Participated · Series B · Oct 2025

Throne Labs builds and manages smart, utility-free restroom units equipped with 21 sensors that monitor cleanliness, usage, and maintenance in real time. Each ADA-accessible unit offers running-water sinks, flushing toilets, baby-changing stations, and free menstrual products, enabling cities to deploy clean, reliable facilities without costly permanent infrastructure. The company currently serves four regions and 20 U.S. cities, partnering with agencies such as AC Transit, VTA, Caltrain, the Orange County Transportation Authority, and LA Metro. A notable 64-unit, four-year contract with LA Metro will expand restroom access ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games. Throne Labs claims it has not lost a municipal customer, highlighting strong retention and satisfaction. With fresh Series B funding, the firm plans to scale its footprint to additional markets nationwide, reinforcing its position as the largest network of connected public restrooms in the country.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2020

BrightHire offers a Zoom-integrated interview platform that records and transcribes each interview and surfaces critical questions during the call to help interviewers focus on candidates. After interviews, the software generates highlights and insights to support data-driven hiring decisions and improve consistency across interviews. CEO and co-founder Ben Sesser frames the product as a way to replace gut-driven hiring with rigorous analysis and to create a more equitable process. The company launched in 2019 and says adoption was accelerated by the pandemic as Zoom interviewing became normalized. BrightHire positions its product as one tool to help drive diversity and reduce unconscious bias within hiring processes. Financially, the company announced a $20.5 million Series B round led by 01 Advisors with participation from Index Ventures and Zoom Apps Fund. BrightHire builds performance optimization technology for recruiting teams via an interview intelligence platform. The product integrates with Zoom and leading applicant tracking systems to guide, capture, analyze, and share interviews. Its tools aim to help teams run a consistent, evidence-based hiring process and equip hiring managers to make fair, fully informed hiring decisions. BrightHire recently closed a $12.5M Series A led by Index Ventures. Investors in the round include Next Play Ventures, angel investors Laszlo Bock and Rosanna Durruthy, and existing backers Flybridge Capital and Ground Up Ventures. Next Play Ventures is the fund founded by LinkedIn executive chairman and former CEO Jeff Weiner. BrightHire offers an intelligent interview platform that integrates a real-time Interview Assistant into common video platforms like Zoom to help recruiters and interviewers run more structured, consistent, and focused interviews. The platform records, transcribes, and analyzes interviews, creating a data set that increases transparency, enables collaboration across recruiters, hiring managers, interviewers, and talent leaders, and surfaces trends to improve hiring outcomes. BrightHire positions itself as a context layer for hiring that complements ATSes by transforming interview moments and providing concrete evidence for hiring decisions. The company sells an enterprise SaaS product with applications across high-volume to executive recruiting and aims to help teams make sound, fair, and fast hiring decisions. COVID-19 accelerated demand for remote hiring tools; BrightHire shifted from being solely New York–based to remote-optional and is using its own product to run remote hiring. In the near term it plans to double headcount, accelerate the product roadmap, deepen integrations with G Suite, Microsoft 365, Greenhouse, and Zoom, and build client-facing teams while delivering analytics to improve fair and inclusive hiring.