Velvet Sea Ventures
7014 13th Ave Ste 202, Brooklyn, New York, 11228, United States
Overview
Velvet Sea Ventures is a venture capital firm that helps entrepreneurs turn their visions into reality. With more than 80 years of combined experience as founders and venture investors and more than $2.2 billion invested, the firm provides seed-to-growth stage capital investments coupled with strategic support across all sectors. Velvet Seas partners’ past investments include such notable companies as Twitter (TWTR), Square (SQ), SpaceX, Snap Inc. (SNAP), Facebook (FB), Pinterest (PINS), Domo (DOMO), Buzzfeed, Namely, Eaze, Braze, and Map Anything (CRM).
- Total investments
- 20
- Lead investments
- 9
- Investments · 12mo
- 1
- Active investors
- 4
Sector focus
- Financial Services
- Social Entrepreneurship
- Venture Capital
Investment portfolio
- Splash Sports
Participated · Series B · Oct 2025
Splash Sports operates a real-money, peer-to-peer gaming platform that empowers fans to act as commissioners and run contests such as Survivor, Pick ’Em, PGA Major Tiers, and the daily QuickPicks "More or Less" game. Available in 44 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and Canada, the service emphasizes social competition and community engagement for both private groups and public audiences. The company originated through the acquisition of RunYourPool and OfficeFootballPool and now partners with media outlets, professional leagues, teams, athletes, and influencers to deepen fan interaction. During the 2023 NFL kickoff, Splash guaranteed more than $6.4 million in contest prizes, a 500 percent increase from the previous year, highlighting rapid growth in user engagement. New funding will expand the product suite, accelerate marketing efforts, and support additional partnerships, particularly within its fast-growing golf vertical. Future plans also include scaling across additional U.S. sports seasons and exploring new entertainment-based gaming formats.
- Healthie
Participated · Series B · Oct 2024
Healthie offers an API-first platform that combines EHR, scheduling, and patient engagement tools alongside a marketplace of third-party partners. The platform is designed so organizations of any size can build, customize, and scale virtual-first care models. Healthie emphasizes continuous and collaborative care workflows and plans to introduce AI-powered solutions into the clinical experience. It also intends to expand its marketplace to broaden third-party integrations. The company meets top data-security and certification standards, including HIPAA, HITRUST R2, SOC-2 Type 2, and ONC certification. Healthie is led by its CEO and positions itself as infrastructure for next-gen healthcare organizations. Healthie offers a software platform that helps healthcare companies and startups handle back-office operations and deliver virtual patient engagements using customizable templates. The product is positioned as infrastructure for next-generation virtual care — likened by the founder to how Stripe simplified e‑commerce payments. Customers can customize templates for workflows and for informing patients about data and HIPAA compliance; Healthie asserts it is HIPAA compliant and that customer data remains the customers’. The company launched in 2016 and serves more than 2,000 organizations while storing upward of 1.3 million patient records. Healthie says it has been profitable for several years, reporting FCF, EBITDA, aEBITDA and GAAP net income for fiscal 2020 and 2021 and FCF net‑income profitability since 2018. The company plans to use new funding to continue developing its software and underpin virtual care delivery.
- KarmaCheck
Participated · Series B · Jun 2024
KarmaCheck provides a technology-driven platform that combines automated dashboards, built-in API integrations with applicant tracking systems, and a mobile-friendly candidate interface for scheduling clinic-based screenings. The company emphasizes an AI-forward approach alongside expert-led customer support to deliver fast, accurate results and an improved candidate experience. KarmaCheck’s platform is used by staffing administrators to manage background checks, credentialing, and compliance workflows. The company plans to use the Series B proceeds to accelerate development of its proprietary technology platform, scale service levels to more customers and candidates, and expand into new industry verticals. Founded by Eric Ly and based in San Francisco, KarmaCheck reported revenue growth of over 600%, expanded its customer experience team by more than 300%, and has delivered millions of screenings. These operating metrics accompanied the company’s recent momentum ahead of the Series B. KarmaCheck provides a compliant technology platform that uses proprietary data access and processing to simplify employment background checks and deliver real-time, actionable notifications to employers. The platform is used by hundreds of large North American companies, including McDonald’s, Domino’s and Recruiter.com. Founded by Eric Ly and based in San Francisco, the company focuses on automating and improving the speed and compliance of hiring-related checks. KarmaCheck says it will use the new funding to expand operations and broaden its business reach. The article does not disclose revenue or other financial metrics.
