Led · Seed · Sep 2025

Podonos builds the infrastructure layer for evaluating voice AI, offering a human-in-the-loop platform that analyzes models across naturalness, similarity, emotion, recognition accuracy, and more. Its evaluation service returns results in under 12 hours, even across thousands of audio samples and multiple languages. Founded in 2024 and headquartered in Los Gatos, CA, Podonos targets ASR, TTS, voice cloning, and multilingual assistant use cases across verticals like finance, medical, legal, in-car, and gaming. The company emphasizes AI-accelerated human feedback rather than synthetic benchmarks to provide reliable, scalable performance measurement and continuous improvement. Podonos raised $2.4M in pre-seed funding and plans to use the capital to grow its engineering team, expand post-analysis tooling, and launch in the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2024

Described by its CEO as a "Fitbit but for work," SocialCrowd provides a platform that lets companies set measurable goals for employees and issue rewards when those expectations are met. The product has been used by restaurants — one example paid $1 for every five daily specials sold and reportedly drove a 490% sales increase in 90 days — and the company has expanded into retail, manufacturing and other hourly blue-collar workforces. SocialCrowd positions itself as performance-based rather than sentiment-based rewards and focuses exclusively on frontline and shift workers. The company reports average growth of 20% month-over-month, though the CEO declined to share revenue metrics. SocialCrowd plans to use new funding to expand engineering, customer success and sales teams and to broaden its vertical coverage. The company also has plans to expand into AI as part of future product development. Launched in 2022, SocialCrowd is a SaaS platform for performance management that lets companies set incentive campaigns, tracks employee performance in real time by connecting to existing productivity apps, and issues reminders to help staff hit targets. When goals are achieved, employees earn points they can redeem for gift cards or custom rewards such as time off. The product is positioned as a “Fitbit for work,” aiming to drive employee retention and productivity, particularly for large blue-collar shift teams that could not transition to remote work. The company has seen increased attention as customers seek tools to manage hybrid and frontline workforces. SocialCrowd plans to use new funding to expand its team and focus on customer acquisition. Co-founders Raphael Akinsipe and Paul Doran have prior startup experience together; Akinsipe has worked at Google and at Casetabs, which sold to Bain Capital. The founders envision evolving the platform into a broader tool for employee growth and business insight. SocialCrowd operates an automated employee incentive platform it calls the “digital Fitbit for work,” connecting to work applications such as Salesforce, Square and Jira to track employee progress toward goals. The platform sends periodic reminders and instantly rewards employees with points redeemable for gift cards, time off, and other rewards. Led by CEO Raphael Akinsipe, the company targets managers who want to boost worker performance through automated incentive programs. Early customers include Sonic Drive‑in franchise locations and Motorola Solutions. SocialCrowd is based in southern California and is currently a five‑person startup planning to double its headcount over the next year. The company says it will use the funding to scale the team, enhance its product offering, and continue its expansion.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2024

FutureMoney is a Boston-based digital micro-investing platform that helps families invest for their children and create generational wealth. Founded in 2023 by fintech veterans Philip Barrar and Dave Fortin, the company’s signature offering is the Junior Roth IRA™, a proprietary, tax-advantaged account service that leverages 529 plans and can transition to a Roth IRA after 15 years. Accounts are held with Pershing | BNY Mellon and carry $500,000 of SIPC insurance. The company plans to use the new funding to drive user acquisition through social platforms, influencer partnerships, curated affiliates, earned media, and a double-sided incentive program. FutureMoney was selected for the gener8tor Insurance & Wealth accelerator in partnership with Allianz Life and Securian Financial. The product aims to make investing more inclusive and accessible to the average family by providing a tax-advantaged, transitionable account tailored for minors.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2024

Bump is a creator-focused platform that helps creators track income, market value, and manage business finances to negotiate better deals and see owed payments. The company was launched in 2020 by James Jones and Anton Kovalyov, who serves as CTO. In 2022 Bump launched the Bump Creator credit card in partnership with Mastercard, marketed with no monthly or hidden fees and available without a credit check. Bump also works with a banking institution to offer direct deposit accounts that let creators earn interest on cash placed in a money market account. The company says it will use the latest fundraise to expand and refine its infrastructure. To date Bump has raised $3.5 million, including the newly announced seed round.