Participated · Equity · May 2022

Airspace is a time-critical logistics tech company that operates a global delivery network aimed at accelerating and improving time-sensitive shipments. Led by co-founder and CEO Nick Bulcao, the company provides real-time, data-driven notifications and tracks over 16,000 touchpoints within a shipment. It serves numerous Fortune 500 customers across healthcare, aerospace, semiconductor, and automotive manufacturing. Airspace has offices in Carlsbad, Dallas, Amsterdam, and Stockholm and employs more than 300 people. The company plans to use new funding to accelerate market penetration in Europe, expand into Asia, build out its core business, launch expedited freight service lines, and enter new verticals including semiconductor, automotive, and cleantech. To date, Airspace has raised $138M in total funding. Airspace operates a global delivery network focused on time-critical and scheduled logistics, leveraging software, people, and a courier network to move urgent shipments such as organs, lab tests, PPE, and vaccines. The company uses a patented Logistical Management System that applies machine learning and AI to generate optimal shipping routes in seconds versus the industry standard of roughly 30 minutes. Airspace serves over 200 enterprise customers across healthcare, high-tech, manufacturing, and aerospace, including Labcorp, Quest Diagnostics, Frontier Airlines, and the American Red Cross. The business reports 200 employees, has shipped more than 200,000 packages to date, and estimates its deliveries have positively affected over 180,000 lives. It assisted pandemic relief by moving thousands of COVID tests daily and acted as a primary logistics provider for vaccine distribution in California. Airspace opened an office in Amsterdam and plans to open additional offices in Europe and Asia as it continues international expansion. The company says it is on pace to grow by over 100% in 2021 and has raised funding that supports continued technology and geographic growth. Airspace Technologies provides a tech platform for time-definite delivery and supply chain services, offering automated quoting, routing and real-time notifications for priority shipments. The company operates a global contractor network that connects businesses directly with drivers (called "commanders") to speed deliveries, increase transparency and reduce cost. Its proprietary algorithms and datasets are used by over 100 companies, including LabCorp, FedEx and Frontier Airlines. Founded in 2015 and led by CEO Nick Bulcao, the company is based in Carlsbad, Calif. Airspace intends to use the new funding to expand globally and accelerate its delivery network and enterprise software platform. The business focuses on time-critical logistics and enterprise customers. Airspace Technologies offers time-definite delivery and supply chain services through an integrated platform and a nationwide network of vetted 1099 driver-partners. Its platform uses proprietary routing algorithms to automate planning for the fastest possible deliveries and enables real-time communication with customers for critical shipments. Driver-partners opt into the platform via the Mobile Application CommanderConnect™ and support high-value loads such as aircraft parts and human organs for transplant. Since its inception in 2015, the company has focused on healthcare, high-tech/semiconductor, and aerospace markets and has customers including LabCorp, FedEx, and Frontier Airlines. The company has built a nationwide network of 1099 driver-partners and currently employs over 50 people. It plans to use the new funding to hire more than 40 additional employees and further develop its delivery network and software platform.

Led · Series A · Mar 2020

Empower Finance offers a mobile-first banking product that aggregates users’ bank and credit card accounts to recommend saving, spending, budgeting and cost-cutting actions. The company pairs AI-driven insights with access to human financial planners and has launched its own checking account and a savings product yielding 1.60% APY with no minimums, no overdraft fees and unlimited withdrawals. Empower charges users $6 per month and says that customers save roughly $300 a year in fees and on average $1,300 more annually. The company reports more than 600,000 active users and about 35 employees. Empower positions itself against a crowded field of digital banks and personal-finance apps, arguing its branchless model and modern tech stack remove 60–70% of legacy cost structure. Empower is a San Francisco, CA-based financial technology company led by CEO and co-founder Warren Hogarth. It operates a mobile bank and app (iOS and Android) that offers 1% cashback on debit purchases, 1.85% annual percentage yield on savings accounts, and no maintenance, foreign transaction fees, or account minimums. Members can access checking and savings for free at over 25,000 ATMs and are reimbursed for out-of-network ATM use worldwide. The service includes an artificial intelligence-powered assistant to help members make improved financial decisions. The company raised $4.5m and intends to use the funds to accelerate development of its new product offering, Empower banking. Empower launched an iOS mobile app that aggregates accounts from more than 1,000 supported banks to give users an overview of day-to-day transactions and spending behavior. The app includes tools to transfer money between accounts, automate a percentage-based savings feature into users' own accounts, and categorizes transactions using in-house data cleaning and a crowdsourced category database. Empower emphasizes security (256-bit AES at rest, 256-bit SSL in transfer, PCI-compliant storage) and partners directly with financial providers rather than only scraping data. Future product plans described in the article include bill payments, debt-paydown tools, recommending high-interest savings accounts, loan-refinancing suggestions, and potential integrations with robo-advisors for investment flows. The San Francisco-based team of five is led by founder Warren Hogarth and co-founder Justin Ammerlaan; an Android version is planned for release in a few months. The app is free on iTunes.

