Upwards (formerly WeeCare), the leading national childcare network and care benefits company, announced their $21M Series B led by Alpha Edison, with participation from existing investors M13 and Fika Ventures. “Upwards has quickly become a leader in childcare benefits by leveraging technology to connect families, caregivers, employers, and governments — a powerful alliance to solve care for good,” said Jessica Chang, CEO and Co-Founder of Upwards. “While billions in public and private funds flow towards childcare annually, hundreds of millions of families still struggle to find quality, affordable care and participate in the workforce, highlighting clear gaps in the system. The growing demand from employers and governments shows that Upwards’ ecosystem-based model and tailored care solutions are making a true difference.” With this latest round, Upwards total funding reaches $43.3M, making it one of the most notable investments in childcare companies.

Manufactured, a software solution that automates and scales the manufacturing supply chain for private label brands, announced $20M in Series A funding. With a focus on empowering private label brands, Manufactured’s platform streamlines processes, reduces costs, and accelerates time to market, providing a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced market. “Manufactured helps companies turn inventory into cash flow, predictably”- founder and CEO, Pranay Srinivasan.

Heliux, a startup building an AI-powered enterprise operating system for manufacturers, emerged from stealth after announcing its $2M pre-seed, with participation from Amplify.LA, New Stack Ventures, Crosscut Ventures, Lux Capital, Countdown Capital, and strategic angel investors. Heliux aims to revolutionize manufacturing operations by offering an AI-powered, all-in-one platform for businesses tired of fragmentation, seeking efficiency and innovation. Alex Craig, CEO and Co-Founder, described their platform as an “AI-powered, all-in-one operating system” that can keep track of everything from supply chain to quality control to finance.

Mogul, helping musicians track their unclaimed royalties, announced $1.9M in pre-seed funding from Amplify, Wonder Ventures, United Talent Agency, and ex-SoundCloud CEO Kerry Trainor’s Creator Partners. With its innovative platform, Mogul aims to tackle the complex issue of unclaimed royalties, providing musicians with the tools they need to navigate the intricacies of the music industry. As the company grows, it promises to become an indispensable ally for musicians seeking to maximize their earnings and protect their intellectual property rights. We are excited to continue supporting Mogul’s mission to bring transparency and fairness to royalty payments, addressing a longstanding challenge musicians face worldwide.

Our Semi-Annual Seed Report is here! Los Angeles experienced a 17% drop in seed dollars deployed, reaching $424 million, accompanied by a 20% decrease in deal volume. Notably, Q3 ’23 exhibited a substantial decline in deals, while Q4 ’23 maintained consistency. Delve into the report to explore how sectors like manufacturing and cleantech weathered the storm, contrasted with the diminishing interest in e-commerce and the nearly non-existent interest in blockchain. Some takeaways below!

• Shift in Sectors: Media and Entertainment eclipsed Health and Wellness as the dominant sector in 2H ‘23.
• Deal Dynamics: Mega deals dwindled, with most transactions falling within the $2M — $3.99M range.
• E-commerce Evolution: From 16 deals and $73M in 2H ’22, e-commerce saw a stark decline to 2 deals and $16.43M in 2H ‘23.

Jessica Chang, CEO and Co-Founder of Upwards, was named to the inaugural CNBC Changemakers list. The women named to this list set the standard for what it takes to defy the odds, innovate, and thrive in a volatile business landscape. #CNBCChangemakers

Reactive, the company building infrastructure for live commerce, was recently featured on Hackernoon. Reactive is at the forefront of the emerging trend of livestream commerce, providing innovative solutions for businesses to engage with customers in real time. With its robust infrastructure, Reactive enables seamless integration of live video streaming and e-commerce functionalities, empowering brands to capitalize on the growing popularity of live commerce. The article sheds light on Reactive’s pivotal role in helping American businesses adapt to this evolving consumer behavior, unlocking new opportunities for revenue generation and customer engagement.

Check out our latest Job Board on the Amplify Website! Find the latest job openings and positions throughout our entire portfolio. you can apply directly, or if you know anyone who could be a fit, feel free to pass it along!

If you found this valuable, consider giving this a share and passing it along to anyone who you think may find this relevant.

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Amplify is a first check fund backing LA’s earliest and strongest tech teams. You can get in touch with us here.

Upwards Raises $21M Series B, Manufactured Raises Series A, Heliux and Mogul Raise a Pre-Seed, and… was originally published in Amplify.LA Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

SafeRide Health, a leading platform connecting patients to life-sustaining care, has secured Series C funding to expand its non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) technology and services. This round was led by Sands Capital alongside new investors Healthworx, the investment arm of BlueCross/Blue Shield and SCAN Group with participation from existing investors Transform Capital, Seminal Capital (SEMCAP), Hill City Capital, Fry’s Path Capital, Primetime Partners, Fresenius Medical Ventures, Bonfire Ventures, and Meridian Street Capital. SafeRide Health aims to disrupt the $10+ billion NEMT market and enhance the member experience for over 120 million individuals in Medicare Advantage and Medicaid programs. The company addresses a crucial healthcare gap by providing access to care for those facing transportation barriers, particularly low income individuals.

Cascade Biocatalysts, a bio-manufacturing company catalyzing green chemistry, raised an oversubscribed $2.6 M pre-seed from Amplify and Ten VC with partners Boost VC, Range Ventures, Spacecadet, and the Cool Climate Collective. Cascade aims to use the raised funds to scale its impact from the lab bench to pilot scale and to support its initial wave of customers.

Sourcetable, the next-generation spreadsheet, announced their $3M Seed Round led by Michael Berolzheimer at Bee Partners, in addition to $1.25M Pre-Seed funding round from Amplify.LA, Long Journey Ventures, and NextView Ventures. Sourcetable is creating a unique spreadsheet experience that combines data warehousing, live data-sync, and intelligent, user-friendly features, breaking down technical barriers for analysts, operators, and regular spreadsheet users. This significant milestone sets the stage for Sourcetable to continue revolutionizing the fields of data analysis and reporting.

