Participated · Seed · Mar 2022

DNABLOCK develops REPLIKANT, a flagship technology that lets distributed teams produce bespoke, high-quality digital 3D avatars, videos, games and even cinema-quality productions. The company focuses on tooling for creator communities in the decentralized Web3 medium. With this funding DNABLOCK plans to further scale and deploy REPLIKANT and empower key partners and creator communities to bring characters to life. The company will also establish an LA-based creator studio to launch new NFT talent and hire several key leadership roles. Leadership is led by co-founder and CEO Anthony Kelani and co-founder and CTO Luc Shurgers, with Scott Broock joining as Chief Strategy Officer following the round. Financially, DNABLOCK closed a second seed round of $7M to support these initiatives. DNABlock provides a virtual production platform called Replikant that uses a photo-to-avatar AI pipeline to turn a selfie into a customizable 3D avatar in about 40 seconds. Creators can fully customize characters from a library of clothing and props, render cinematic animated videos, and create multiplayer venues for live events that can be streamed. The platform also supports distribution of original content and avatar assets as NFTs and includes a private Discord community for creators. DNABlock has produced projects for clients including Fox, Apple TV+, video games, music labels, fashion designers, and award shows. The company was bootstrapped by cofounders Anthony Kelani and Luc Schurgers, who began work on the tech in 2017 and incorporated in 2019; it currently has 11 employees. DNABlock plans to use the new funding to bring the technology to a broader community of individual creators and companies on its waitlist later this year.

Led · Series A · Feb 2022

Sounder is an end-to-end podcast management platform that brings Audio Intelligence to creators and media publishers. Founded in 2019 by former Google and Spotify executives and led by CEO Kal Amin, the New York-based company connects creators and enterprises to Audio Intelligence solutions to accelerate discovery, engagement, and monetization. The company plans to use the $7.7M Series A to expand its research and development team and build AI- and ML-powered tools to drive growth for audio creators. It also intends to build a complete ad system that supports publishers and advertisers of all sizes. With this round, Sounder’s total funding to date has reached $11.55M. Sounder is an end-to-end audio management and monetization platform for creators, led by Co-founder and CEO Kal Amin. The platform connects creators to the tools and services they need to grow audiences and revenue. Its Discovery Suite brings proprietary SEO, search, transcription and sharing technology to audio content, expanding the reach of every episode. The company will use the new funds to further advance its proprietary search, speech-to-text and contextualization technologies. Sounder also plans to establish a new R&D center of excellence in New York. Financially, it closed a $2.15M follow-on round, bringing total seed financing to approximately $4M raised in 14 months. Sounder provides an end-to-end podcast management platform that connects creators to tools and services to grow audiences and revenue. It leverages proprietary Pinpoint Audio Search technology to improve discoverability of audio content; the technology is described as patent-pending. Founded in 2019 by former Google and Spotify executives and led by CEO Kal Amin, Sounder has attracted thousands of shows and generated millions of streams in over 50 languages worldwide. The company closed a seed financing to support its growth and further product development. Proceeds will be used for select key hires, marketing initiatives and continued development of the platform and its patent-pending technology.

Participated · Seed · Dec 2021

Pariti is a community-led marketplace that connects founders in emerging markets to resources, talent and capital. Its principal product is the Recommendation Engine, which reviews submitted pitches, provides expert feedback and suggests personalized next steps, and includes predictability features tied to a Pariti score. The company reports that firms scoring over 70 on Pariti have a 50% likelihood of connecting with investors, while scores above 78 correlate with an 8x likelihood of raising capital. Pariti also helps talent monetize skills, enables VCs and angels to find and vet deals, and hosts a range of coaching and mentorship interactions. Founded in 2019 and based in Kenya, Pariti says it grew 795% this past year and lists over 880 companies across 42 countries; platform users raised more than $20 million in debt and equity over the past year. The company plans to use new funding to build SaaS workflows to aggregate equity, debt and DeFi fundraising, enhance its talent marketplace, create bespoke investor solutions, hire talent, grow communities and expand into new markets. Pariti operates a three-way marketplace that assesses startups across more than 70 data points, benchmarks them against peers, and matches founders with investors and a global expert community for one-on-one support and freelance hires. The platform provides detailed assessment feedback, NDAs, vetting and an algorithmic deal-matching service to simplify investor outreach and due diligence. Pariti monetizes through investor subscriptions (undisclosed), planned founder subscriptions, and transaction fees for freelance work and fundraising executed on the platform. Since launching in 2019, the company reports over 500 companies onboarded across 42 countries, 100 freelance experts and 60 investors, and five funds using its deal-management operating system. The founders say they have partners across emerging markets including Latin America and India and have expressed interest in the United States.