Participated · Seed · Oct 2018

Dash Radio, founded by Scott Keeney (DJ Skee), is a curated, personality-driven live-radio platform that emphasizes "lean back" programming over on-demand streaming. It programs more than 400 shows across 75 stations and recently reached 10 million monthly listeners. The lineup includes high-profile hosts such as Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne and Ice Cube, and the platform highlights new artists and emerging DJs. Dash minimizes traditional insertion-based advertising while pursuing sponsorships and branded partnerships, including a Build-A-Bear kids' station, and operates studios in Los Angeles and a newly opened studio in the Empire State Building. The company has said it may introduce a paid premium plan with on-demand show archives in the future. Financially, Dash announced an $8.8M seed round to support growth as it scales its curated live-radio offering and talent pipeline. Dash Radio operates a technology platform of roughly 60 curated stations delivered via web and mobile apps, with programming chosen by human DJs rather than algorithms or playlists. Streams function like traditional terrestrial radio—one-to-many broadcasts where listeners hear what the DJ plays and cannot skip tracks. The service features live DJ breaks and on-demand playback of prior broadcasts; high-profile DJs include founder and CEO DJ Skee (Scott Keeney) and Snoop Dogg. Dash emerged from beta with more than one million users and is available on the Web, iOS, Android and Apple CarPlay, with planned Sonos and AT&T Drive integrations. The company is ad-free for now and is experimenting with future monetization ideas such as DJ sponsor mentions and in-app ticket sales. Financially, Dash has taken $2 million in seed funding to date and says it is "funded enough" to continue building while planning a Series A.

Participated · Series A · Apr 2014

Piqora is a marketing platform and analytics provider for visual social networks such as Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. Founded in 2012 as Pinfluencer, it offers campaign and promotion tools, customizable landing pages, analytics, competitive insights, hashtag monitoring, trend tracking, influencer engagement and social CRM. The company uses image recognition technology to identify product images across networks and plans to hire more image recognition engineers to improve logo identification. It recently launched an Instagram Conversation Manager, a web dashboard that aggregates comments and @mentions and is in private beta with customers including West Elm, Zales, JustFab and Benefit Cosmetics. Piqora works with over 300 customers, has run more than 600 Pinterest and Instagram contests delivering over half a billion impressions, and reports revenue in the "single digit millions," with monthly recurring revenue up 700% and a customer base that doubled in the last year. The team has grown from 12 to 23 employees and the company plans to double its 23-person team and open U.S. offices in Chicago and New York. Piqora provides marketing, analytics and customer-relations tools for image-driven social networks, including Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr. The company sells annual subscriptions ranging from $12,000 to $24,000 and combines an analytics dashboard with hands-on advisory services. Piqora reported revenue in the single-digit millions and saw monthly recurring revenue grow 600% in 2013. Its customer base grew 400% to over 300 clients, with customers such as Crate & Barrel, Wayfair, Etsy and Steve Madden. The company tracks over 1,000 Instagram hashtags, has over 400 brands connected to Google Analytics and Omniture, and has monitored more than 450 photo contests that produced over half a billion product impressions. Piqora plans to expand its product suite into a "content management system for the visual web," will launch an initial product to consolidate tracked images across networks, and management aims to double the business in 2014 while growing headcount from 15 toward 30.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2014

Bitium develops software used for managing access to software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. Led by Scott Kriz, the company is based in Santa Monica. On August 30, 2016, Bitium disclosed it raised $6M more to support its software development efforts. The latest funding came from Polaris Partners alongside other prior investors. Bitium has previously raised funding from Amplify LA, Double M Partners, Karlin Ventures, Lazerow Ventures and Resolute.vc. The article did not disclose operating metrics such as revenue or user counts. Bitium builds an app management platform that provides single sign-on and analytics for cloud-based applications. The platform supports more than 1,500 cloud apps, including Google Apps, collaboration tools, CRM, social networks, accounting programs, bug trackers, customer service dashboards and marketing tools. Founded in 2012 by CEO Scott Kriz and Erik Gustavson and based in Santa Monica, CA, Bitium raised a $6.5M Series A. The company said it will use the proceeds to accelerate product development and expand sales and marketing activities. Its backers in the round included Polaris Partners plus previous investors Amplify, Resolute VC, Double M Partners, Social Leverage, Karlin Ventures, Lazerow Ventures and Rob Glaser. Bitium had previously raised $2.4M in seed funding in 2013. Bitium provides companies a single place to handle authentication and authorization for cloud-based software and adds collaboration features such as consolidated messaging and deep-link bookmarking and sharing. The product integrates with over 300 popular web apps and the company has added 30 beta customers while operating in closed beta. Bitium offers unlimited users and apps for free, with advanced capabilities—reporting, IP whitelisting, and integrations with Google, Salesforce, LDAP and Active Directory—available for a flat rate. The founders position the product as an open, self-organizing SaaS operating system designed to change how people and companies interact with software. Bitium was founded in early 2012 and is a graduate of LA accelerator Amplify. The company is based in Venice Beach, California, with offices in Malaysia and Singapore. It recently completed a seed financing, which supports its transition out of closed beta and broader market roll-out.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2013

Funnel provides a renter-centric RMS platform that treats the renter — not the property — as the source of truth, enabling enterprise-wide visibility across the entire renter journey. Its completed front-office suite includes CRM, a virtual leasing agent, online leasing, onboarding, and a resident portal. The platform leverages AI and automation to reduce rote tasks, enable shared services and role specialization, and allow operators to move away from antiquated 1:100 leasing models to improve margins and team experience. Funnel says its centralized operating model is already embraced by eight companies that rank among the top 20 owners or operators, along with many other customers. The company is expanding its sales and marketing teams and recently added multifamily veteran Johnny Hanna to the team. Financially, Funnel announced a $32 million Series B-2 financing to expedite adoption of its new operating model. Funnel provides a full-stack, renter-centric leasing and marketing platform that centralizes leasing operations and automates the renter journey for multifamily owners and operators. Its product suite includes Engage (CRM and lead management), Amplify (natural language virtual leasing agent), Convert (online leasing with instant income verification via a FinTech integration), and Signal (listing syndication and data capture). The company emphasizes placing the renter at the center of interactions to improve leasing efficiency, reduce operational costs, and optimize marketing spend. Funnel has expanded from an apartment marketing platform founded in 2010 to a broader end-to-end leasing solution since 2018. The business reports 115% year-over-year revenue growth and has doubled headcount from 40 to 80; its platform is used by 17 of the NMHC Top 50 and Engage is deployed by 5 of the NMHC Top 20 owners. Funnel plans to develop renter onboarding, resident portal, and retention tools to complete the end-to-end renter journey. Nestio offers a next-generation marketing and leasing automation platform that streamlines the entire rental process for multifamily owners, operators and renters. The platform centralizes inventory distribution, lead tracking and management, renter engagement and touring, and delivers advanced real-time reporting within a single dashboard. Enhancements include automated workflows and machine learning to expedite responses and improve efficiency across the leasing lifecycle. CEO Caren Maio, who founded the company from a renter’s perspective, says the product aims to make finding and renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel or restaurant. Nestio’s customers manage hundreds of thousands of listings across major U.S. markets including New York, Boston, Chicago, Houston and Dallas. The company emphasizes delivering effortless, on-demand and personalized experiences for renters while improving operator efficiency. Nestio began as a renter-focused tool and has evolved into a full-service leasing and marketing platform for residential landlords and brokers. The product allows customers to manage inventory, track leads, advertise listings, and communicate in real time with consumer-facing sites such as Trulia and Zillow. Nestio says it now originates half of New York City’s rental listings and has generated over $20 million in additional revenue for clients. The company is currently live in NYC and plans to expand to Boston, Chicago, Miami and Washington, D.C. New funding will be used to execute that geographic expansion, advance the product roadmap, and grow the sales, marketing, and engineering teams. The company also announced the addition of Scott Wolfgang as CFO; he previously worked at Quotidian Ventures and served on the Hootsuite board. Nestio launched out of TechStars in 2011 as a consumer-facing apartment search tool but pivoted in 2013 to focus on landlords and brokers. It builds back-end tools that let landlords and brokers constantly update inventory and availability in real time, replacing workflows that relied on Google Docs, faxes, phone calls and paper files. The platform has been adopted widely in New York and now handles more than 30 percent of New York’s rental market. The Real Estate Board of New York named Nestio’s platform one of four approved technology vendors. The company says it is operating “above the line” and is growing rapidly in the real estate community. Recent funding will be used to accelerate growth and add hires, predominantly on the sales side.