We’re Backing Reactive

When you think back to 90’s catalogs, what comes to mind? Maybe a product image, a quippy blurb, available sizes, and maybe even multiple color options. Save for slightly more engaging elements (like carefully filtered customer reviews and embedded social posts from their most aesthetic fans) e-comm product pages remain almost identical in 2022! And unfortunately, the vast majority of e-commerce sites suffer the same problem their retro paper ancestors did: they fail to convert 99% of potential customers. The e-commerce revolution has, in many senses, simply copy and pasted the customer experience of the 90’s and early aughts into today’s world.

In our latest blog post, you can read all about how Reactive is bringing the interactivity of social to merchant storefronts, and in turn, ushering e-commerce into an engaging new era. Reactive offers live streaming infrastructure as a service, providing e-comm sellers the building blocks for exceptional, low-latency live experiences, focusing on live commerce. Using Reactive, merchants can go live on their first-party platforms, own their audience and brand interactions, and seamlessly incorporate critical features like enhanced audience analytics, payments, chat, and more. Read more here about why we decided to back Andrew Conti.

Upwards (previously WeeCare), the leading national childcare network, announced its new name and brand identity: Upwards. As Upwards enters a new growth cycle, it remains steadfast in its commitment to childcare, while also planning to include other types of care that meet the unique needs of families.”Upwards signifies the direction families move when care is not a concern,” said Jessica Chang, CEO and Co-Founder of Upwards, unveiling the company’s new name. “From our founding in 2017, we focused on putting family at the center of everything we do. And going forward, the new name aligns with our company’s mission of making care accessible to all families and empowering the caregivers who provide it.”

WARP, a Los Angeles, CA-based tech-powered freight network specializing in middle-mile solutions, announced the launch of their real-time inventory distribution service, “WARPstock” backed by their WARP Station technology. Using their proprietary algorithm, WARP can now facilitate the movement of goods in/out of their customers’ warehouses, to distribution centers, and in/out of stores based on their actual needs, not just anticipated needs.

HoneyBee Health, an online pharmacy that sells generic medications without the need for insurance, was featured in this year’s #TIME100Companies: A list of the world’s most influential businesses! They were recognized in the Times for their work in expanding access to abortion pills across the U.S. HoneyBee Health was the first pharmacy officially cleared by the FDA to dispense abortion pills via mail. In 2023 HoneyBee Health was also the first to satisfy new permanent requirements, continued to meet increasing demand, and kept its 36-hour turnaround time from prescription to delivery. They are a leading force driving positive change in the healthcare sector.

Abstract’s founders, Patrick Utz, Matthew Chang, and Mohammed Hayat, have made the first Forbes 30 under 30 list for Los Angeles! The Local List features the top entrepreneurs, activists and creatives in vibrant innovation hubs across the country. From 2020 to now Abstract has worked hard to create the “Atlassian for government data,” aiming to make lobbying accessible through a collaborative workflow management platform built on the largest structured dataset of state government documents.

Artkive, a leader in helping people preserve physical memorabilia, launched Cards By Artkive allowing people to send in their greeting cards to be digitally preserved and turned into a keepsake book. Customers are sent a box with a return label to fill with their old birthday, Mother’s/Father’s Day, and other cards they’ve received. The cards are then professionally photographed, loaded to an account and a hardcover book is sent of all the memories. Cards By Artkive has gone viral on TikTok garnering nearly 100k followers and tens of millions of video views in the last 90 days.

Check out our latest Job Board on the Amplify Website! Find the latest job openings and positions throughout our entire portfolio. you can apply directly, or if you know anyone who could be a fit, feel free to pass it along!

If you found this valuable, consider giving this a share and passing it along to anyone who you think may find this relevant.

Want these updates delivered to your inbox!? Join our newsletter!

Amplify is a first check fund backing LA’s earliest and strongest tech teams. You can get in touch with us here.

SafeRide Raises Their Series C, Cascade Raises $2.6M, Sourcetable Raises $3M, and More! was originally published in Amplify.LA Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our latest Seed Report is live!

Read on for a snippet of our coverage, and huge thank you to dot.LA for covering the report!

On a global scale, venture funding tumbled to $445 billion in 2022, a 35% decline YoY from the $681 billion deployed in 2021. Flaunting its relative immunity to broader venture pessimism, seed stage funding was the “least impacted funding stage” of 2022’s downturn. Despite the rosiness this might imply, when taken piece by piece, 2022 represented a steady, stepwise decline in quarter over quarter seed funding, with Q4 alone clocking in with 35% less funding than the same quarter the year prior.

And when we look at LA dealmaking, it doesn’t get much prettier. While the narrative, and numbers, for the first half of 2022 might have led one to believe that LA was uniquely protected from whatever evil was plaguing the rest of the world, the second half of 2022 was a sobering reminder that we are no exception.

We’re Backing Vendorflow

We’re ecstatic to be backing Vendorflow, a contact center solution that provides shared inbox business texting and messaging automation for logistics companies. The team behind Vendorflow, Eric Rodriguez (CEO) and Greg Bujak (CTO) worked together at NEXT Trucking, where they observed the challenges of driver app and shipper portal adoption first-hand. They recognized the need for a better solution, and thus, Vendorflow was born.

Vendorflow is building contact center software to optimize workflows for the freight industry. They are leveraging the latest in mobile engagement technology, such as Android RCS, Apple Business Chat, and WhatsApp Business to provide an app-quality experience in mobile messaging channels without the friction of installing a full app. By utilizing the platform, Logistics Service Providers can capture structured data via smart, lightweight cards delivered through the trucker’s preferred communication channel. Read more here about why we decided to back Eric Rodriguez (CEO) and Greg Bujak (CTO).

Warp, a Los Angeles, CA-based tech-powered freight network specializing in middle-mile solutions, raised $5.7M in additional seed funding led by MaC Venture Capital, Bonfire Ventures, and Frontier Venture Capital with participation from insiders like us and Bee Partners. Warp will use these new funds to scale its network and tech platform to further automate traditional supply chain “hacks” that were previously done manually.

