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The Venture Codex

HearstLab

300 West 57th Street, New York, NY, 10019, United States

Overview

HearstLab is an early-stage venture fund focused on women-led startups innovating across the enterprise technology, data analytics, health, fintech, transportation and media spaces. To date, HearstLab has invested in over 56 companies at the Seed and Series A stages, with four successful exits. The firm often participates as a co-investor and in follow-on rounds. HearstLab is a venture arm of the Hearst Corporation ("Hearst") and provides one year of services in addition to cash investments. With access to Hearst's resources across 360+ businesses, HearstLab’s breadth of services includes providing assistance with commercial deals, privacy and security, legal services, marketing support and raising capital. Portfolio companies also benefit from the strategic guidance and resource support of HearstLab Scouts, women leaders across Hearst who share their networks and expertise. HearstLab has a full-time dedicated team assisting with UI/UX, DevOps engineering, data security, data science, brand storytelling, financial modeling and business development.

Total investments
36
Lead investments
14
Investments · 12mo
6
Active investors
6

Sector focus

  • Analytics
  • DevOps
  • FinTech
  • Information Technology
  • Marketing
  • Media and Entertainment
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Investment portfolio

  • Buzz Solutions

    Participated · Series A · Aug 2026

    Buzz Solutions offers PowerAI, a platform that transforms inspection imagery into actionable asset intelligence across transmission, distribution, substations and utility-scale solar. The company helps utilities modernize the electric grid by enabling improved reliability, reduced infrastructure risk and optimized maintenance at scale. Leadership includes co-founders and executives Kaitlyn Albertoli (CEO) and Vikhyat Chaudhry (CTO). Buzz Solutions works with utilities across North America, including Dominion Energy, American Electric Power and the New York Power Authority. The company is based in Palo Alto, CA. It plans to use the newly raised Series A funds to accelerate product innovation, expand go-to-market capabilities and deepen customer deployments.

  • Bevyl

    Participated · Seed · Jun 2026

    Bevyl offers an AI-driven platform that automates clipping, sequencing, overlays, and voiceovers to produce publish-ready short-form videos for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. The company claims its system saves brands roughly 18 hours per week and that 90% of videos edited through the platform go straight to publish without further tweaks; it also markets a 50% better social engagement claim. Bevyl was co-founded by Nina Chen Liu and Noah Lindner and operates with a small team of between two and ten people. Its pricing includes a Pro tier at $199 per month per seat. Bevyl faces competition from horizontal and vertical players such as OpusClip, Descript, VEED.io, Kapwing, and Captions, and emphasizes learning brand voice and visual style as a differentiation. The company has taken early steps to commercialize through seed funding and a syndicate-style cap table driven by Launchpad Venture Group members.

  • Statusphere

    Participated · Series A · Jan 2026

    Winter Park-based Statusphere provides an AI-driven platform that automates every stage of large-scale creator campaigns, from influencer sourcing and vetting to product fulfillment, compliance, performance tracking, and rights management. The software enables brands such as Parlux, Kendo Brands, Express, and LG H&H to activate thousands of micro-creators with less than an hour of setup while maintaining brand-safety and compliance standards. In the past year, the company powered more than 50,000 creator collaborations that generated over half a billion engagements and video views, demonstrating strong market traction. Statusphere’s technology also supports social SEO and generative engine optimization (GEO) to improve product discovery across emerging AI-driven search experiences. With the new capital, the team plans to expand its social SEO, GEO, and reporting capabilities and to build next-generation tools for creators. Total funding now stands at $27 million, providing resources to fuel continued platform development and customer growth.

  • MamaWell

    Participated · Series A · Dec 2025

    MamaWell, founded in 2022, has built a digital health platform that supports women during pregnancy through personalized, evidence-based care. Using wearable devices, the service collects vital data such as heart rate and activity levels and blends it with 24/7 chat and online consultations from a network of personal midwives. The B2B-focused model has been adopted by more than 140 corporations, health-insurance associations and municipalities across Japan, including over 100 companies seeking to help employees stay in the workforce through pregnancy. By filling the gap between conventional medical care and workplace accommodations, the service is positioning itself as new social infrastructure. The company plans to expand corporate roll-outs, deepen alliances with local governments and hospitals, and grow its midwife network. Proceeds from the latest round will also strengthen product development so the platform can deliver seamless support from pregnancy through postpartum. Ultimately, MamaWell aims to make comprehensive maternal support an everyday standard in Japan.

  • Heatseeker

    Led · Seed · Oct 2025

    Heatseeker helps brands close advertising’s costly “say–do gap” by measuring how real audiences click, sign up, and engage on social platforms before campaigns go live. Its Market Experiments Engine runs live tests and delivers predictive results with up to 90% accuracy, allowing creative, pricing, and positioning decisions to be made in minutes rather than weeks. To make findings tangible, the company generates lifelike, behaviorally trained AI avatars that let teams watch simulated customers react to different messages in real time. Marketers can conduct rapid, what-if experiments across audiences and regions and instantly see which creative drives attention, recall, and conversion. Heatseeker showcased this capability alongside KPMG at SXSW Sydney 2025, underscoring demand for data-driven decision tools. Backed by investors such as Capital F, Eastend Capital, Euphemia, and now HearstLab, the company is using fresh capital to broaden access to its platform and integrate deeper within brand workflows. The combined pre-seed and seed funding efforts position Heatseeker to accelerate product development and commercial growth.

Team