Participated · Seed · Feb 2024

Yuva Biosciences applies AI to mitochondrial research to identify compounds that restore mitochondrial function; its first ingredient to market is YuvaBio® Y100™. Y100 is available for licensing to non-drug consumer brands and is being incorporated into BosleyMD’s Revive Plus Densifying Foam for national retail and e-commerce rollout. The company was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Yuva’s scientific leadership includes Co‑Founder and CSO Dr. Keshav K. Singh and CEO Greg Schmergel; the team also includes consumer-products veteran Dr. Shekhar Mitra. The company reports noticeable effects in multiple clinical trials and positions the platform to target additional mitochondrial-related indications such as ovarian aging and wound care. Financially, Yuva completed a $7.5M seed financing led by VentureSouth.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2021

Expetitle is a Miami, Florida–based digital-first real estate title and closing company operating in multiple states. It uses proprietary technology to deliver a faster, more cost-efficient closing process. The company provides software and staff to increase transparency, communication, and accountability and employs title agents with decades of experience. Expetitle aims to help brokerages earn more, save time for realtors, and improve the experience for buyers and sellers. In September 2021 the company closed a $2.3M seed round. With the new capital, Expetitle plans to roll out its solution to new states and new partners across the country. Expetitle provides a secure collaborative platform and app that enables fully digital and hybrid closings, allowing buyers and sellers to track the entire closing process. The company partners with real-estate brokerages through joint-venture structures and has begun writing title policies in Florida this year. Fees for various closing services can run 20%–60% lower than traditional closings, according to examples on its website. After the coronavirus pandemic spurred demand for remote services, Expetitle’s revenue nearly tripled over four months and it reports a monthly run rate in the high tens of thousands. The seed funding will be used to fund sales and marketing and to improve the company’s technology. Expetitle was founded in January 2019 and was built in LAB Miami Ventures’ Startup Studio; the team is about 10 people with roughly five in South Florida. The company is focused on growing in Florida over the next year.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2021

AOA Dx is a NYC-based company developing a detection test for ovarian cancer using its GlycoLocate™ platform. The platform focuses on glycolipids and tumor marker gangliosides and harnesses novel biomarkers through data science to improve early detection. Led by CEO and co‑founder Oriana Papin‑Zoghbi, the company’s initial focus is ovarian cancer. AOA Dx plans to use the new capital to open new lab facilities, expand its prospective ovarian cancer clinical trial (OVERT), and develop GlycoLocate into additional cancer areas. The company raised $17M in the latest round led by Good Growth Capital and has now raised $24M in total. Investors in the round include RH Capital, Y Combinator, Astia Fund, Adaptive Capital Partners, Gore Range Capital, LongeVC, The Helm, VU Venture Partners, FemHealth Ventures and diagnostic investors such as Labcorp Venture Fund. AOA Dx is developing AKRIVIS GD, a liquid‑biopsy assay intended to enable accurate early detection of ovarian cancer. In a landmark peer‑reviewed study in the Journal of Precision Medicine, the technology showed over 90% accuracy for detecting ovarian cancer, including early‑stage disease. The company says AKRIVIS GD has high sensitivity and specificity and would be the first available tool to enable early detection of ovarian cancer. AOA plans to use new funding to further develop the next generation of AKRIVIS GD and to expand its team. Teams are based in Boston, New York, and London, and the company participated in Y Combinator’s program in 2021. The work responds to a large unmet need: roughly 225,000 women are diagnosed annually and late detection drives high mortality, while early detection can dramatically improve five‑year survival rates. AOA is developing AKRIVIS GD, a blood-based liquid biopsy intended to detect ovarian cancer at earlier stages. The company reports that its proof-of-concept demonstrates high accuracy across all cancer stages and epithelial ovarian cancer subtypes. AOA says its technology detects 53% more patients with early-stage disease compared with the current standard, CA 125. The team partnered with Professor H. Uri Saragovi of the Lady Davis Institute/McGill University to develop the test. AOA is part of Y Combinator’s summer 2021 batch and raised seed funding to advance development. The company plans further prospective patient clinical trials and to pursue FDA regulatory processes to bring the test to market.

Led · Seed · Apr 2021

Quala offers a customer success platform built by CSMs for CSMs, centered on a “CSM Sentiment” that captures qualitative insights at scale and pairs them with usage metrics to represent customer health. The product aims to replace spreadsheets and unreliable CSP outputs by providing fast, simple, and accurate customer truth. The company is described in the article as among the fastest-growing Customer Success Platforms. Founders Jonathan Tushman and Sonciary Honnoll are first- and second-time founders and long-time tech executives; the team is noted for an empathic, transparent approach. Reported near-term product plans include improved CRM integrations, a brand-new UI, and enhanced platform CX. The round funded additional senior hires to lead sales and engineering to scale and meet market demand.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2021

Esprezzo develops a suite of products including Dispatch, a no-code automation platform, and blockchain intelligence APIs and tools for accessing on-chain and smart contract data. Dispatch lets users create automated notifications and workflows in response to on-chain events via point-and-click interfaces, and is expected to release publicly later this year. The company also offers developer-facing APIs and products such as UniSpotter, a Telegram bot that notifies users about new Uniswap trading pairs. Esprezzo aims to simplify blockchain data access for traders, beginners, and developers who otherwise must monitor multiple sources or learn blockchain-specific programming. To date the company has delivered over 1 million notifications and reports growth of 2x month-over-month. The team says its products target both retail users and developers seeking high-throughput blockchain data.