LA Tech Week

Since Amplify’s founding in 2011, we’ve watched the LA tech scene explode, which is part of the reason we were thrilled to be a part of the city’s #LATechWeek! Tech Week is a week of events hosted by the startup community to celebrate the status of LA within US tech. This year it has grown into an amazing platform of over 750+ events bringing together the founders, startups, and investors in some of the most vibrant tech hubs! We had the pleasure of hosting an amazing event focused on the earliest builders and investors in LA with our friends at Fika Ventures, MaC Ventures, and Bling Capital.

Make sure you’re registered for NY Tech Week in October!

We wanted to take a second to recognize Paul Bricault (Managing Partner at Amplify.LA) for his 8th consecutive year in a row on the Los Angeles Business Journal’s LA 500 — an annual list of the five hundred “most influential people in Los Angeles.” Paul is featured alongside fellow honorees like Mayor Karen Bass, Rupert Murdoch, Bob Iger and Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger.

The Bouqs Co., a cut-to-order flower e-commerce company, was ranked as the best online flower delivery service by the lovely experts at Wirecutter. The Bouqs shined above all other competitors in beauty, order process, arrival time, and packaging. Wirecutter reported that, “the Bouqs Company just looked better, even to casual observers. Add to that reliable delivery, a clean, easy-to-use website, and the fact that it offers three price options (akin to small, medium, and large) for each bouquet, and you really won’t find a better delivery service.” 🌸

WeeCare, one of the largest childcare networks in the US, is celebrating its 5-year anniversary and was recently ranked as one of the 500 fastest-growing companies in America by Inc. Magazine. WeeCare provides access to high-quality childcare for all families, supports childcare providers in operating sustainable businesses through a technology-based marketplace, and helps employers of all sizes offer their employees childcare benefits. WeeCare also won dot.LA’s Social Equity Award for their admirable mission to make childcare accessible for all.

Cheese, The first zero-fee cash-back debit card for immigrants, launched their new Credit Builder product and is top ranked in the app store amongst credit builder products. Cheese allows you to show credit bureaus that consumers can consistently make on-time payments. This builds your payment history, which makes up 35% of your credit score!

Nectarine Credit, a b2b credit software company, is highlighted in an article by TTEC as a company that can help banks maximize value, enhance customer experiences, foster innovation, and achieve sustainable growth. Nectarine Credit offers an easy-to-use system for managing client credit applications. With Nectarine Credit’s involvement, banks position themselves to remain competitive and shape a successful future in the ever-changing financial landscape.

Check out our latest Job Board on the Amplify Website for the full list of openings throughout our entire portfolio! You can apply directly, or if you know anyone who could be a fit, feel free to pass it along!

If you found this valuable, consider giving this a share, and passing it along to anyone who you think may find this relevant.

Amplify is a first-check fund backing LA’s earliest and strongest tech teams. You can get in touch with us here. Want these updates delivered to your inbox? Join our newsletter!

Amplify’s 2H ’22 Seed Report, Warp raises $5.7M, LA Tech Week, and More! was originally published in Amplify.LA Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The intelligence revolution, initially marked by the automation of rote tasks, and more recently indicated by the maturation of large language models, is starting to show what’s possible in the disruption of new industry categories. Robots are already sorting our drugs at pharmaceutical plants, painting our cars inside factories, and automating our 3PL warehouses. Yet there are plenty of jobs that robots, or rather, computer vision and robotics experts, have yet to replicate. Tasks that require a robot to handle objects of varying sizes and shapes with exceptional dexterity have been an unceasing headache. In turn, many of the most unpleasant jobs humans work remain underserved by automation, with robotic arms busy picking, packing, and not doing much else in the industries most desperate for their aid.

The Amplify team is beyond thrilled to be backing Altitude AI in its mission to accelerate the fourth industrial revolution. Altitude’s proprietary SaaS synthesizes advanced computer vision and sensor data to enable off-the-shelf robotic hardware to perceive and manipulate objects like never before. In the long-term, the Altitude operating system will develop and deploy industrial robotic applications across many industries. But to start, they’re zeroing in on where the pain is felt most acutely, in food processing.

The food supply chain as a whole is champing at the bit for automation. Produce growers are hoping robotics will touch everything from planting to harvesting to weeding. Protein processors are keen to expand beyond pick and place. Across verticals, food processors are on break-neck deadlines to implement robotics throughout their operations, with many appointing heads of automation. Yet until very recently, robotics hadn’t been able to consistently move beyond pick and place and warehouse work.

As their initial go to market, Altitude is zeroing in on meat processing. For a sense of scale, the meat industry alone employs more workers than automotive manufacturing in this country. Thus far, nothing has been sophisticated enough to step in along the line itself. In part, this was because of the peculiar challenges posed by the degrees of variation in food products. Depending on the protein, the same cut can vary dramatically from animal to animal (with lamb and fish being among the worst). This degree of variability has long been a barrier to entry for robotic trimming and slicing as the variable shapes and sizes of meat require 3D computer vision for manipulation.

Yet, from conversations, it was clear that the greatest problem facing the industry was staffing and labor along the processing line. Companies in the space revealed shocking rates of worker churn (clocking in at an industry average of 160%), with multiple executives speculating that nobody is operating their plants at above 80% capacity. Churn is only exacerbated by the dangerous, dirty, and shoulder to shoulder work environment typical across the industry.

Diminished capacity is only compounded by an increasingly unskilled workforce. Older, more experienced workers are retiring, and their expertise is leaving with them. If meat processing wasn’t entirely a pennies and ounces business, then workers would be largely interchangeable. But yield is everything, and unskilled workers often cut too much protein in the process of trimming fat. In a revelatory exchange, a CEO of a pork processing plant pointed to a station wherein a flank had been cut too deeply and reckoned that over the course of a year, the cumulative loss of yield from that station alone would amount to $1M in lost revenue for the company. Decreased capacity, worker churn, and dropping yield are all cutting into the already razor thin margins of protein processors.

There is a multi-tiered benefit to implementing robotics along the line itself. Labor turnover is only getting worse and labor costs are climbing. Yield optimization presents a huge opportunity for cost savings as most plants are aware that their workers cut away plenty of good product. Then there’s the food and human safety issue. For food safety reasons, the industry already tries to minimize contact points between workers and product as much as possible. From a worker safety perspective, the facilities are very dangerous, with business owners eager to boost safety. Most trimming and cutting lines have people shoulder-to-shoulder with sharp instruments. The plants are kept at frigid temperatures, and the work can get dirty. It’s not an easy job, and it’s not a particularly safe one.

