Participated · Series A · Sep 2021

Phiar develops an ultra-lightweight Spatial-AI Engine and Mobility AR Engine to deliver camera-based augmented-reality navigation, vision-based live road detections, HD mapping, smart parking, and traffic-condition awareness for vehicles. The company integrates its software with modern automotive chipsets including Qualcomm Snapdragon and works closely with OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers such as Nissan, Panasonic Automotive, and Bosch, as well as mapping vendors TomTom and HERE. Phiar announced a recently closed Series A to accelerate business with OEMs and Tier-1 partners and to expand go-to-market resources. Founder Chen-Ping Yu will shift to Chairman of the Board and CTO to focus on spatial-AI technology and product development while new CEO Gene Karshenboym onboards to lead global growth. The company has announced partnerships with Panasonic Automotive to integrate its AI-based navigation into automotive solutions. Phiar is headquartered in Redwood City, California and was founded in 2017. Phiar develops an AR navigation app that overlays turn-by-turn directions while using object recognition and visual mapping to build high-quality map data. The company focused on software after initially considering building hardware prior to joining Y Combinator. Its app captures up to 30 minutes of dash-cam footage per ride, providing free dash-cam utility to users and anonymized metadata for mapping. Phiar has engineered single-camera, high-speed geometry understanding and real-time occlusion so digital overlays interact cleanly with the physical world at driving speeds. The startup plans to release its free consumer app in mid-2019 and is positioning its mapping data for partners in autonomous vehicles and ridesharing. CEO Chen-Ping Yu says Phiar is in talks with automotive and ridesharing partners to integrate its technology.

Participated · Seed · Jan 2015

Sense360 is a Los Angeles-based customer data insights company led by CEO and founder Eli Portnoy. It offers a data insights platform focused on offline customer journeys that leverages mobile sensor technology to collect anonymous, always-on location and survey data. The company draws from a panel of two million consumers to let clients observe where, how and when people interact with physical locations, identify core personas, analyze promotions, discover growth opportunities and develop localized marketing plans. Sense360 serves nearly 20,000 locations across the quick-serve and fast-casual restaurant space. Following a $7M Series A, the company plans to use the funds to accelerate growth and to strengthen support for new and existing clients. It also named four industry leaders to its advisory board, including Noah Glass, Joel Aach, Alex Vayslep and Huw Griffiths. Sense360 develops technology that enables app developers to make use of data from smartphone sensors to improve user interactions. The company is led by founders Eli Portnoy and Kamil Mroczek and is based in Culver City, California. Sense360 is early-stage and currently working with a number of beta customers while operating with a five-person team. The startup raised $2.75 million in its first round of funding to support growth. Management says the new capital will be used to hire engineers and data scientists tasked with turning messy sensor data into meaningful signals. The product roadmap focuses on building the engineering and data capabilities needed to surface actionable insights from phone sensors for third-party apps.

Participated · Series B · Mar 2013

Retailigence operates an Online-to-Offline (O2O) local marketing and commerce platform that embeds real-time brick-and-mortar inventory data into mobile and digital advertising to drive in-store purchases. Its core products include adPOP, which dynamically inserts local store inventory into hyperlocal mobile ad creative, and appNET, a commerce solution that helps shoppers find specific products via mobile application partners. The company works with major retailers and brands including Home Depot, Best Buy and Nordstrom, and its retail network covers 50 percent of U.S. retail sales. Retailigence reported triple-digit revenue growth in Q4 2012 and says the new funding will support expansion to meet growing demand. It distributes inventory-based advertising through location-based app partners, mobile ad networks and exchanges, search providers and social networks to increase both awareness and sales. Retailigence is privately held and based in Redwood City, California (Silicon Valley). Retailigence is a hyperlocal marketing platform that integrates with local retail systems to aggregate and distribute product-availability information to consumers. Its core product connects retailers’ available-inventory data with location-aware applications to reach shoppers with high purchase intent. The company says it will use the new funding to advance development, accelerate integration into major retail systems, and dramatically expand retailer coverage. Since launching in late 2010, Retailigence has grown to index more than 10 million active products across nearly 100,000 retail locations in the United States and Canada. The company has also launched in Japan with major Japanese IT and telecom partners. Retailigence positions itself to help brick-and-mortar retailers remain competitive in an increasingly omni-channel shopping environment. Retailigence offers an open API that pulls product listings and availability from retailers’ backend systems, point-of-sale platforms and inventory into a cloud database. The service currently ingests data from major retailers including Target, Best Buy, RadioShack, ToysRUs and The Home Depot. Its database contains more than 3 million products across over 50,000 stores. About 30–40 developers are using the API today, and one of the world’s largest newspaper publishers is using it to tag product images and link to nearby store availability. Use cases cited include driving foot traffic for retailers and powering location-aware product lookups in devices such as GPS units. The company emerged from stealth and was incubated in the Founders Institute prior to its public launch.