Led · Series D · Feb 2023

LeafLink is a New York-based provider of a wholesale cannabis B2B technology platform that enables thousands of brands, distributors, and retailers to manage operations, create, manage, pay for, and ship orders. Its marketplace currently processes approximately $5 billion in annual transactions. The company offers marketplace and operational tools spanning ordering, payments, and logistics, and intends to use new capital to expand its suite of offerings. LeafLink raised $100M in Series D funding, to be funded in two tranches. The business is also evolving its executive leadership effective February 1, 2023, with co-founder Ryan G. Smith moving to Executive Chairman and Artie Minson appointed President & CEO. Karan Gupta has joined as Chief Technology Officer while co-founder Zach Silverman will transition to a Senior Advisor role. LeafLink operates in the cannabis wholesale market. The company raised $40M from Founders Fund and other investors to cultivate its cannabis wholesale market. That announcement appears amid 2020 trends that accelerated cannabis e-commerce and digital payments, as dispensaries were often classified as essential during the pandemic. TechCrunch notes legal cannabis sales reached nearly $20 billion in the past year and are expected to top $40 billion within the next four years, highlighting market expansion. The coverage frames the funding as part of broader investment and enterprise‑level technology adoption across the cannabis industry. LeafLink Financial is a digital cannabis supply-chain financing solution launched by LeafLink to address banking and liquidity challenges for licensed cannabis operators. The platform enables brands and distributors to assign invoices for upfront payments, broadly extend net terms, receive payment via ACH, and digitally reconcile invoices; retailers gain centralized accounts payable, net terms, digital invoice dispute resolution and cash-flow management tools. LeafLink developed the product with a focus on compliance and scalability across legal cannabis markets and processes roughly $2.8 billion in orders annually—about 30% of wholesale transactions on LeafLink’s marketplace. The service is marketed as the industry’s first “liquidity as a service” offering, providing on-demand funds to licensed businesses to support supply-chain growth and stability. Leadership for the unit includes Doug Gordon, appointed Executive Vice President and Head of LeafLink Financial, who has experience providing loans and lines of credit via partnerships with banks, B2B vendors and online platforms. LeafLink operates an e-commerce wholesale marketplace that connects more than 1,200 licensed cannabis brands to over 3,500 cannabis retailers and provides vendors with order management, CRM, inventory tracking, and customized reporting. The company charges a $299 minimum monthly subscription for its software, positioning it as a vertical-SaaS startup in the cannabis industry. LeafLink says it has facilitated more than $1 billion in annualized orders and has grown to more than 65 employees. It launched in Colorado in 2016 (with Zoots as its first brand) and is now described as a New York company. LeafLink is expanding its LeafLink Financial unit — a payments and credit management solution that is live in four U.S. states — to address banking challenges in the cannabis market. The company plans to use new capital to speed its expansion roadmap, improve technology, and undertake a major recruiting effort in its New York and Los Angeles offices. LeafLink is an NYC-based online commerce platform that connects cannabis brands and dispensaries. Led by CEO Ryan Smith and CTO Zach Silverman, the company facilitates transactions between brands and retailers. Since 2016 it has handled $186M in transactions and works with 400 brands and 1,700 retailers. The platform is live in five states: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. LeafLink intends to use new funding to expand into California and to launch in additional states, timed ahead of California's recreational sales rollout.

