Participated · Seed · May 2026

Arc develops voice AI systems aimed at automating drive-thru ordering for quick-service restaurants. The company trains its models on real drive-thru conversations and customizes them for brand-specific menus, scripts, accents, and order patterns. Arc provides operators tools to test different model variants and measure speed, accuracy, and ticket size in real time. It reports deployments with two major fast-food chains, each with hundreds of locations, and claims its system completes orders over 95% of the time while raising average order value by 4%–5%. Arc was founded by Mike MacLennan and Ali Hussain, who previously worked at Square and Cash App. The startup recently closed a $10.76 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, giving it early-stage capital to scale deployments and testing.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2024

Founded by former SoundCloud executives Jeff Ponchick and Joey Mason, Mogul offers artists a royalty-tracking and catalog-management platform that has already surfaced $1.5 billion in previously unclaimed or misallocated royalties. The product ingests first-party data from numerous collection societies and distributors to flag missing registrations, suggest corrections and even complete bulk registrations on the artist’s behalf. Recent enhancements include cross-platform data fixes, a bulk registration tool and a catalog valuation feature that estimates track-level earnings potential across services like Spotify and Apple Music. On average, users report a 20% increase in royalty revenue after adopting the service. Mogul currently employs six people and plans to hire additional staff with its new capital. The company eliminated its free tier to focus on higher-value, revenue-generating users. Looking ahead, management is preparing for the complexities of AI-generated music royalties while positioning its data pipeline to accommodate evolving regulatory standards. To date, Mogul has raised more than $6.3 million in venture funding.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2017

Pocket.watch is a kids media brand focused on creating digital stars, franchises and formats across online video channels. The company programs and develops content for digital platforms and has collaborated with traditional media partners on IP for TV and film. It reports over one billion monthly views across twenty YouTube channels and a combined subscriber base of more than 34 million. Pocket.watch has raised $21M since launching in March 2017 and recently closed a $15M Series B. Future plans outlined in the articles include collaborative content development, expanded ad-sales packaging with Viacom/Nickelodeon inventory, and joint talent initiatives to identify up-and-coming creators. Pocketwatch is a Culver City–based kids media startup creating digitally born brands through original animated and live-action programming and YouTube channels targeting children ages 2–11, with an initial focus on ages 6–11. The company plans to launch this summer with five YouTube channels and generate revenue through advertising and YouTube Red subscriptions. Its larger goal is to develop premium series that can be packaged and licensed to streaming platforms and to expand into toys, gaming, and other brand extensions. Pocketwatch will also roll out a preschool sub-brand later and a parent-focused sub-brand to inform parents about what kids are watching. The content strategy combines in-house premium series with partnerships with 10–15 digital creators, who will be offered significant equity stakes. The team of ten is led by CEO Chris Williams, with Chief Content Officer Albie Hecht and Chief Strategy Officer Jon Moonves; the company raised $6 million in Series A funding.

Participated · Seed · Dec 2016

Waggle collects user-generated pet content via a mobile app and website, curates and lightly produces clips, then syndicates that programming through an e-mail newsletter, website, mobile app and Facebook. The New York City–based startup was incubated at Broadway Video Ventures and forges partnerships with organizations such as the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, America’s Funniest Home Videos and the San Francisco SPCA to fuel its digital programming. Since its beta began in September, Waggle has aired at least 1,000 hours of live-streaming pet videos on Facebook and garnered more than 10 million views. Co-founder and CEO Matt Cavnar says the company aims to celebrate pets and build a community-driven destination for animal lovers and pet parents. Eventually Waggle hopes to help pets and their owners become micro- and mega-influencers who can generate income via product placements or content licensing. The company has eight full-time employees, about half based in San Francisco, and intends to use its new capital for hiring, community and content development.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2016

Captiv8 is a data-driven influencer marketplace that provides brands with tools to discover and match with social media talent. Its Marketplace is an AI platform that uses real-time audience data across Instagram, Twitter, Vine, YouTube, and Facebook to predict which influencers will generate maximum results, analyzing geography, household income, ethnicity, age, and gender. Marketplace is complemented by Insights, a SaaS platform enabling brands to understand audiences, optimize content, benchmark competitors, and grow their fan base. The company works with over 125,000 influencers with a combined reach of over 2.1 billion fans and serves Fortune 500 clients such as Johnson & Johnson, Adobe, Microsoft, and Amazon. Founded in 2015 by Krishna Subramanian and based in San Francisco with offices in Los Angeles and New York, Captiv8 has established a broad creator network including Zach King, Casey Neistat, iJustine, and Christian DelGrosso. In April 2016 it raised $2M in funding from investors including Social Capital, United Talent Agency, Subtraction Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, Social Starts, Lone Wolf, and Jason Calacanis’ Launch Fund.