• FUZE Technology

  Participated · Series A · Jun 2024

  Fuze Technology is a Los Angeles-based IoT company that operates a network of IoT utilities backed by data-driven advertising. Its flagship product, chargeFUZE, provides a pay-per-use mobile charging solution. The company’s adFUZE product delivers contextually relevant content to targeted audiences by combining its IoT hardware and software. Led by CEO Brandon Afari, Fuze plans to use the $11.5M Series A to accelerate demand and support international expansion. The company also intends to invest the proceeds in new product innovations. The Series A involved both strategic and institutional partners, including live-entertainment and venue investors named in the round. ChargeFUZE provides high-speed, on-the-go mobile charging via a network of autonomous kiosks where users scan a QR code to rent an all-in-one portable charger. The service removes the need to buy a battery, carry charging cords, or use tethered public chargers. Its kiosk network is expanding to span over 40 states and more than 50 professional sports stadiums and has been deployed at major venues and events such as Crypto.com Arena, SoFi Stadium, the US Open, Super Bowl LVI and the Miami F1 Grand Prix. The company partners with venue operators and property owners including Simon Property Group, Live Nation Entertainment, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, Brookfield Properties and Oak View Group. Co-founded by Brandon Afari and Ryan Levy and based in Los Angeles, ChargeFUZE intends to use recent funding to scale its team, expand its global partner roster, accelerate growth, and explore new sectors of interest. The company announced a $5M Seed funding round in May 2022.

• Foursquare

  Led · Series F · Oct 2018

  Foursquare builds a location services platform centered on its Pilgrim technology, a global map of 105 million POIs across more than 190 countries, plus developer tools, analytics, audiences, attribution, and consumer products. The company reports revenue of more than $100 million, with over 90% stemming from its enterprise business. Foursquare will integrate Placed’s #1 in-store visit attribution product—used by roughly 500 brands—into its suite as “Placed powered by Foursquare.” Combined, Foursquare and Placed serve more than 1,000 brands, including over 50% of the Fortune 100, and Foursquare measures over 100 million monthly U.S. devices. Management says the new investment will fund the acquisition, increase R&D, and support expansion to deliver a complete toolkit for location-aware services. Placed will gain access to Foursquare’s first-party data and Pilgrim technology to strengthen visit detection and attribution across digital, OOH, and TV. Over the past four years Foursquare has pivoted from a consumer-facing social application to an enterprise platform focused on location-based data and analytics. Its core products include Attribution, which lets retailers and publishers track the offline conversion impact of media, and the Pilgrim SDK, which enables partners to deliver contextual notifications and experiences using location data. Attribution relies on a panel of 25 million non-incentivized users to measure foot traffic and visit history for campaign insights. The company reports that more than 90% of its revenue comes from enterprise customers. Customers named in the article include Tinder, AccuWeather, Spotify, Hilton and iHeartMedia, and its location data powers platforms such as Uber, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Twitter. Foursquare’s platform contains more than 100 million places across more than 150 countries and powers apps that collectively serve over 1 billion consumers; the company’s total funding is now $240 million after the latest round, which increased its valuation. Foursquare’s core offerings combine consumer apps with an enterprise location-intelligence suite built on its Pilgrim location system, Places API, Place Insights and Pinpoint. Place Insights provides an opt-in foot-traffic panel and aggregate anonymous trends that customers use to choose store locations, move inventory and inform investments. The company says its media and enterprise lines are growing at triple-digit rates (Pinpoint ~170% year-over-year; combined enterprise ~160%) and now make up the majority of revenue—over 50%, up from 40% last year. Foursquare declined to disclose absolute revenue figures. The company plans to continue launching consumer-facing innovations while accelerating its enterprise product development and is hiring about 30 positions, mainly in enterprise media sales and engineering. Leadership changes position co-founder Dennis Crowley as executive chairman with Jeff Glueck as CEO and Steven Rosenblatt as president to focus on scaling the business. Foursquare builds location and context layers and exposes them via an API, providing data and technology such as a location-targeting system and passive location technology to associate coordinates with places. The company powers anticipatory features (push notifications and contextual results) and positions itself as the “location layer of the Internet.” Foursquare’s platform combines data and predictive/technical capabilities that clients can integrate beyond simple data licensing. As part of its commercial strategy, integrations can surface branded results in maps and increase inventory for Foursquare’s advertising products. Financially, Foursquare received an incremental $15M from a Microsoft partnership, which was rolled into a prior $35M raise to bring total funding to $50M. Future plans described in the agreement include deep technical integrations with Microsoft’s Bing platform on Windows 8 and Windows Phone and multi-year exploration of those integrations. Foursquare operates a location-based social platform built around user check-ins and venue tips. The company reports 45 million registered users, 40 million tips, and 5 billion check-ins; the post does not disclose how many users are active. CEO Dennis Crowley said the new investment will let the team "build our vision even faster" and that users will see more from the company. The announcement does not include revenue or other financial details. DFJ Growth and Capital Group’s SMALLCAP World Fund are named as the investors in the new round, and DFJ’s Barry Schuler is joining Foursquare’s board. Earlier, in April, Foursquare raised $41 million in a debt deal; the recent round is described as equity.

• Grailed

  Participated · Series A · Jun 2018

  Grailed operates a community-driven marketplace focused on curated men’s clothing, combining a vetted selection of secondhand pieces with editorial content. The company also operates Heroine, a womenswear-focused sister property launched in October 2017. Grailed highlights a highly engaged global audience and a devoted community of enthusiasts around brands like Supreme, Off White, Raf Simons, Saint Laurent, and Celine. The company plans to use new funding to enhance the customer experience, expand marketing efforts, and deepen product supply across Grailed and Heroine. Founded in 2013, Grailed emphasizes an interactive, educational space for buying, selling, and exploring fashion. Its recent fundraising aims to support expanding product offerings for men’s and women’s fashion customers worldwide.

• FabFitFun

  Participated · Equity · Oct 2015

  FabFitFun’s flagship product is the FabFitFun Box, a seasonal curated collection of full‑size products across beauty, fashion, wellness, fitness, home and technology. Since launching in 2010, the company has grown from a newsletter and blog into a platform with more than one million members globally and services including FabFitFunTV, an online community, daily lifestyle content, and seasonal sales. FabFitFun operates a retail engagement platform that designs customized seasonal programs for brand partners, including access to celebrity/influencer networks, generating hundreds of millions of targeted impressions. Members receive personalized seasonal offerings and remain engaged through live TV, social media, and year‑round exclusive shopping experiences. The company emphasizes high value compared to retail for its members and deeper, longer‑term touchpoints for brands. FabFitFun recently completed a financing update, signaling resources to pursue product and geographic expansion. FabFitFun sells a quarterly subscription box priced at $49.99 that contains 8–12 full-sized products valued at over $200. The company grew out of an online magazine and maintains a media arm that publishes 5–10 pieces of original content per day alongside newsletters and social media. FabFitFun sources products at or below production cost or receives them free from brands, and also runs paid campaigns for CPG partners such as Vaseline and Crest. Investors report the business had bootstrapped to roughly $15 million in annual revenue and counts over 1 million members; the team is 35+ employees. The company uses consumer surveying to inform merchandising and plans to use personalization to deliver boxes tailored to individual users with minimal choices required.

No current team members are available.