All of the above is what gets us so excited to be backing Ed Walker as he and the team build Altitude. Ed has spent his entire career focusing on computer perception system design, with a particular interest in multi-sensor modalities. Graduating from Princeton for Computer Science, he joined Google as a software engineer. Later, he spent time at Waymo and Built Robotics, but was always passionate about his own project ideas and always had things percolating in spare time. Ed’s original idea was to build a robotics system to create fast casual food experiences, using existing hardware and novel software. After exploring in industry, he realized that labor was important for the fast casual space, but was spread across many use cases so it was hard to find one that took a significant enough portion of COGS off the table. An advisor connected him with a meatpacker, and it was a lightbulb moment. Nearly all of the cost outside of raw materials is the manual-intensive labor around things like trimming and cutting. Ed thought he could adapt a lot of the work and research he was already doing to fit the space. From there, Altitude as we know it was off to the races.

Proprietary sensor data is ingested, the Altitude software makes sense of the data with in-house perception algorithms, and movement commands informed by the results of the prior step are sent to a robotic arm. Altitude is not the eyes, nor the arms of industrial automation, it’s the brains!

Industry appetite, coupled with Ed’s technical prowess, is an exciting combination. Implementing robotics software that limits food and worker safety hazards, increases yield, and supplements labor with human level dexterity, is what Altitude AI is already delivering in a series of pilots. This new infusion of cash will allow the Salt Lake City based team to expand existing contracts and meet preliminary demand.

The team recently closed on $3.165M from Amplify and co-investors we’re lucky to work with: Kickstart Fund, Lerer Hippeau, and Signal Peak Ventures.

If you found this valuable, consider giving this a share, and passing it along to anyone who you think may find this relevant.

Amplify is a first check fund backing LA’s earliest and strongest tech teams. You can get in touch with us here. Want these updates delivered to your inbox? Join our newsletter!

Why We’re Backing Altitude was originally published in Amplify.LA Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our latest Seed Report is live!

Read on for a snippet of our coverage, and huge thank you to dot.LA for covering the report!

On a global scale, venture funding tumbled to $445 billion in 2022, a 35% decline YoY from the $681 billion deployed in 2021. Flaunting its relative immunity to broader venture pessimism, seed stage funding was the “least impacted funding stage” of 2022’s downturn. Despite the rosiness this might imply, when taken piece by piece, 2022 represented a steady, stepwise decline in quarter over quarter seed funding, with Q4 alone clocking in with 35% less funding than the same quarter the year prior.

And when we look at LA dealmaking, it doesn’t get much prettier. While the narrative, and numbers, for the first half of 2022 might have led one to believe that LA was uniquely protected from whatever evil was plaguing the rest of the world, the second half of 2022 was a sobering reminder that we are no exception.

Company Raises

Warp, a Los Angeles, CA-based tech-powered freight network specializing in middle-mile solutions, raised $5.7M in additional seed funding led by MaC Venture Capital, Bonfire Ventures, and Frontier Venture Capital with participation from insiders like us and Bee Partners. Warp will use these new funds to scale its network and tech platform to further automate traditional supply chain “hacks” that were previously done manually.

Portfolio News

The Bouqs Co., a cut-to-order flower e-commerce company, was ranked as the best online flower delivery service by the lovely experts at WireCutter. The Bouqs shined above all other competitors in beauty, order process, arrival time, and packaging. Wirecutter reported that, “the Bouqs Company just looked better, even to casual observers. Add to that reliable delivery, a clean, easy-to-use website, and the fact that it offers three price options (akin to small, medium, and large) for each bouquet, and you really won’t find a better delivery service.” There’s still time to order for Valentines day!🌸

WeeCare, one of the largest childcare networks in the US, is celebrating its 5-year anniversary and was recently ranked as one of the 500 fastest-growing companies in America by Inc. Magazine. WeeCare provides access to high-quality childcare for all families, supports childcare providers in operating sustainable businesses through a technology-based marketplace, and helps employers of all sizes offer their employees childcare benefits. WeeCare also won dot.LA’s Social Equity Award for their admirable mission to make childcare accessible for all.

Thankful, a provider of AI customer support SaaS that integrates with any helpdesk and solves customer queries end-to-end, announced its integration with ChatGPT. Thankful is the first customer service tech to marry the benefits of generative text with the need for vertical-specific knowledge. Thankful also received six awards in G2’s Fall 2022 reports. For the third quarter in a row, G2 has named Thankful a High Performer in the Intelligent Virtual Assistant Software, Customer Self-Service Service, and Mid-Market Customer Self-Service categories.

Cheese, The first zero-fee cash-back debit card for immigrants, launched their new Credit Builder product and is top ranked in the app store amongst credit builder products. Cheese allows you to show credit bureaus that consumers can consistently make on-time payments. This builds your payment history, which makes up 35% of your credit score!

Why We’re Backing Reactive

When you think back to 90’s catalogs, what comes to mind? Maybe a product image, a quippy blurb, available sizes, and maybe even multiple color options. Save for slightly more engaging elements (like carefully filtered customer reviews and embedded social posts from their most aesthetic fans) e-comm product pages remain almost identical in 2022! And unfortunately, the vast majority of e-commerce sites suffer the same problem their retro paper ancestors did: they fail to convert 99% of potential customers. The e-commerce revolution has, in many senses, simply copy and pasted the customer experience of the 90’s and early aughts into today’s world.

In our latest blog post, you can read all about how Reactive is bringing the interactivity of social to merchant storefronts, and in turn, ushering e-commerce into an engaging new era. Reactive offers live streaming infrastructure as a service, providing e-comm sellers the building blocks for exceptional, low-latency live experiences, focusing on live commerce. Using Reactive, merchants can go live on their first-party platforms, own their audience and brand interactions, and seamlessly incorporate critical features like enhanced audience analytics, payments, chat, and more. Read more here about why we decided to back Andrew Conti.

