Participated · Seed · Aug 2024

VoyceMe is a first-of-its-kind platform that centralizes the manga and webtoon fandom experience, allowing users to read, interact with creators, stream anime, purchase merchandise, and create their own series. The company provides a proprietary ethical generative-AI tool trained on its own dataset to help professional artists reduce burnout and to democratize manga creation for new creators. VoyceMe is currently in beta with plans for general availability in 2025, and says it can produce content five times faster and seven and a half times more cost-efficiently than other studios. It reports strong traction—over eight million monthly visits, two million monthly active users, and a 1,000% readership increase since 2023. The firm has pursued strategic partnerships and IP deals, including Heavy Metal Comics, rights to a Night of the Living Dead prequel, licensing arrangements with top Japanese and South Korean platforms, and a partnership with Zokio. Recent senior hires from Wattpad, WEBTOON, and Netflix are intended to drive product development and strategic initiatives as VoyceMe scales. Voyce.Me offers an English-language platform for creators to develop, publish and monetize manga and webtoons while engaging directly with fans. The company partners with creators to produce in-house content, leverages existing IP and licenses IP from user-generated content. Creators can instantly make money from their content through the platform’s all-in-one distribution and social features. Voyce.Me reports strong engagement metrics, with over 8M pageviews per month, nearly 350K unique views per month and an average of 23 minutes spent on the platform. The company plans to use new funding to accelerate growth in its technology and audience-development teams, hire additional developers and scale its product line. Leadership is led by founder and CEO Dylan Telano, and the company is based in Los Angeles, CA.

Participated · Equity · May 2024

ByHeart is an NYC-based infant nutrition company that uses breast milk science to develop clinically proven products. Its formulas are positioned to deliver benefits such as easier digestion, less spit up, softer poops, more efficient weight gain and enhanced nutrient absorption. The company operates end-to-end manufacturing facilities in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Iowa, enabling full control over production and quality. ByHeart is a three-time Clean Label Project Certified brand and is led by CEO Ron Belldegrun. It recently launched in Thrive Market and plans to expand to several additional retailers by the end of 2024. The company raised $95M to support its U.S. commercial launch and the development of its innovation pipeline, bringing total funding to $395M to date. ByHeart is advancing an infant formula recipe that incorporates modern advancements in baby nutrition. The company plans to use its Series B proceeds to launch its first formula and to advance its innovation pipeline of mom and baby products. It recently launched Cluster, a digital platform offering resources and education to support parents from pregnancy through toddlerdom. ByHeart was founded in 2016 by Ron Belldegrun and Mia Funt and is based in New York City. The company operates manufacturing facilities in Pennsylvania. It raised $90M in Series B financing to fund these initiatives. ByHeart develops infant and baby nutrition products, including baby foods and formulas grounded in nutrition science and production transparency. The company targets immune, cognitive, digestive and microbiome health. Co-founded in 2016 by Mia Funt and Ron Belldegrun, ByHeart is based in New York City and operates facilities in Pennsylvania. It is conducting a multi-site infant-growth monitoring clinical study in accordance with FDA requirements to support a first product launch in 2021. The company closed a $70M Series A and is using the funds to continue to expand its development efforts.

Participated · Seed · Jul 2023

Optiversal offers an AI-powered content creation and merchandising platform that uses AI, natural language processing and GPT-3 to remove operational and technical barriers to producing content at scale for retailers. The platform converts missed content opportunities into traffic-generating landing pages and has delivered material revenue for enterprise customers. Customers include top-20 retailers. Optiversal will use the $4.2M seed proceeds to accelerate growth by investing in product development, technology, and infrastructure, and to scale efforts to meet growing customer demand. The company was founded by Will Underwood, Lucas Tieleman, and Jarrod Wolf and is based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Participated · Series A · May 2023

Range is an AI-driven registered investment advisor that combines human advisors with its proprietary AI wealth manager, Rai, to deliver sophisticated financial planning at lower cost. The platform currently manages $400 million in assets under management and has $9.5 billion in assets under advisement, serving more than 5,000 high-net-worth clients nationwide. Range reports 300 percent year-over-year revenue growth, positioning it among the fastest-growing RIAs in the U.S. Rai already answers thousands of complex client questions each month and has cut advisor message volume in half, and the company is developing additional AI agents focused on compliance, tax optimization, and investment strategy. Near-term plans include expanding into broker-dealer services to widen investment product access and growing its physical presence on the West Coast while accelerating hiring across AI, product, and go-to-market roles. By targeting households historically priced out of traditional advisory models, Range aims to democratize institutional-grade wealth management. The firm also added notable board advisors Haroon Mokhtarzada (Rocket Money) and Alex Niehenke (Scale Venture Partners) to guide its next growth phase.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2022

Sequencing.com is a Los Angeles–based direct-to-consumer DNA interpretation company led by CEO Dr. Brandon Colby. The company offers free, unlimited storage of DNA data plus tools and enhanced reports to help customers access and understand their genes. It has proprietary applications including Genome Explorer, an online browser and search engine for genomes, and Next-Gen Rare Disease Screen, which lets customers screen their genome for risk of thousands of rare diseases, conditions, and traits. The team includes U.S. medical doctors, geneticists, bioinformatics experts, and software developers. Sequencing.com raised $5M in funding and intends to use the proceeds to build upon and enhance its DNA technology.