Participated · Series A · May 2022

BuildOps, founded in 2018 and based in Los Angeles, builds field service management SaaS that helps commercial contractors in the U.S. and Canada with project management, service, dispatching, and invoicing via AI-powered automation. Its per-user annual-contract pricing serves HVAC, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, and fire and life safety contractors and the platform claims to boost efficiency, reduce errors and downtime, and increase profitability. The company reports over 1,000 commercial contractor customers and about 375 employees, up roughly 50% year over year. Chanani declined to disclose hard revenue figures but said the company launched its platform in 2020, surpassed seven figures in its first year, tripled that figure in 2021 and 2022, and then doubled revenue in 2023 and 2024. BuildOps is not yet profitable as it prioritizes aggressive scaling and investment in product and technology. It plans to use the new capital to expand headcount, invest in products and its API architecture, and pursue strategic acquisitions. BuildOps provides a SaaS platform for commercial service and project-oriented trade contractors to manage workflows and operational tasks. The purpose-built technology integrates scheduling, dispatching, inventory management, contracts, workflow, purchasing, and invoicing into a single software suite. It serves commercial contractors of all sizes, from a dozen employees to several thousand. The platform is designed to address industry challenges such as supply chain delays and the skilled labor shortage. BuildOps is led by CEO and founder Alok Chanani and is based in Los Angeles, CA. The company raised $50M in a round that brought total funding to $100M and plans to use the proceeds to accelerate growth and cement its market position. BuildOps is a SaaS technology platform that integrates scheduling, dispatching, inventory management, contracts, workflow, and accounting into a single software suite for commercial contractors. The product is built specifically for modern commercial contractors with staff ranging from a dozen to thousands of employees. The company plans to use the funds to expand operations and its business reach. BuildOps was founded in 2018 by co-founders Alok Chanani, Steve Chew, and Neeraj Mittal and is based in Los Angeles, California. The article frames the company as an all-in-one management solution for the commercial contracting market. BuildOps sells an integrated software platform that combines scheduling, dispatching, inventory management, contracts, workflow and accounting into a single package for commercial real estate contractors. The product targets subcontractors with staffs ranging from a few dozen to several hundred employees. The company plans to use the new financing to support continued growth. BuildOps positions itself against fragmented tech adoption in the subcontractor segment of the commercial construction market. The company cites industry context that commercial construction spending grew from $626 billion to $807 billion over the past three years. The founding team includes former ServiceTitan developer Neeraj Mittal, Steve Chew, and Alok Chanani.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2021

Cellibre is a manufacturing technology company that employs an organism-agnostic approach to turn cells into specialized, sustainable factories for the manufacture of globally significant products at scale. Its initial strategic focus is changing how natural, plant-based compounds are manufactured, targeting high-value natural products and bioactives to displace agricultural production. The company highlights industrial uses of natural products—including monomers that can be used to produce thermosetting resins, certain polymers, and energetics—and aims to enable domestic chemical production. Cellibre states its technologies achieve lower cost and higher quality than legacy production methods to improve supply‑chain resilience for customers and government partners. The recent $1.5 million Department of Defense award under the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program (DBIMP) is intended to prepare commercialization of its manufacturing technologies to bolster domestic supply chains. Cellibre was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in San Diego, California. Cellibre is a San Diego, CA-based sustainable manufacturing technology company founded in 2017 that employs an organism-agnostic approach to turn cells into specialized, sustainable factories. The company’s platform is designed to manufacture globally significant products at scale, with an initial strategic focus on enabling the production of pharmaceutical-grade cannabinoids. Cellibre is led by founder and CEO Ben Chiarelli and founder and chief scientific officer Dr. Nicky Caiazza. In October 2021 the company closed an $11.5M Series A financing. The financing was led by Merida Capital Holdings with participation from the founders, Scott Gordon, Flatiron Venture Partners, L2V, Entourage Effect Capital, and Delta Emerald Ventures. Cellibre intends to use the proceeds to expand operations and broaden its business reach. Cellibre develops proprietary cells to enable production of pure, natural, pharmaceutical-grade cannabinoids through fermentation. The company uses an organism-agnostic approach to turn cells into specialized, sustainable factories for manufacturing globally significant products at scale. Its initial strategic focus is on deploying that expertise to enable pharmaceutical-grade cannabinoid production. Cellibre was founded in 2017 by CEO Ben Chiarelli and is based in San Diego, CA. The company intends to accelerate development of its cell platforms using newly raised funds. No operating metrics or revenue figures were disclosed in the article.

