Participated · Equity · Sep 2025

Unvale provides creators with tools to organize and share character pages, backstories, concept art, and writing while layering social features that help them attract and engage followers from day one. The platform prohibits AI-generated content, positioning itself as a creator-first hub that supports original intellectual property rather than machine-produced work. Users have generated more than 3 million stories, 30 million story views, and 15 million meaningful social interactions, driving 250 thousand sign-ups to date. Infrastructure upgrades now support roughly one million meaningful social interactions per month, alongside automated moderation and cross-platform sharing. Unvale aims to capture a share of the $470 billion fiction, comics, and animation market, with ambitions to become the world’s largest producer of animated content and a top career destination for young creatives. Future product plans include deeper publishing capabilities that allow creators to release novels, comics, or animations directly on the platform. To date, the company has raised $1.8 million from a roster of early-stage investors to fuel continued growth and product development.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2025

Pickleheads operates a leading website and mobile app that helps players find courts, organize games, collect payments, run round robins, and recruit local players. The company is positioning itself as a complete platform to power recreational play and is introducing level-based formats to create balanced, competitive games. Pickleheads reports 9 million visits last year, is the #1 mobile app for pickleball, and served nearly 1 million players per month. It has 354,000 registered users, growing 405% year-over-year, and is the official court and game finder of USA Pickleball and the Global Pickleball Federation. The company says the funding will help enhance the on-court experience through technology and expand its product beyond a court finder into structured programming. Pickleheads is hiring for remote roles as it scales its team. Pickleheads is an Atlanta-based startup that offers a platform to help pickleball players find local courts and connect with nearby players. The company first introduced a court finder last summer and says thousands of players use the site every day. On Feb. 21, 2023 Pickleheads released new scheduling and group management tools that let organizers post schedules, collect signups, and manage waitlists. The startup quietly raised pre-seed funding last fall from Ardent Venture Partners, Overline, and Kevin Durant's and Rich Kleiman's Boardroom Pickleball to support growth and its technology roadmap. Planned roadmap items include flex leagues, an instructor marketplace, and other tools to enhance the on-court experience. The company was founded by Max Ade, Brandon Mackie, and Ian Langworth and positions itself as a digital home and operating system for pickleball players and organizers.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2024

When, founded by Andy Hamilton and Dan Wertheimer and based in Chicago, offers a software platform that guides organizations and their employees through healthcare and benefits changes triggered by events such as early retirements, career pivots, involuntary exits, Medicare eligibility, and other coverage transitions. The solution aims to reduce employer costs while delivering personalized support to transitioning workers. Since its launch in 2024, more than 6,000 companies have adopted the platform, giving over 1 million employees access to its tools. Current functionality centers on simplifying benefits navigation, but the company plans to broaden its coverage to additional transition scenarios, including Medicare and early retirement pathways. Proceeds from its recent Series A will be used to expand the team and enhance product capabilities to serve a wider array of workforce transitions. The company’s traction across thousands of employers demonstrates early product-market fit and provides a growing revenue base, although specific revenue figures were not disclosed.

Participated · Seed · May 2024

Swivel (formerly PilotDesk) offers a no-code AI workflow automation platform designed to remove repetitive work in ad operations and account management. The company focuses on AI-driven orchestration, unified analytics, and seamless integrations with ad servers, DSPs, SSPs, and OMS platforms. Swivel says its automation engine has already produced measurable results — in a deployment with LG Ad Solutions it performed over half a million automated actions, equating to roughly 25,000 hours of manual ad-operations time saved and moving from pilot to a long-term partnership. The team includes co-founders Joe Hirsch, Matt Dearborn, and Rich Lin, plus President Frans Vermeulen and CTO Geir Magnusson Jr., bringing deep adtech and technical experience. The company rebranded from PilotDesk to Swivel as it shifts to building more intelligent systems to eliminate the need for staff to "swivel-chair" between multiple ad platforms and to enable automation in revenue operations at scale. Funding announced in April 2025 will support team growth and accelerate product development focused on deeper AI orchestration and integrations. UnVale is a platform for storytellers to develop entire worlds of content, enabling writers, illustrators, and animators to grow an audience and publish long-form work in serialized pieces. The product breaks down long-form content into easy-to-digest releases so creators can expand their fanbase with each update. The company positions itself as an alternative to short-form influencer-focused social platforms, emphasizing public worldbuilding and story craft. Operating metrics cited in the announcement include 150k users (700% growth year-to-date), 1M pieces of original content, and 3M social interactions (28x growth YTD). UnVale said the $1M pre-seed raise will accelerate growth through 2025. The company is actively hiring backend engineers and aims to use its momentum to help creators self-publish and signal audience interest to publishers.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2021

EarlyBird operates a community-focused app that lets parents create custodial UGMA accounts to invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other securities on behalf of their children. The platform emphasizes social features: every investment can include a video memory to contextualize the gift. EarlyBird currently focuses on the 0–7 demographic but plans to serve the full 0–18+ lifecycle and to transition teens to take ownership at 18. Product roadmap includes multiple customized portfolios, the ability for parents and children to pick individual stocks together, and exploration of integrating 529 college-savings plans. The company reported total funding of $10.9M and will use the new capital to scale its community-based investing features and expand its investment services. EarlyBird positions itself as both a savings vehicle and a time-capsule for family milestones. EarlyBird is a Chicago-based gifting platform that enables parents, family, and friends to collectively invest in a child’s financial future. In minutes, parents can set up an investment account, choose from a range of diversified portfolio options, and start investing on behalf of their child. The platform also lets a child’s broader network send gifted capital accompanied by video and photo memories for birthdays, holidays, and other occasions. EarlyBird plans to expand its community-first approach to childhood investing and to broaden the types of assets users can gift and invest in, including cryptocurrencies. The company intends to use new funding to grow its engineering, product, marketing, and operations teams. The product and roadmap details reflect the company’s current focus rather than disclosed financial metrics or user counts. EarlyBird offers a mobile app that simplifies creation and management of custodial UGMA accounts, enabling parents to invite family and friends to contribute investments and attach short video “memories” to gifts. The product includes fixed and customizable ETF-based portfolios from conservative (bond) to aggressive (equity), a rebalancing engine, and age-based financial literacy features that progressively expose children to their accounts. Accounts are held with Apex Clearing Corporation, a registered broker-dealer and SIPC member, which protects investments up to $500,000; EarlyBird plans to transition to its own broker-dealer in time. The company charges a $3 per month management fee (and $1 per month for each additional child) and is currently a very early-stage startup only weeks old. EarlyBird says it will expand into 529 plans within a year and may add brokerage lending and other revenue programs once it has a sizable user base and assets under management. The app is free to download on iOS. The company was founded by CEO Jordan Wexler and COO Caleb Frankel.