Events & Opportunities

LA Tech Week is a week of events hosted by the LA startup community to celebrate the growing ecosystem. More than 16,000 people came together for LA Tech Week 2022. This year, it’s going bigger and farther with Tech Weeks in LA, SF and NYC. Make sure to save the dates and sign up here! SF (5/30–6/4) | LA (6/5–6/11) | NYC (10/16–10/22)

Pitch HearstLab: LA is a pitch competition focused on women-led startups in the US. After applying, select founders will get the opportunity to pitch onstage in Los Angeles on May 9th. Winners will receive $100,000 in investment funds and support from HearstLab for three months. Apply by Wednesday, March 1st.

Amplify is a first check fund backing LA’s earliest and strongest tech teams. You can get in touch with us here. Want these updates delivered to your inbox? Join our newsletter!

We’re excited to share the most recent update of our LA Seed Report, encompassing all seed funding to LA companies in the second half of 2022.

On a global scale, venture funding tumbled to $445 billion in 2022, a 35% decline YoY from the $681 billion deployed in 2021. Flaunting its relative immunity to broader venture pessimism, seed stage funding was the “least impacted funding stage” of 2022’s downturn. Despite the rosiness this might imply, when taken piece by piece, 2022 represented a steady, stepwise decline in quarter over quarter seed funding, with Q4 alone clocking in with 35% less funding than the same quarter the year prior.

And when we look at LA dealmaking, it doesn’t get much prettier. While the narrative, and numbers, for the first half of 2022 might have led one to believe that LA was uniquely protected from whatever evil was plaguing the rest of the world, the second half of 2022 was a sobering reminder that we are no exception.

Taken in its entirety, LA only saw a 6% decrease in funding in 2022 (YoY). Yet this comparison obfuscates what really is a significant slowdown. When comparing 1H with 2H of 2022, LA begins to mirror global trends. LA seed funding for the second half of 2022 clocked in at $505.89mm dollars raised across 120 rounds of financing. While only down 6% from the first half of 2022 ($539mm and 134 companies), 2H’22 funding was down a remarkable 35% from the same time in 2021 (when we recorded a record breaking $780mm deployed). While the Q3 of last year was up 20% over Q2, it was still down 20% from the same time in 2021. Fourth-quarter funding totaled $186.5 million, making it the lowest since the first quarter of 2021, when $139.3 million was invested. Not to mention, between Q3 and Q4, LA seed funding fell a humbling 43% (vs the drop between Q3 and Q4 of 2021 which was only 10%).

On a more granular level, the average deal size fell by 10% YoY when looking at 2H’22, to $4.17M (down from an average of $4.64M for 2H’21). But again, quarter to quarter, the drop was sharper. In Q4 of 2021, the average deal size was $4.8M, meaning that the average Q4 seed deal last year saw a nearly $700k decrease from the same time the year prior (with Q4 ’22 coming in at just $4.14M). That said, when you exclude all deals north of $6M, the average quickly falls to $2.97M, which might be fair given that 2H’2022 saw more deals above $6M than any half-year we’ve recorded to date.

But where did all this cash go? Well, 17% of 2H’22 capital went to blockchain companies (a 4% uptick over 1H’22). Blockchain deals came in 3rd by deal volume (14) and second overall for most funded category ($86.95). But boy did that faucet turn off quickly in Q4, with just 4 deals done and $21.6M deployed in the category. One can only imagine attention turned elsewhere amidst the broader crypto meltdown (hello, ai).

Once again SaaS funding remained strong, garnering an impressive 38% of all capital raised with $190.53M and 48 deals done (practically level with 1H’22). Conversely, none of the categories we track shrank as much as eCommerce did in 2H’22. While the amount of capital raised remained stable from 1H ($80.19M) to 2H ($73.5M), the number of deals done fell by 38% (from 26 to just 16). As LA SaaS ascends, we suspect fundraising for eCommerce, but CPG specifically, will only become more cut-throat.

Below are a few key trends from LA Seed deal activity in the second half of 2022:

• Blockchain deals had the highest average deal size at $6.21M (beating out the runner-up — biotech–by an impressive $1.74M per deal).
• We were prompted to begin tracking CleanTech for the first time as a category given that it surpassed even logistics and supply chain in number of deals done (7).
• The number of Social Media deals doubled from 4% in 1H’22 to 8% in 2H’22.

If you found this valuable, consider giving this a share and passing it along to anyone who you think may find this relevant.

Want these updates delivered to your inbox!? Join our newsletter!

Amplify is a first check fund backing LA’s earliest and strongest tech teams. You can get in touch with us here.

(Our report covers seed deals that have been publicly announced. Please reach out to olivia@amplify.la with any questions or comments.)

2H 2022 Los Angeles Seed Deal Report was originally published in Amplify.LA Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recall, for a moment, the catalogs of the early 2000’s. Maybe it’s just the season, but I vividly remember hunting party city’s Halloween catalog line by line in search of the perfect costume. When it got chillier, I’d flip through L.L. Bean’s winter offering, cutting out my top picks for a hefty Christmas wish list. What’s funny, is that despite a bonafide e-commerce revolution, digitized product pages and SKU lists have remained almost identical to their paper counterparts. You have the item in question, the sizes or shades it comes in, and a few artful product shots to click through. Slightly more engaging components have made their way onto product pages, like carefully filtered customer reviews and embedded social posts from their most aesthetic fans. But unfortunately, the vast majority of e-commerce sites suffer the same problem their retro paper ancestors did: they fail to convert 99% of potential customers. In short, the e-commerce revolution has, in many senses, simply copy and pasted the customer experience of the 90’s and early aughts into today’s world.

Perhaps the reason the storefront has been neglected for so long is because, for a while, brands could reliably get in front of customers via social media instead. Another way of looking at this is that brands could acquire customers by platform chasing: building successive audiences on whichever platform was en vogue (while treating their storefront as a no-frills shopping cart). But with each new platform comes the almost ground-hog-day-like task of building up a new audience. Say you started with Facebook when it was all the rage, amassed a huge following, only to have Instagram, then YouTube then TikTok gain prominence. Each time a new platform emerges, brands are faced with the costly task of building up a platform specific persona that perfectly conveys their brand voice without, of course, seeming like they’re trying too hard.

