Aggregate statistics for all LA funding deals by stage of funding (Early, Series A, Series B, & Late) including mention of notable rounds for September 2021.
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Dogdrop Raises $2.9M for its On-Demand and Flexible Dog Day Care Service
The pandemic has brought flexibility to the forefront whether it be for work or living. This is no different for our dogs that have also had to adjust to our at-home and remote living lifestyles. Dogdrop is a flexible provider of dog care services that’s expanding nationwide to cater to the needs of dog owners. Rather than traditional dog daycare services, where you drop off Buster, for the traditional 9-5 workday, Dogdrop offers on-demand care with clients able to drop off without an appointment and for shorter periods, giving dog parents flexibility when juggling everything on their schedule and providing often much-needed socialization for the dogs. The company opened its first location in Downtown LA just before the pandemic hit our shores and is now poised to scale with a plan to franchise the model to new cities like Charlotte, Austin, Denver, and Salt Lake City as well as expand to new locations across LA. There is a range of pricing options spanning from pay-as-you-go ($10/hr,$40/day) to an unlimited option ($600); Dogdrop also monetizes with its own line of dog care products – wipes and poop bags. LA TechWatch caught up with Dogdrop CEO and Cofounder Shaina Denny to learn more about how her personal experience led to the company’s founding, strategic expansion plans, latest round of funding from investors that include Fuel Capital, Muse Capital, Animal Capital, Gaingels, The Helm, Mars PetCare and Garrett Smallwood.
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GrayMatter Robotics Raises $4.1M For its Operating System That Powers Robots for Manufacturing Applications
The use of industrial robotics has been growing steadily since the 1960s when robotic-assisted automation was first introduced into manufacturing in the automotive industry. The advent of the internet and connected devices is now fueling a new uptick in robotic sales as applications are more sophisticated and specialized. Today’s environment with labor shortages, high labor costs, and decreasing hardware costs ensure that the future of manufacturing will be reliant on robotic automation. GrayMatter Robotics is a platform that powers smart robotic assistants that focus on specialized surface finishing tasks in manufacturing like sanding, polishing, and spraying. The platform serves as an operating system that seamlessly integrates with commercially available robots, sensors, and tools to give manufacturers the ability to introduce automation in a timely manner without friction, significant training, or excess cost. Founded in 2020, GrayMatter allows manufacturers to be flexible and more competitive at a time when manufacturing is slowly returning to the states. LA TechWatch caught up with GrayMatter Robotics Cofounder and CEO Ariyan Kabir to learn more about the use of industrial robotics in manufacturing, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding led by Stage Venture Partners and Calibrate Ventures.
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Welcome Raises $3.5M for its Personalized City Guide that Provides Recommendations That are Truly Designed for You
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
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.
Elodie Games Raises $32.5M for its Gaming Studio Focused on Providing Seamless Gaming Experiences Across Any Platform
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.
Nacelle Raises $50M for its Headless E-Commerce Platform That Truly Decouples the Back and Front Ends
In a crowded digital realm, e-commerce companies are constantly updating the customer experience to respond to emerging touchpoints and to engage consumers in novel ways. Headless commerce is gaining in popularity, designed with a flexible architecture that decouples the front end of a site from the back-end commerce functionality. By decoupling, companies can rapidly iterate and test without disrupting the core commerce functionality, resulting in reduced development time while enriching the customer experience Nacelle is an e-commerce infrastructure platform that allows merchants and brands to move to headless architectures in order to innovate and iterate quickly while reducing dependency on third-party solutions. The company’s core technology, the unified GraphQL API layer, integrates with various commerce platforms and content management systems including Shopify Plus with minimal effort. Merchants on the platform have the flexibility to build true headless solutions with benefits like reduced page speeds and increased conversions while maintaining a single codebase that’s optimized for all devices. The company, founded in 2019, powers the e-commerce presence of brands like LOLA, FTD, Flex, Boll & Branch, