Participated · Equity · Mar 2020

Bazooka Tango was founded in 2019 by Bo Daly and Stephan Sherman, veterans from AAA game development who previously created Vainglory at Super Evil Megacorp. The studio is developing Shardbound in collaboration with web3 publisher Immutable; the game blends TCG elements, tactical maneuvers on hex grids and digital collectibles. Key gameplay features include commanders moving across low/high ground, mana and health systems, a Super Meter, an alternate Victory Points win condition, and five distinct commander types. Bazooka Tango ran playtests with roughly 1,000 creators, logged about 10,000 hours watched and amassed over 50,000 pre-registrations. The company plans seasonal content, deck building, leaderboards and broader cross-platform support, with a public beta later this year and an official launch in 2024 on Steam, Epic, Apple and Google stores and eventual mobile. Bazooka Tango raised $5 million to fund Shardbound, grow its team of roughly a dozen people and advance three other in-development titles. Bazooka Tango was founded by Bo Daly and Stephan Sherman, the creators of Vainglory, and is led by gaming veterans with experience at Riot, Rockstar, EA, and NCSoft. The studio's first title, Vainglory All Stars, is a 3-vs-3 mobile multiplayer game built on the E.V.I.L. engine and uses a more cartoon-like, accessible art style. Bazooka Tango emphasizes a scientific, analytics-driven approach, heavily utilizing player behavioral data to drive design and polish features. The company plans to create original IP and a portfolio that mixes successful mobile genres, mobile adaptations of PC/console genres, cross-genre remixes, and ambitious genre-defining titles. The team is currently about 10 employees based in San Mateo, California and has leveraged Super Evil Megacorp's E.V.I.L. engine to accelerate development. Bazooka Tango has raised $2.5 million and says it will scale up over time as it takes on more projects.

Participated · Equity · May 2019

Hostfully offers a Property Management Platform and Digital Guidebooks that let professional managers centralize booking calendars, adjust pricing, distribute inventory, automate guest communications, and collect payments. Its platform is used for more than 40,000 properties in 80 countries, and its digital guidebooks (available in 15 languages) are viewed more than two million times each month. The company plans to add capabilities including a native mobile app and multi-unit inventory handling. It also intends to expand its team with hires focused on sales and customer success. Hostfully will use the new funding to accelerate those product and go-to-market initiatives. The company has raised a total of $7.0M to date. Hostfully builds an end-to-end property management platform aimed at helping vacation rental property managers increase bookings and boost revenue. The company was founded in 2015 by Margot Schmorak and is based in San Francisco. Hostfully’s product is positioned for property managers seeking recurring revenue streams from vacation rentals. According to investors cited in the article, the company has a proven model and is generating real recurring revenue. The article does not disclose user counts or exact revenue figures. Recent financing activity indicates continued investor interest in its market and product.

Participated · Series A · Apr 2019

Pana is a Denver startup founded in 2015 that provides a travel concierge and companion app to coordinate business travel, especially for onsite interviewees. Its core product blends automation with human concierges via in-app chat, text and email, handling bookings, rebookings and complex requests with a five-minute human response time. The company previously offered a $49/month consumer travel concierge plan but has shifted focus to the corporate travel market, outsourcing coordination for out-of-network guests. Pana is pursuing the broader corporate travel market by working with large travel platforms such as SAP Concur rather than competing directly. It already books thousands of trips per month and counts customers including Logitech, Quora and Shopify. The startup recently closed a $10 million Series A to support this corporate push. Pana (formerly Native) is a Denver, Colo.-based conversational commerce travel startup that combines artificial intelligence with a concierge service to provide personalized travel booking, troubleshooting, benefits and awards. Led by CEO and co-founder Devon Tivona, the service pairs 24/7 human assistants with proprietary AI to handle member requests. Members send messages via the app to request flight bookings, hotel reservations, car rentals, or restaurant suggestions. Through the combination of experts and AI technology, requests are typically handled and answered within 30–60 seconds. The company is accepting a limited number of beta members and plans to roll the service out to beta customers over the next couple months. Pana raised seed funding to expand product distribution and further develop its proprietary AI technology.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2018

Paladin’s core product is a pro bono management platform used by law firms, legal departments and legal services organizations to list, find, sign up for, and track pro bono opportunities. Its customers include major law firms such as Dentons, Clifford Chance, Wilson Sonsini, and McDermott Will & Emery, as well as companies including Verizon, Dell, and Zurich. The company says the platform helps legal teams run more efficient pro bono programs and increase access to justice. Paladin will use new funding to accelerate product development and to meet demand from organizations building out or scaling pro bono programs. The company also plans to continue expansion beyond the U.S. and Canada. As of the Series A, Paladin reports total financing of over $12 million. Paladin is a New York–based SaaS business that helps legal teams sign up for pro bono opportunities, enables coordinators to track attorneys’ donated time, and captures impact stories. The platform helps legal departments see the return on investment for pro bono work and is used by clients such as Verizon and Lyft. Founders Felicity Conrad and Kristen Sonday created the company about three years ago and it operates as a seven-person team. Paladin plans to build infrastructure that connects organizations on the ground with legal services and law firms worldwide, acting as a matchmaker for legal departments. The company acknowledges scalability challenges because many corporate lawyers do not practice the types of litigation often most needed, including immigration, social security, criminal, and domestic abuse matters. To support growth and product development, Paladin has raised $1.1 million from investors.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2017

Kidizen is a mobile-first app that lets parents snap photos and resell children’s clothing, accessories, shoes, baby gear and toys through individual listings or lots. The platform pairs a storefront with a social ‘Gallery’ where users (mostly moms) share styled photos, hashtag collections and push content to Instagram and Facebook. Sellers keep 82% of proceeds, and the app reports strong engagement and retention: more than a quarter-million registered users, over 100% year-over-year growth in 2016, 88% of sessions from daily repeat users, 55% hourly repeats, and 80% of purchases from repeat customers. Kidizen acquires roughly 70% of users organically each month and has begun attracting boutique sellers and brick-and-mortar consignment shops in addition to individual parents. The company was founded in February 2014 and is based in Minneapolis. Planned product work includes more curation, sharing and self-expression features, a local selling component to compete with Facebook Groups, refreshed apps, and an eventual expansion to the web; the team is expected to grow from five to 15. Kidizen operates a mobile-only, peer-to-peer marketplace that lets parents buy and sell secondhand kids' clothing, toys, shoes and other easily shippable items. The app does not act as a middleman; sellers handle packing and shipping and retain roughly 90% of the selling price. Kidizen has seen strong engagement: over 2,500 transactions in the past month, 50% month-over-month sales growth, more than 55% of registered users active monthly, and over 65% of purchases are repeat buys each month. The company has been featured weekly in the iTunes App Store since early April, which has helped visibility and growth. With proof of concept underway, Kidizen plans product expansions to Android, web and tablet platforms, increased user acquisition, and building out its data analytics team. Financially, the startup has now raised $530,000, exceeding an original $500,000 goal.