Yet when we take a step back, what’s gained by building a following on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok? Assuming you’ve been able to game another company’s opaque algorithm, you’ve gotten in front of many sets of eyeballs, and perhaps even built out a lake of potential customers. But conversion across social media has fallen off in recent years. For starters, brands have never owned their follower’s data first party — the platform has, and the platform likely always will. Then there’s advertising, which isn’t what it used to be. It’s never been more expensive to advertise on social platforms, with CAC as much as 5x higher. Facebook’s new ads model is driving even lower quality traffic, and the changes made with iOS 14 and iOS 16 have also massively increased CAC across social platforms.

Without doubt, social media is an incredible layer upon which to build an audience, but when it comes to owning the customer relationship directly, it’s seriously lacking. Which is unfortunate, because forming, and deepening, a 1st party customer relationship is exponentially more valuable and efficient than putting out massive amounts of content to a relatively passive audience. For years, social media was certainly the primary channel for customer conversion, but a confluence of factors is forcing merchants to shift their efforts elsewhere. And there’s no better place to route, and engage with, customers than a merchant’s own site, albeit with updates.

And boy are updates needed! Say you keep seeing this brand, first on Instagram, then in a TikTok video, finally in a YouTube tutorial, so you go through the effort of clicking through to the brand’s homepage, only to be routed to a jarringly contrasted and bland experience. While social channels are addictive and engaging, making it easy to scroll for, let’s be honest, hours, ecommerce sites have been boring, stale, and static, with too much information laid out in literal grids. That string of cross-platform content your social media manager bent over backwards producing has routed your potential customer to an utterly anti-climactic landing page. In order to compete in today’s hyper competitive ecommerce landscape, this disconnect between 3rd party platform presence and a brand’s own site has to be remedied.

Innovating 1st party customer interactions is exactly what CEO and Founder Andrew Conti has set out to do with Reactive. We’re stoked to be backing Andrew and wholeheartedly believe in his bet that the future of e-commerce will be all about higher engagement powered by increasingly interactive media. And live infrastructure is the perfect way to bring interactivity to e-commerce, creating a new way for merchants to promote product drops, seasonal collections, and so much more.

Reactive has built out impressive capabilities on the backend, enabling them to beat out everyone in the space with their hyper-low latency and high fidelity streams. Their world’s first interaction technology allows merchants to affordably connect with their customers at scale while generating a treasure trove of 1st party user data. They’ve cracked providing truly native experiences anywhere on the web that always work great; no detrimental iframes required. Reactive primarily empowers live shopping, but they’ve also made it possible for merchants to inject ‘shoppable’ capability into any of a brand’s existing video assets. Instead of going live on instagram, only to have customers clumsily be redirected to the product page, merchants now have the opportunity to route customers directly as streams are native to the site itself.

And in case there was any question as to the power of product videos when it comes to converting potential customers, let’s take a brief look at the sleuthing/decision making phase of the customer purchase journey. The criticality of this phase is, in some ways, unique to e-commerce. Without being able to try things on before purchase — be it pants, bras, lipstick, or complexion products — customers will search everywhere for videos that can give them a better sense of shade ranges, sizing and general quality. According to 2022’s Shopify Future of Commerce Report, 46% of “consumers want to watch product videos before they buy.” Moreover, “from web searches to livestreams, video is becoming the primary way the next generation of shoppers make buying decisions.”

This represents an incredible opportunity for brands to engage with customers directly as they make their way to a final purchase. The Reactive app is embedded into your site, allowing merchants to easily start a low-latency live stream from their store’s admin panel, post pre-recorded content, or attach prior live-streams. Once the stream has begun, brands will be able to send their visitors products to purchase, polls to answer, and discounts and gifts with purchase.

Since closing their round, Reactive has rolled out “living replays,” providing deeper and richer experiences for the viewer while capturing first-party consumer data via polls and customer questions answerable through chat. Moreover, they recently released a whole host of features improving the shop-along experience. Now, merchants are able to direct customers to collection or product pages through a link, and add a group of products to the stream that are browse-able and buyable at any time.

Given the emphasis on streaming, the Reactive team’s background should serve as no surprise. Before founding Reactive, Andrew worked on back-end systems scaling at HQ Trivia and Giphy. He is joined by Head of Design and Front End Engineering Lead John Jannetty (who was instrumental in the success of FreeBird and LevelUp) and Erik Garcia (with a background in scalable video marketing from Vicky and video-based qvc from Products). With the cash from their raise, the team has been able to bring on an impressive CMO and push new product features monthly.

Reactive is the infrastructure merchants need in order to modernize their websites and meet consumer expectations around engagement and interactivity. By connecting directly with customers, merchants are able to sell faster through highly shoppable, live and prerecorded video content that never routes customers away from their storefront.

After just 2 months using the app, M.M.LaFleur gushed that “Reactive helped [them] increase sales!,” explaining that they “normally host launch events to celebrate new products,” but when they “started using Reactive, [they] saw sales increase significantly.” They raved that the app was great with exciting updates coming out all the time. In a glowing review, they described Reactive as “easy to use on the merchant side and also user-friendly on the customer side.”

Reactive makes e-commerce storefronts the primary sales channel for merchants, simplifying their efforts and converting customers. Gone are the days of static paper catalogs. Reactive brings the same engaging, influencer lead, experience as social media to the merchant’s website. Merchants are no longer stuck engaging with customers at the mercy 3rd party algorithms. And perhaps best of all, merchants are able to generate and own data derived from the experience, leveraging Reactive analytics to improve operations across the board.

The team recently closed on $1.4M from Amplify and co-investors we’re lucky to work with: Acequia Capital and Vinyl Capital.

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Amplify is a first check fund backing LA’s earliest and strongest tech teams. You can get in touch with us here. Want these updates delivered to your inbox? Join our newsletter!

