Participated · Seed · Aug 2024

Payman AI is an AI agent tool focused on enabling AI-to-human payments, allowing AI to pay people to complete tasks like marketing. The company positions itself as creating a new era of AI paying humans for work. Payman AI completed a $3 million pre-seed financing. Reported investors in the round include Visa, Coinbase Ventures, Boost VC, Deepwater Management, The Spartan Group, Untapped VC, Theory Forge VC, Protofund VC, Systemic Ventures, Metropolis DAO, and angel investors Viktor Axelsen, Devin Walsh, and Kenneth Kuo. The article does not disclose additional operating metrics or prior funding rounds.

Participated · Series A · Sep 2023

Brine Fi operates an orderbook-based decentralized exchange built on Starkware’s Ethereum scaling technology, combining DEX custody with CEX-like order types and low-latency execution. The protocol leverages zero-knowledge proofs to provide privacy on orders and mitigate frontrunning, while remaining fully non-custodial. Brine supports both retail users (including a beginner mode) and institutional traders, and has integrated liquidity aggregation partners such as 0x. During testing from February to June it processed about 4 million transactions and reported over $1.6 billion in trading volume; its recently launched mainnet has accumulated roughly $500 million in trading volume per Starkware stats. The team says the system can execute orders in milliseconds and is onboarding hedge funds, exchanges and high-frequency traders. Brine has also begun using Chainalysis and Merkle Science to prepare for potential KYC/AML regulatory requirements.

Led · Seed · Feb 2023

Nestment is a San Francisco-based startup (founded in 2021) that enables groups of friends and family to co-buy and co-own homes by forming an LLC to fractionalize purchases. The platform assists with property analysis, lender setup, agent introductions, and post-purchase management including a shared calendar, P&L management, and equity tracking. Nestment also helps owners sell shares in a home and provides assistance listing and providing liquidity for departing co-owners. The company launched publicly from stealth into a public beta alongside a $3.5M pre-seed financing. Its revenue model is referral-driven, primarily earning referral fees from the agent side rather than charging users directly. Nestment positions its product as a way to open access to homeownership and build equity for groups who otherwise could not afford individual homes.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2022

Magna provides a token management platform that lets crypto organizations automate distributions to teams, stakeholders, community members and other recipients on Solana, Ethereum and other blockchains. The product includes token planning features that help founders plan future distributions and educate token holders on future ownership. The company supports distributions on Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche and others, and has been managing over $30M of distributions for select customers. Magna went live in July and has distributed to thousands of recipients since launch. The company plans to use the new funding to launch additional token management offerings and expand its team. Magna was founded in early 2022 by CEO Bruno Faviero and CTO Arun Kirubarajan and has a presence in New York, Miami, and Toronto.