The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Jun 2026

KLIPY offers an expression API layer that enables developers to integrate GIFs, memes, stickers, clips, and AI media into social and creative platforms. Its platform provides developer infrastructure, creator tools, content rights and distribution controls, and monetization solutions including contextual ad tools. The company cites integrations with apps and platforms such as BeReal, Baidu, Canva, Figma, and Microsoft SwiftKey, and reports nearly 10,000 developers and 40,000 creators using its API, which processes billions of requests weekly. KLIPY plans to use the recent funding to expand product, engineering, and go-to-market teams, broaden platform integrations, and build new monetization and creative tools for creators and content studios. It was founded by serial entrepreneurs Givi Beridze, Frank Nawabi, and Waska Chaduneli; Nawabi previously founded GIF-sharing platform Tenor. KLIPY positions itself as a privacy-conscious expression layer for the AI era focused on enabling expressive media at scale.

Participated · Series B · Apr 2026

Founded in 2015, Expo provides an end-to-end open-source platform and cloud tooling for building, deploying, and maintaining production-ready mobile applications with React Native. The company reports powering apps used by hundreds of millions of people and cites close to 4 million weekly downloads and a community of over 3 million developers, with customers including Phantom, Pizza Hut, MTA and PrizePicks. Expo recently launched Expo Agent, an agentic mobile expert in public beta intended to help scaffold projects, debug native integrations, and recommend deployment configurations. The company positions itself to shorten the path from idea to production and to support builders from solo founders to enterprise teams. After raising $45 million in Series B funding led by Georgian, Expo plans to accelerate core platform development, deepen native integrations, improve developer experience, and expand enterprise-grade performance, security, and compliance.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2025

Kingpin provides a B2B SaaS platform that unifies product information, pricing, customer discovery, and sales processes within a single AI-powered ecosystem. Its technology leverages artificial intelligence to clean and enrich product data, automate repetitive sales tasks, and surface new retail opportunities worldwide. The company currently serves more than 300 distributors and brands across beauty, fashion, sports, and other consumer-goods verticals. Headquartered in Dubai with an office in Abu Dhabi, Kingpin positions itself as an operating system for global wholesale distribution. Management plans to use newly raised capital to deepen engineering resources, expand AI capabilities, and broaden geographic coverage from the Middle East into Europe and North America. The company’s revenue or user growth figures were not disclosed, but the seed financing marks its first publicly announced round and underscores investor confidence in its go-to-market traction.

Led · Seed · Jul 2025

Founded in 2022 by CEO Ryan Urban, COO Maricor Resente and Head of Marketing Megan Kresinske, Queen One builds AI-driven software that analyzes shopper behavior to personalize timing, frequency and content of marketing across channels. The platform targets consumer brands—primarily apparel, retail, beauty and home—and the company says it can serve any brand with more than $500,000 in commerce. Queen One reports that its technology has doubled email-generated revenue for some early customers, though it did not disclose customer names or overall revenue. The company employs just under 100 people and has assembled commerce executives and technologists, including veterans from Wunderkind; it raised $5.5 million in early 2025 and has roughly $37.5 million in committed capital, financing and incentives. Queen One has pledged major expansion in Brooklyn—a 30,000-square-foot headquarters backed by up to $6 million in state tax credits and commitments to create 600 jobs by 2030—and says it plans to go public in 2028 under the ticker HEXY.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2023

Lex is a text-first social app inspired by vintage lesbian personals that operates as a community hub for LGBTQIA+ people. The product emphasizes text-only posts and local, community-oriented uses such as dating, finding roommates, selling tickets, venting, and other neighborhood exchanges. A February redesign codified a broader community focus and prompted debate as some users lamented a deemphasis on dating and hookups. The company has about 11 employees, is three years old, and ranks around No. 350 on Apple’s U.S. social networking charts, with concentrated usage in cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Leadership recently shifted: co-founder Jennifer Lewis moved from COO to CEO, founding CEO Kel Rakowski became chief creative officer, and former Hinge product boss Michelle Parsons joined as chief product officer. Lex plans to use new funding to expand while prioritizing community-sensitive monetization rather than an ad-based growth model. It is already testing paid features, including charging users who want to post more frequently than the app typically allows. Lex is an MVP social app that lets users create profiles and post text-based personal ads (personals) and browse or like others’ personals without requiring mutual matches. The app launched on the App Store in November 2019 and intentionally omits in-feed photos, though users can link to Instagram and messaging is available without a match. Founder Kell Rakowski built the product from an audience that responded to curated historic personal ads, and the current team is five people with 80% cis women, 20% cis men, 80% identifying as LGBTQ and three team members of color. With the new funding, Lex plans to hire underrepresented talent in product and engineering as a hiring priority. Product roadmap items include adding clickable profile photos (not in the feed), group chat for community building, and eventually a freemium subscription model to unlock extended functionality. For now the focus is on growth and building out the app.