Participated · Series A · Apr 2026

Since launching in 2021, Gizmo has developed an AI-driven platform that converts students' notes into interactive study materials and uses game mechanics—like leaderboards, streaks, limited lives, and friend challenges—to boost engagement. The app is designed for teenagers and young adults and has grown rapidly to more than 13 million users across over 120 countries, up from about 300,000 users in 2023. Gizmo had seven employees before the Series A and plans to expand to around 30 as it hires for engineering and AI roles. The company intends to use the Series A proceeds to scale its teams and expand its presence in the U.S. college market. Gizmo's prior financing includes a $3.5 million seed round led by NFX.

Led · Series A · Jun 2025

Pro Athlete Community (PAC) operates a global education and community platform that provides executive education certificate programs, certified performance coaching, hands-on industry experience, and access to a network of athletes, CEOs, investors, and advisors. PAC runs executive education programs in partnership with the University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School and offers curated mentorship and career-support services tailored to athletes. The company says membership has more than doubled since January to over 650 current and former professional athletes across 10+ sports and leagues, including roughly 10% of currently active professional football players in the U.S. PAC plans to use new capital to launch virtual education programs, expand mentorship, increase industry access, and enhance career support targeted to athletes’ post-playing needs. The platform emphasizes peer community and connections to Fortune 500 leaders and investors as a core driver of athlete transition outcomes. Founded in 2022 by Chip Paucek and Kaleb Thornhill, PAC positions itself as a specialist workforce and education provider for elite athletes.

Led · Seed · Apr 2025

SigIQ.ai builds AI-driven learning tools that deliver personalized education at scale, with flagship platforms PadhAI for UPSC exam preparation and EverTutor for GRE test prep. The company emerged from stealth in April 2025 after raising a $9.5M seed round. SigIQ.ai plans to use the funds to accelerate hiring, enhance its proprietary AI models, and scale its platforms across educational systems globally. Founded in 2023 by Karttikeya Mangalam and Prof. Kurt Keutzer, the company operates from offices in Berkeley and Gurgaon. Its product strategy targets elite-level instruction delivered at the cost of computation, addressing both Indian competitive exams and the U.S. test-prep market. The startup positions itself to expand platform reach and invest in core model and team growth using the new capital.

Led · Seed · Apr 2025

Ropes is an NYC-based company led by founder and CEO Ken Schumacher that provides an AI-driven platform for engineering talent evaluations. Its software combines technical assessments and real-world performance to deliver asynchronous assessments tailored to each role. The platform creates real-world simulations aligned to customer domains and tech stacks to evaluate candidates in context. Ropes aims to use new funding to expand operations and accelerate product development. The article reports the company raised $3.1M in Seed funding to support those plans. No operating metrics (revenue/users) are disclosed in the article.

Participated · Series A · Nov 2024

Leland operates a coaching marketplace that connects more than 100,000 users with over 1,000 vetted coaches across categories, plus courses and group events. The platform provides coach-facing tooling — payments, messaging, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, reviews, discount codes — described as a “business in a box.” It also offers AI features that generate session summaries, action items, and onboarding bios/headlines to streamline coach discovery and workflows. The company is expanding enterprise offerings (already used as perks by many Fortune 500s) and investing in AI-powered onboarding and interactive coach experiences tailored to learner progress. Financially, Leland is cashflow positive, saw revenue grow fourfold in the past year, and ran over 50,000 coaching sessions in the last 12 months. The startup maintains a strict coach vetting process (about a 5% acceptance rate) to preserve quality. Leland operates a coaching marketplace that targets career transitions rather than general classes or enterprise reskilling. Founded by John Koelliker last year, the platform connects customers with hourly‑paid coaches and takes tiered transaction fees (20% for payments under $1,000; 10% for checks over $10,000). Leland began with an MBA placement focus and has expanded to eight new coaching categories, including test prep (SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE) and paths into private equity, product management, investment banking and other tech roles. The company monetized on day one and reports that in the last nine months hundreds of customers purchased more than 2,500 hours of coaching. About 70% of its coaches use the work as a side hustle, and Leland positions itself as a lightweight option for practitioners who prefer one‑on‑one coaching to building large creator audiences. The startup is scaling its offerings and customer base as it formally goes to market.