Participated · Series B · May 2023

Hero Bread produces an artisanal line of low-carb, high-nutrition baked goods using resistant wheat starch to achieve minimal to zero net carbs. Its portfolio includes croissants, cheese biscuits, rolls, buns, tortillas and seeded and white breads sold DTC and across over 4,000 retailers. The company says sales have more than doubled every year since launch and expects to easily double sales year over year. Founder Cole Glass launched the business in 2021 and early backers included athletes Tom Brady and Kevin Durant and recording artists including The Weeknd. Hero Bread has invested in product formulation and manufacturing capacity, iterating recipes (for example replacing seed oils with olive oil) and building a test kitchen and manufacturing system to support rapid growth. The company plans to expand national distribution, broaden retail doors in 2024, continue product innovation and explore other carbohydrate-rich categories. Hero Bread produces low‑carbohydrate breads that replace standard flour with proteins and plant fibers, delivering roughly 0–2 grams of carbs per serving versus more than 20 grams in traditional white bread and offering higher protein. The company’s products are positioned as direct substitutes for conventional bread with a nutrition-forward formulation. Online sales through the company website are expanding, and the firm plans a retail rollout into 32 U.S. states, including placement at Sprouts Farmers Market. Athlete sponsors Tom Brady and Kevin Durant are among the company’s backers. The business just completed new fundraising to support growth through the end of 2023, and leadership has signaled the remainder of the raise could close earlier if performance exceeds expectations.

Participated · Series E · Nov 2022

Alation provides a data-cataloging platform that uses machine learning to crawl databases, parse metadata, track lineage, and surface searchable business and technical context for enterprise data. The product includes collaboration tools, reporting, behavioral recommendations, and integrations with sources like Redshift, Hive, Presto, Spark and Teradata. The company plans to invest the new capital in product development (including acquisitions), and to expand sales, engineering and marketing with a focus on the public sector and customers across Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Alation has grown to serve over 450 brands and more than 25% of the Fortune 100, and its ARR is over $100 million. Management reports that ARR has increased year-over-year for the past five quarters, the company has 700+ employees (expected to be just under 800 by 2023), and a cumulative-cash-burn-to-ARR ratio of about 1.5x. Alation builds an enterprise data intelligence platform centered on its data catalog, combining a Behavioral Analysis Engine, machine learning, and collaboration features to help organizations find, understand, and trust data. The company offers Alation Cloud Service to deliver continuous integration and faster product innovation and integrates with ecosystems including Snowflake, AWS, Salesforce, and Tableau. Alation serves more than 250 enterprise customers across industries, including Bank of Montreal, Cisco, Pfizer, New Balance, and Munich Re. The company plans to use new capital to accelerate go-to-market, fund new products and capabilities, and expand into new geographies, verticals, and product areas. Alation has received industry recognition, including placement in Forrester and Dresner reports and other accolades. Total funding now stands at $217 million and the company has a reported market valuation of $1.2 billion. Alation builds a centralized data search catalog by crawling databases and connecting to common sources such as Oracle, Redshift, Teradata, Spark and Tableau. The product focuses on structured data and uses out-of-the-box connectors plus analysis of usage logs to surface the most likely results, a method the CEO likened to PageRank. The company reports triple-digit growth for four years running and has grown headcount from 89 to around 200, with about 100 large enterprise customers in production including BMW, Hilton, American Express and Salesforce. Alation plans to use the capital to hire 100–200 additional employees over the next year, including engineers as well as customer support, sales and marketing, and to build additional connectors. It also intends to expand partnerships and leverage authorized resellers such as Teradata to enter global markets. Alation was launched in 2012, released its first product in 2014, is based in Redwood City, California, and has raised a total of $82 million to date. Alation provides a collaborative, AI-powered data cataloging platform that helps analysts and information stewards search, query and collaborate for faster, more accurate insights. The platform automatically captures the context of enterprise data, including relationships between data sets, analyst usage and trusted insights. Led by CEO and co-founder Satyen Sangani, the company serves customers including General Electric, Intuit, Pinterest, Pfizer, the City of San Diego, Tesco, Albertsons, eBay, Square and large financial services firms. Alation is based in Redwood City, California. The company closed a $23M Series B and intends to use the proceeds to scale operations. Michael Mullany, a general partner at Icon Ventures, joined Alation’s board as part of the round. Alation develops a platform to make data more accessible within organizations, aiming to obtain timely insights. Founded in 2012 and based in Redwood City, Calif., the company operated in stealth while serving beta customers that include large data-driven organizations with tens of thousands of employees managing petabytes of data and thousands of databases. Its core product focuses on surfacing and governing enterprise data to enable broader access and insights. Alation planned to release its product for general availability in the first half of 2015. The company intends to use the funds from the Series A to accelerate product development and to scale sales and marketing.

