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The LA TechWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 9/24/2021

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The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for LA startups for 9/24/2021 featuring funding details for NTWRK, Dogdrop, and much more

Welcome Raises $3.5M for its Personalized City Guide that Provides Recommendations That are Truly Designed for You

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While a site like Kayak can help you get a clear understanding of costs when it comes to travel, other sites offering recommendation options are typically a crapshoot, littered with fabricated reviews and manipulated results that do not take into account the traveler. With such a glut of information (some accurate, some not) available, one can easily get overwhelmed. Welcome is a newly-launched app, just out of beta, that serves as a curated city and travel guide that leverages AI coupled with vetted recommendations from experts and friends to give travelers personalized recommendations that take into account preferences, weather, time of day, and a host of other factors fueled by a robust data-driven and tech-enabled approach focused on contextual place discovery. The app elegantly delivers seamless recommendations that allow users to actually enjoy their travels instead of endlessly researching for it. The app comes out of beta with over 50,000 users in 350+ cities that have provided over 300K reviews. LA TechWatch caught up with Welcome Founder, serial entrepreneur, and CEO Matthew Rosenberg (founded and exited Cameo) to learn more about how his travels after his previous exit inspired the business, the challenges of raising funding for a travel-related business during a pandemic, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding from investor that include Accel and Lakestar Ventures.

Bruvi Raises $7M for its Single Serve Coffee System That Brings Great Tasting Coffee to Your Home

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8 out of 10 cups of coffee are consumed at home. 27% of American coffee drinkers have used a single-service coffee brewing machine in the past year. The diversity of choice and enhanced taste profiles coupled with the efficiency of these systems are responsible for the single pod coffee segment becoming the leading segment in terms of dollar amount spent annually as a part of the overall coffee market. Bruvi is a next-generation single-serve coffee system that offers tastier coffee along with environmentally friendly pods. The system can brew filter coffee, espressos, Americanos, ice coffees, infused coffee, and tea. For the pods, Bruvi offers sustainably sourced coffees as well as choices from Los Angeles’ most prominent roasters. LA TechWatch caught up with Bruvi Cofounder Mel Elias to learn more about the single-serve coffee market, the company’s strategic plans including national expansion, latest round of funding from investors that include The Merchant Club, Terpsi Capital, 9Yards Capital, Cambridge Companies SPG, Miroma Ventures, and M1.

LA Tech Week in Review: 9/12/21-9/18/21

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7 LA startup funding this past week with $366M+ in new deals for LA startups. LA Tech news for the week ending 9/18 featuring news for Outer, Grow Credit, and much, much more.

The LA TechWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 9/16/2021

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The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for LA startups for 9/16/2021 featuring funding details for Omaze, Outer, and much more.

Elodie Games Raises $32.5M for its Gaming Studio Focused on Providing Seamless Gaming Experiences Across Any Platform

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A seamless user experience, regardless of channel or device, is one of the main pillars of a usable omnichannel experience. The same is true for gaming. Presently, incongruent and inconsistent experiences across devices often give some players advantages while creating differences in engagement rates among others. Elodie Games is a gaming studio that firmly believes that building truly synchronous experiences across any platform will lead to deeper social gaming experiences. The company, founded last year by two Riot Games executives that had worked on League of Legends, is in the process of developing its debut title, which is currently in pre-Alpha. The company has not disclosed more on the specifics but will use this latest funding to expand the team and complete the game. LA TechWatch caught up with Elodie Games CEO and Cofounder David Banks to learn more about the company’s mission, strategic plans, differentiators, latest round of funding from investors that include Galaxy Interactive, Andreessen Horowitz, Brian Cho, and Chris Ovitz.