Participated · Equity · Jan 2019

Proprio builds Paradigm, a real-time surgery guidance device that maps pre-operative scans to a live 3D representation and shows surgeons sub-millimeter guidance during spinal procedures. The system’s Prism imaging array combines multiple RGB cameras, infrared stereo cameras and a dedicated depth sensor to continuously register vertebrae without physical markers. Proprio received FDA 510(k) clearance for stereotaxic navigation for spine surgery and plans to commercialize by deploying the platform in operating rooms and taking on first in-human cases this summer at partnering hospitals. Commercial rollout will require scaled manufacturing, testing, training and field support. Beyond spine surgery the company sees applications in other difficult procedures (for example joint reconstruction) and anticipates a data opportunity to collect high-fidelity surgical recordings for training, outcome analysis and retrospective review. The company announced $43 million in new funding and maintains an office in Seattle where the team and co-founders including CEO Gabriel Jones and CMO Dr. Samuel Browd are based. Proprio develops a computational imaging system that provides enhanced visualization to enable precise surgical execution. The platform integrates robotics, artificial intelligence and computer vision to simplify surgical workflow, improve procedural accuracy and reduce or eliminate exposure to radiation. Proprio’s system is intended to increase surgical productivity while improving precision. The company plans to use the new funding to expand its development teams, accelerate clinical and regulatory timelines, build commercialization capabilities and install the first Proprio systems in leading institutions. Leadership additions and technical advisors have been added to support commercialization and product development, including hires with expertise in regulatory affairs and operations and advisors from Microsoft and academia. The co‑founders and leadership team include CEO Gabriel Jones, Ken Denman, Dr. Joshua Smith, Head of Engineering James Youngquist and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Samuel Browd. Proprio Vision develops a light-field platform that captures real-time volumetric video, enabling surgeons to change viewpoints in immersive, accurate 3D. The system couples light-field arrays with software similar to a powerful video-game engine and is designed to work with existing medical imaging such as MRIs and CT scans. Immediate use cases include teaching via playback from different angles, surgical planning and remote collaboration, and the company aspires to supplant tools like surgical microscopes and fluoroscopy. Proprio emerged from stealth in Seattle and started as a secretive operation at the University of Washington; it has clinical research partnerships with Seattle Children’s and UW Medicine. The startup has 10 employees, plans to double headcount this year and hire AR/VR specialists, and is opening a workspace in Seattle’s Lower Queen Anne neighborhood. Proprio positions itself against incumbents such as Intuitive Surgical and emphasizes improving surgeon user experience through AR/VR and computer vision.

Participated · Seed · Dec 2018

Harness Wealth is a digital platform focused on financial, tax, and estate planning that connects clients with a roster of vetted advisors and advisory firms. Its product suite includes Harness for Advisors, which bundles advanced software, an in-house concierge team, practice-management tools, lead generation, and a professional community to streamline tax advisory practices. Clients access personalized tax and financial advice through a user-friendly portal with document sharing, payments, onboarding, and access to pre-vetted estate and financial advisors. The company says it has onboarded thousands of clients onto its new portal and expects that figure to triple this year. Harness targets the $10B+ tax advisory market and the $50B+ financial advisor segments, and monetizes via fees from both advisors and clients for software and services. After the recent raise, the company is focused on product enhancements and building insights around tax data while describing itself as well-capitalized. Harness Wealth is a New York–based startup that offers a platform bringing family-office–style services to individuals with complex financial pictures. It matches clients with independent registered investment advisors and connects them to teams across verticals — tax, estate and investment planning — to replicate the multidisciplinary access of a family office. Harness charges an ongoing revenue share, collecting part of the fees advisers on its platform charge to align incentives with long-term client success. The company employs 22 people and is not yet profitable. Part of its new capital will be used to build a captive tax business, Harness Tax, to address time-sensitive tax planning around IPOs, SPACs, remote work and cryptocurrencies. Founders David Snider and Katie Prentke English drew on experience at Bain, Compass and Nutmeg and have grown a customer base that includes employees of Coinbase, UiPath, PayPal, Snowflake, DoorDash, Amazon and partners at venture firms. Harness Wealth offers a hybrid digital-human platform that builds personalized balance sheets and matches clients to a curated set of top tax, financial, and legal advisors via proprietary technology and comprehensive needs assessments. The company targets accomplished individuals with $250K–$10M in investable assets and cites a U.S. addressable market of 20M households that spend $80B annually on financial, tax and legal professional services. Its adviser diligence process collects 40+ attributes per advisor and 100+ attributes per firm to ensure tailored recommendations. The business model takes a minority percentage of an adviser’s standard fee for referred clients. Harness Wealth is developing additional client tools and technology to enhance the digital experience and is working to onboard users from its waitlist. Financially, the company recently closed a $4M Seed round to support product and growth initiatives.