Led · Equity · Aug 2022

Oliver Space provides a fully circular consumer furnishing experience that lets users buy new or refurbished furniture, schedule delivery in as soon as three days, and trade items in for credit with free pickup. Returned items are meticulously cleaned and repaired by Oliver technicians before being resold at a 20–50% discount. All deliveries and pickups include expert assembly and disassembly. The company is led by CEO Chan Park and is based in San Francisco, servicing Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, Austin, and Dallas. Oliver Space raised $36M in funding and intends to use the proceeds to expand operations and broaden its business reach. Oliver Space is a home furnishing tech company that offers a flexible payment structure enabling customers to try before they buy at 0% interest, build ownership in furniture, or exchange pieces over time. The company operates in San Francisco and serves customers in Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, Austin, and Dallas. Led by CEO and co-founder Chan Park, Oliver Space emphasizes a customer-first rental-to-own and exchange model for home furnishings. The company plans to use new funding to invest in logistics infrastructure, expand its technology team, and increase marketing capabilities. Financially, the firm has raised a total of $21M in equity to date and has secured an additional $16M in debt financing. The recent capital raise strengthens its ability to scale operations and product availability across its served markets. Oliver Space is a San Francisco–based furniture rental startup that rents fully furnished rooms with a focus on speed, convenience, and reducing furniture waste. The company offers white‑glove delivery and is rolling out digital design services including a collaborative Room Builder, shareable mood-board templates, and complimentary design consultations guided by a style quiz. Oliver Space has moved to exclusively private‑label furniture manufactured in the same factories as retail brands like Article and West Elm to improve value and meet California environmental and safety requirements. The business says pandemic-driven shifts drove a 400% increase in demand between March and August 2020 and that a two‑week Los Angeles beta grew twice as fast as the Bay Area launch period. To support product development and geographic expansion, the company has raised additional capital bringing its total funding to $12M. The funding is being used to support the Los Angeles launch, make production more efficient, and expand its digital and design capabilities. Oliver Space offers a furniture-as-service product that outfits apartments with design-led furnishings customers can rent monthly or yearly, plus curated mood boards to simplify interior decisions. The company also produces Oliver Space–branded pieces via dozens of manufacturers in China and elsewhere, with a focus on fast assembly and disassembly. Customers can rent long-term at lower rates and apply prior rental payments as down payments if they choose to buy items at retail price. Oliver Space plans to inspect, clean and repair returned pieces and develop a certified pre-owned channel as the business scales. The service is available in the Bay Area and the company employs roughly a dozen people. Financially, Oliver Space has attracted $6.8 million in seed funding to support growth and expansion beyond its initial market.

Led · Seed · Jul 2022

Current Foods produces seafood made wholly from plants, aiming to replicate fish using earthly ingredients without microplastics, mercury, or added planetary strain. Led by CEO Jacek Prus, the company completed a soft launch in spring 2021 and is now rolling out nationwide across restaurants, retail, and e-commerce. The product lineup targets both foodservice and consumer channels as it expands distribution. Current Foods plans to use new funding to accelerate its distribution and broaden product offerings domestically and internationally. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, CA and positions itself within the alt-protein sector focused on plant-based seafood alternatives. Kuleana is a Y Combinator–backed startup building an animal-free substitute designed to replicate sushi‑grade raw tuna using iron, algae oil and a mix of proteins formed with a proprietary scaffolding process. The company deliberately avoids 3D printing techniques, saying those can make products look or taste cooked, and focuses on achieving raw tuna texture. Kuleana is initially targeting food service and restaurants, citing that a majority of seafood is eaten outside the home, with plans to expand into retail within the year. The team has conducted taste tests in Barcelona and San Francisco and reports letters of intent for orders exceeding 50,000 pounds. The company received an initial €50,000 seed investment from Good Seed Ventures and emerged from Y Combinator's summer cohort. Founders include CEO Jacek Prus and Barcelona-based researcher Sonia Hurtado; Ron Shigeta helped launch the company but has since left.

Participated · Series A · May 2021

Forte offers an end-to-end platform that lets game publishers integrate blockchain features such as embeddable token wallets, NFT minting/sales, payment rails, and tools for managing digital and virtual assets. The platform emphasizes built-in compliance and security for regulated activity, including money transmittal, anti‑money laundering, tax compliance, and IP protection. Forte highlights customizability and interoperability across multiple blockchains, with pathways to Layer‑1 and Layer‑2 networks and cross‑chain portability. The company is currently invite-only and in private testing, working with 40+ game developer partners and reaching 15M+ players across partner games. Forte positions itself to help publishers transition from initial NFT introduction to long-term in-game economies and player-to-player marketplaces. The team includes industry veterans from Unity, Riot, EA, Sony, Rockstar and others, and the company says its mission is to prepare developers of all sizes for blockchain gaming. Forte offers an end-to-end blockchain economic platform that lets game developers create fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and build scalable token-based game economies. The company is currently invite-only and in private testing and works with 25+ game developer partners. Its platform has enabled 5M+ NFTs minted and reaches 8M+ players across partner games. Forte is engaged with industry veterans and developer projects from creators such as Will Wright and Jeff Tunnell, and previously announced partners include Hi-Rez Studios, Penrose, nWay, and others. The company plans to use new funding to accelerate development of its platform and expand access to developers, players, and fans. The team includes longtime industry members from Unity, ngmoco, Riot Games, Electronic Arts, Sony, and Rockstar Games.