The Future of E-commerce is Interactive — Why We’re Backing Reactive was originally published in Amplify.LA Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re excited to share the most recent update of our LA Seed Report, encompassing all seed funding to the LA companies in the first half of 2022. Our friends over at dot.LA picked up the report and added some insight “It’s widely known that venture capitalists are investing less money lately, but not all startups are feeling the pinch. Despite macroeconomic concerns and a broader chill on VC investment, funding for seed-stage startups in Los Angeles is still chugging along, according to a new report. Amplify, a Venice-based early-stage VC firm, examined seed deals in L.A. that were publicly announced during the first half of this year. One of the report’s main findings: seed funding actually grew when compared to the same six months last year, from $330.2 million in 2021 to $539.1 million this year.” To read the full report go to our Amplify Blog!

Portfolio News

RentSpree, an online rental application and tenant screening platform, Closed a $17M Series B led by Green Visor Capital with participation from Rally Ventures, the California Association of REALTORS® (C.A.R.), Venture MLS, ECG-Research, KEC Ventures, and Gaingels. Their raise comes hot off of being ranked in the top 13% of Inc. 5000’s fastest growing companies of 2022. As a result of partnerships with multiple listing services (MLSs), associations, brokerages, and proptech platforms, RentSpree recently reached one million users! With this cash, “RentSpree will use the new funding to further empower renters, agents, and landlords with new tools, such as rent payment. Case in point, RentSpree has seen an average monthly increase of rent collected via this latest feature by more than 30% year to date. Given this trajectory, RentSpree is on track to process more than $160 million in rental payments over the next 12 months.”

Manufactured, a software solution that automates and scales the manufacturing supply chain for private label brands, Closed $13 Million in Debt and Equity from Tenacity Venture Capital and TriplePoint Capital to expand its inventory financing solution for consumer brands. As part of their announcement, founder and CEO, Pranay Srinivasan explained: “Inventory is the most misunderstood financial asset in the world. It looks like an asset on a balance sheet but is priced like a liability. . . The Manufactured platform eliminates inventory risk by manufacturing, financing, and distributing inventory predictably, efficiently, and affordably. These funds increase our ability to manage financial risk, mitigate uncertainty and boost revenue for our customers.” Manufactured helps companies source, finance and manage inventory across 20 industries and 25 countries. With over 45 years of experience, the company wants to simplify the inventory cycle for businesses of all sizes and industries. Companies can easily scale their manufacturing, lower unit costs, optimize supply chains and allocate capital efficiently.

Investment Announcements

Nectarine Credit: We’re leading Nectarine Credit’s first institutional round with participation from Cascade Seed Fund, SK Ventures, and 5K Global. Nectarine, led by CEO Alex Armitage and CTO Gagan Chaudhari, is modernizing the broken, outdated, and costly process that currently constitutes B2B vendor credit. At any given time, $3.1T in credit is extended between companies in the U.S. But most of these applications are still paper, with even billion dollar companies sending out hundreds of paper apps a month. As a result, errors are rampant, and businesses are frighteningly in the dark about their credit exposure. Nectarine’s modern and intuitive SaaS platform is the solution. Read about our investment here.

WARP: We’re thrilled to announce our investment in Warp, with participation from the awesome team at Bee Partners. Warp is building a SaaS platform to batch, optimize, and route less than truckload (LTL) freight. Nearly $100B in LTL goods are moved in the US each year-It’s a complicated market involving small franchise players, outdated cross-docking facilities, and complex routing arrangements. It’s also incredibly inefficient, as trucks running under capacity often introduce waste and delays to the supply chain. Warp is on a mission to make simple, transparent, and efficient LTL the industry standard. Read about our investment here.

Events

3686 Entrepreneurship Festival: Amplify’s Venture Partner, Josh Payne, is speaking at the 3686 Conference in Nashville on September 28th. Along with other panel members, Josh will be discussing what his journey looked like becoming an operating-angel investor and what he looks for when seeking out new deals. Josh is an active angel investor in more than 20+ startups, and mentor to early-stage startups at Techstars and 500 Global. He has exceptional insight, you wont want to miss his talk at the event!

Amplify is a first check fund backing LA’s earliest and strongest tech teams. You can get in touch with us here. Want these updates delivered to your inbox? Join our newsletter!

Amplify Invests in Nectarine Credit & WARP, RentSpree Closes $17M Series B, and More! was originally published in Amplify.LA Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It is not actually money, but credit that makes the world go round. When we think of credit, we often focus on our own — consumer credit. Nearly all of us have had the experience of purchasing something on credit, or examining our own credit scores: the three-digit numbers that still underpin much of consumer lending. The past few years have been replete with attempts to make consumer credit ­more — more fair by incorporating alternative or often overlooked streams of payments and creditworthiness data, more transparent by giving us close to real-time visibility into the factors that push our scores one direction or another, and more accessible by providing new on-ramps to a broader set of consumers.

Startlingly little, however, has been done to reshape the business side of the credit equation. Traditional lending, where a bank or other financial institution underwrites a business customer and provides interest-bearing financing is one arena, and has seen a bit of innovation. But, this only covers a part of the picture. An estimated $3–5 trillion — with a capital T” — is extended in the form of vendor or trade credit at any given time between companies in the US. These arrangements look like the net 30, 60 or even 90-day payment terms that are near-ubiquitous in B2B purchases. Vendor credit is essential. While no money exchanges hands, these are essentially interest-free “loans.” This extension of credit allows businesses to purchase goods and services as they’re needed and consumed, without the burden of costly institutional lending and upfront cash payments. Ideally, it empowers commerce and trade to occur at a quicker clip and in a larger and more impactful way.

Businesses, though, are rarely sophisticated when it comes to vendor credit. Through the course of normal operations, they often find themselves with purchase orders ranging from thousands to millions, and the need to make quick, informed decisions on which customers to extend credit to, how much, and on which terms. Historically, they’ve relied on people and paper — internal employees who act as credit managers and mountains of documents (incorporation details, bank records, payments/transaction history, other vendor references). This leads to a mess of a process and oftentimes costly delays. An estimated 15%+ of b2b invoices are overdue, with close to a third of those ending in default. That equates to hundreds of billions per year in revenue and opportunity cost.

