuses) from any camera or smartphone. Its technology captures high-definition images that can be processed in about 60 seconds and presented across mobile, desktop, AR and VR hardware. The company holds nearly 80 patents and has commercialized use cases in automotive (damage analysis, AR/VR extraction) and is expanding into fashion and e-commerce. Fyusion reports around 150 million users of its products globally. The business has raised close to $70 million to date and is backed by prominent Silicon Valley investors and global corporate partners. Fyusion’s platform is positioned to drive higher e-commerce engagement and sales by enabling 360-degree interactive product viewing. Fyusion develops technology that enables 3D capture with any camera to produce interactive images called ‘fyuses’ that users can tilt or swipe to view in up to 360 degrees. Its core stack combines computer vision and machine learning and is covered by more than 50 patents. Fyuses are optimized for small file sizes similar to a high-quality JPEG while remaining immersive and interactive across web, mobile, VR, AR and mixed reality platforms. The company has commercial partnerships with Cox Automotive and its Manheim brand to deliver enhanced merchandising for Manheim Express and wholesale services. Fyusion and Manheim plan future innovations that will add more artificial intelligence and improve objectivity in condition reports. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Radu Rusu and is based in San Francisco, CA. Financially, Fyusion announced a new $30M funding round and had previously raised $40M. Fyusion builds 3D computer-vision and machine-learning technology that lets users create immersive, interactive 3D images (“fyuses”) by moving a camera around a person, object or scene. Its core stack is covered by over 50 patents and is underpinned by a large, monthly-updated database of real-world 3D images from OEM partnerships. The company targets three verticals: mobile OEM (chipset-level mobile AR platforms with a first launch planned for Q1 2018), automotive imaging (a Car Capture App/SDK for 360° 4K captures and inspection workflows), and e-commerce imaging (studio and lifestyle 3D capture with Turntable Mode and automatic tagging). Fyusion reports more than 15 million Weekly Active Users and about 2.5 billion tilts (user-triggered view events) per week on its platform. OEM partners named in the articles include Gionee, Huawei, TCL and ZTE, and commercial partners or customers include Cox Automotive, Gulliver and DoneDeal. The company has been recognized by Walmart and Accenture for retail innovation. Fyusion has raised a total of $38 million since its 2014 inception and is based in San Francisco. Fyusion develops surround-view digital technology and a mobile photo app platform that lets users navigate beyond fixed angles and experience images from multiple perspectives. Its first application, Fyuse, is a mobile photo social app available for iOS and Android. Fyuse has been adopted by musicians (including Katy Perry, J*Davey, and Kittens), fashion designers (Kerby Jean‑Raymond and Camelia Skikos), and several brands across e-commerce, fashion and automobile industries. The company is led by CEO and co‑founder Dr. Radu B. Rusu. Fyusion intends to continue developing its user experience and to broaden its audience. Fyusion develops patent-pending 3D image-processing technologies and a 3D modeling platform that capture space via visual graph structures called "Spatial Photographs." Its consumer product, Fyuse, is a mobile iOS app that lets users create and share immersive Spatial Photographs by moving a camera through a scene. The company licenses its technologies and platform to players in the mobile and wearable device sectors. Fyusion intends to use recent funding to continue adding features and capabilities to the Fyuse app. The company was founded in 2013 by Dr. Radu B. Rusu (CEO), Stefan J.J. Holzer (CTO) and Stephen D. Miller (VP Engineering).