- Gynger
Participated · Series A · Jun 2024
Gynger provides financing, payment and management services that let businesses finance technology purchases—software, hardware, cloud and infrastructure—via unsecured lines of credit and embedded vendor financing. It uses advanced AI and data analytics to underwrite, automatically detect technology spend and recommend financing opportunities for buyers and sellers. The application process is under 10 minutes, with next-day credit decisions and immediate access to funds once approved; Gynger pays vendors upfront and customers repay later. Gynger generates revenue from interest, loan origination fees, interchange fees from its card program and vendor service fees, and plans to add SaaS/platform fees later this year. The company began selling in Q2 2023 and reports revenue up over 700% year-over-year and a 5x increase in customer base, while declining to disclose hard revenue figures. Gynger was incubated in June 2021 out of m]x[v Capital and is led by founder Mark Ghermezian. Gynger is a New York–based platform that provides capital specifically for software and infrastructure purchases, emerging from stealth with both equity and debt financing. Its core product is an automated underwriting model that offers lines of credit and debt financing so companies can pay SaaS vendors upfront and repay Gynger over time. Customers can elect to pay vendors annually for discounts or spread existing bills over three to 12 months, and Gynger consolidates SaaS expenses into a single monthly payment via a unified dashboard. The company’s decisioning algorithm evaluates cash, burn rate and revenue to determine eligibility and does not require companies to have revenue. Gynger says it has financed contracts ranging from $1,000 to $1 million with vendors including Airtable, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, Slack and Zoom. The 13-person company declined to disclose revenue but described its cash flow as “super healthy.”
- LeoLabs
Participated · Series B · Feb 2024
LeoLabs operates a vertically integrated technology system, Vertex™, that delivers LEO coverage, real-time tracking and insights for satellite operators, commercial enterprises and federal agencies. The company focuses on space safety, security and sustainability by providing the information needed to plan and execute missions in low Earth orbit. LeoLabs sells operational insights and tracking capabilities to commercial and government customers worldwide. The company plans to scale up its insight delivery by investing in advanced end-user applications and partner integrations. Leadership under CEO Dan Ceperley says the funds will bolster the company’s data architecture and system software to support growth. LeoLabs recently raised new funding to support these product and scaling initiatives. Founded in 2016, LeoLabs operates a global network of ground-based phased-array radars to track and measure objects in low Earth orbit. Its radar sites include installations in Alaska, Texas, two sites in New Zealand and two in Costa Rica. The system detects objects as small as 2 centimeters, versus legacy systems that typically see 10-centimeter objects, expanding tracked object counts from roughly 17,000 to about 250,000 at the smaller threshold. Customers access collision-risk data through a subscription SaaS that issues automatic alerts for close approaches. LeoLabs reports seeing three to five close approaches per week for larger objects and many more when tracking smaller debris, which drives demand for avoidance maneuvers. The company plans to expand its radar footprint, increase tracking frequency, scale its software and data-science teams, open locations outside the U.S., and add new products and services. LeoLabs operates a patent-pending global phased-array radar network and a mapping and SSA platform that provides orbital and situational data to customers. Its core offerings include collision prevention, risk assessment, constellation monitoring and general SSA services. Customers include space agencies, commercial satellite operators, defense, and scientific/academic organizations. The company was founded in 2016 as a venture-funded spinout of SRI International and is led by CEO Dan Ceperley. LeoLabs closed a $13M Series A and plans to use the funds to expand its radar network for tracking small debris and satellites in LEO and to accelerate development of its mapping and SSA platform. The platform for developers and operators is available on a trial basis at the company’s website. LeoLabs spun out of SRI International to provide a collision-avoidance service for low-Earth orbit (LEO) operators. The company operates a network of ground-based radar monitoring stations and recently added the Midland Space Radar facility in Midland, Texas. Its system offers accuracy to within 100 meters, multiple daily tracks per object, verification mechanisms, scheduled data delivery, and an API for customer integration. LeoLabs says it can track up to 250,000 objects not covered by public monitoring systems today. The company supplies raw data plus built services to help customers avoid collisions and is investing in a data services platform to enable third-party innovation. CEO Dan Ceperley emphasizes the startup’s role in supporting growing cubesat, smallsat and space-tourism traffic in crowded LEO.