Even in the best cases, businesses with teams of credit managers and more established underwriting procedures face critical flaws in process. A one-time creditworthy customer may not always be a low underwriting risk. Covid put this at the forefront for many — B2B payment defaults nearly doubled through the pandemic, as many found that their customers’ financial situations rapidly decayed. The data landscape has shifted as well. Companies take payments and conduct business on new platforms and through more varied channels. Credit approval workflows are fragmented across tens of touch-points.

All of this is why we’re thrilled to be working with Nectarine Credit, led by Alex Armitage and Gagan Chaudhari. Nectarine Credit’s mission is simple: modernize the B2B credit stack from application, to review, through reporting and all the way to approval of terms. Nectarine Credit makes it easy to integrate and sync all relevant application data (incorporation, finances, transaction history, references, and more) and work through a seamless underwriting and approval flow all in one SaaS platform. Nectarine Credit is modernizing the current cumbersome vendor credit workflow from its very foundations. Clients benefit from transparency, speed, and ultimately a more personalized process that can reward and reflect their credit profiles. Meanwhile, business lenders cut down on lengthy procedural inefficiencies and make decisions with a far-richer dataset.

Credit applications and approvals are only the first step. From there, Nectarine Credit has ambitions to push the entire B2B credit space towards a more real-time understanding of creditworthiness and risks. Through deeper customer integrations and leveraging external and crowdsourced data, Nectarine Credit can create a living credit application for a business and make the idea of credit “reviews” and ongoing monitoring more automatic.

Talk to most business leaders, and you’ll hear endless stories of the shortcomings of business credit scores — much of the data is self-reported or dated, and tough to rely on in isolation. Nectarine Credit has the ability to build richer profiles over time and to contextualize them by vertical or industry. Ultimately, by advancing B2B credit, Nectarine’s goal is to further empower B2B commerce.

We’re lucky to be leading Nectarine Credit’s Pre-Seed and to be working alongside co-investors Cascade Fund, SK Ventures, and K5 Global.

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Amplify is a first check fund based in LA backing the strongest technical and product teams at the earliest stages. You can get in touch with us here. Want these updates delivered to your inbox? Join our newsletter!

Betting on B2B: Why We’re Backing Nectarine Credit was originally published in Amplify.LA Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Allthenticate, on a mission to free the world from passwords, keys, and cumbersome authentication mechanisms, announced a $3M funding round led by Silverton Partners. We’re excited to be backing Chad and Rita, Allthenticate’s co-founders, alongside the Silverton team and Denver-based Ping Identity. With the influx of cash, the company plans on expanding its Houston and Santa Barbara teams and growing its engineering and commercial operations, as well as partnerships.

LA500 List: We wanted to take a second to recognize Paul Bricault, Amplify’s Managing Partner, for his continued appearance on the Los Angeles Business Journal’s LA 500 — a list of the year’s most influential people in L.A. Fittingly, Paul was featured in the tech section — for the seventh year in a row — on account of his work as founding partner and managing director of Amplify, as well as his long-running contributions to Greycroft as a venture partner. Paul is in good company with many of LA’s great VC’s gracing the list as well. Congratulations to Bill Gross of Idealab, Eva Ho of Fika Ventures, Brad Greiwe of Fifth Wall, William Hsu of Mucker Capital, Richard Jun and Brian Lee of BAM Ventures, and Ashton Kutcher of Sound Ventures.

SafeRide Health, the leading technology platform connecting patients to life-sustaining care, has announced a strategic investment from SCAN group — one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit Medicare Advantage plans. President and CEO of the SCAN group, Dr. Sachin Jain, explained that “SCAN is proud to support SafeRide’s growth as it seeks to fulfill older adults’ need for safe, reliable transportation to and from medical appointments.” For CEO and co-founder Robins Shradder, SCAN’s investment “validates SafeRide’s unique approach of partnering with plans to drive a whole-patient strategy and transform the member experience. Together we are driving enrollment, improving STAR ratings, and increasing adherence to care.”

Abstract, an all-in-one platform for government affairs professionals working to streamline the legislative process, has announced their $2.5M raise from Amplify, Stage Venture Partners, WndrCo, Motivate Venture Capital, Vitalize, and others. Patrick Utz, CEO of Abstract, shared “We are excited to bolster our advisory board with renowned minds in California policy, such as Chris Micheli, and brilliant leaders in tech like Nick Allen from Snap. This, paired with the capital we raised from investors who backed Airtable and Robinhood, will help guide our path towards increasing government transparency, and making lobbying accessible to all.” The team is planning on onboarding more customers and continuing to build more tools for their growing user base.

HoneyBee Health, an online pharmacy that sells generic medications without the need for insurance, was featured in TIME for their work expanding access to abortion care across the U.S. While founder Nouhavandi recognizes that Honeybee Health isn’t a panacea (“every patient can’t use medication abortion, and Honeybee Health can only mail the pills to states in which abortion is legal”), the company is helping to reduce the burden faced by already over-booked clinics. Nouhavandi’s goal is to make it “as easy as possible for patients and providers alike to get access to critical medications — now and in the future.”

Why We Invested in Phaze Zero: These days, every aspect of the care journey, from initially selecting a provider, to patient management post-visit, is now expected to have a digital component. This growing expectation — that healthcare be as tech-enabled as possible — has accelerated healthcare’s digital transformation, and meant massive opportunity for the companies powering it. That’s why we’re excited to announce our pre-seed investment in Phase Zero, a SaaS infrastructure platform empowering healthcare builders of all kinds to build internal tools — faster, smarter, and safer. They’ve launched the first no-code platform for healthcare, helping healthcare organizations quickly build provider experiences, conduct clinical research, and organize all of their patient data in one place.

#LATechWeek Since we founded Amplify 11 years ago, we’ve watched the LA tech scene explode, which is why we were thrilled to be a part of the city’s inaugural LA Tech Week! LA Tech Week is a week of events hosted by the LA startup community to celebrate the growing ecosystem! We had an amazing time hosting an event focused on the earliest builders and investors in LA with our friends at Fika Ventures and Stage Venture Partners!

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Amplify’s Managing Partner Paul Bricault Lands on LA500 List, Allthenticate Raises $3M Seed Round… was originally published in Amplify.LA Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.