Led · Equity · Jun 2018

Grove provides subscription financial planning for $600 a year, combining software and salaried financial advisors to make advice more affordable and reduce conflicts of interest. The company has about 12 employees, roughly split between advisors and product staff. Grove says its model lets advisors serve many more clients cost‑effectively, though the CEO declined to disclose client counts or revenue. The startup was founded roughly two years before the article and is based in San Francisco. Co‑founder and CEO Chris Hutchins previously spent several years as an investor with GV. Grove has attracted interest from athlete investors who value unbiased, affordable advice for a broader set of clients. Grove pairs customers with a real-life Certified Financial Planner and combines that human advice with a dashboard that tracks goals, sends reminders, and lets users message their advisor. The service asks users to connect existing financial accounts (cards, investment accounts, etc.) to produce personalized recommendations and visibility into spending and saving. Grove offers an optional investment service that charges 0.25% of assets under management, though users can manually implement recommendations if they prefer. The company charges a $600-per-year subscription, which it expects to be its main revenue source and does not plan to push referral-fee-generating products. The site is live now and users can schedule an initial consultation with an advisor before committing to the yearly plan. The startup was founded by Chris Hutchins, who previously co-founded Milk and was a partner at Google Ventures.

Participated · Series A · Feb 2018

Owl builds a two-way dash cam that plugs into a car’s on-board diagnostics port to provide always-on LTE video for monitoring break-ins, collisions and police stops. The device sits between the dashboard and windshield and is controllable via the Owl mobile app; it automatically saves crash video including 10 seconds before and after an incident. Owl launched in February initially for iOS and is now available to Android users. The camera supports voice capture (“OK, presto”) for recording moments and scenery. Installation takes only a few minutes; Owl includes one year of instant LTE video with its $349 price. The team includes ex-Apple and Dropcam executives, and the product is positioned against competitors such as Raven. Owl makes an always-connected LTE dashboard camera that plugs into a car’s on-board diagnostics port and streams footage to a mobile app. The device runs continuously to capture crashes, break-ins, parking dings and traffic stops, and it automatically saves video of detected accidents including the 10 seconds before and after the event. Users can view the prior 24 hours of footage via the app and save clips to their phone; the camera also supports a voice command (“Ok presto”) to instantly save moments. Co-founded by Andy Hodge (ex-Apple, Dropcam) and Nathan Ackerman (Microsoft HoloLens lead), the company positions the product around security, accountability during police stops, and everyday sharing. Owl will retail for $299 with LTE service at $10 per month; at launch it is offered as a $349 bundle that includes one year of LTE service. The company has disclosed $18 million in funding and named several investors tied to its commercial launch.

Participated · Seed · Dec 2017

PullRequest provides on-demand code review as a service, matching expert reviewers to developers' code before it is published. The company was in Y Combinator last August and is led by founder and CEO Lyal Avery. PullRequest is adding elements of automation and intelligence to its platform to complement human reviewers. It targets QA bottlenecks created by faster development cycles, enabling teams to move faster without sacrificing code quality. Avery says the platform has found vulnerabilities that helped prevent potential data leaks, though the company declined to name clients. Gradient Ventures’ managing director Anna Patterson highlighted the combination of on-demand review and AI to make code reviews more accessible to enterprises. PullRequest operates an on-demand code review service that connects companies with a pool of human reviewers who check for bugs, security issues, coding standards and performance problems. The company is building toward automation of the coding process, using its reviewed code dataset to surface and eventually repair common issues. An early automation effort is a Slack bot (in alpha) that notifies developers when dependencies need updating. PullRequest says it scores and analyzes review projects to create the dataset that will drive future automation. The startup is a Y Combinator Summer 2017 graduate and has grown from 200 reviewers and 300 companies in August to 1,900 reviewers and 1,000 companies today. The company has six employees, plans to double headcount next month, and will use the new funding to continue growth.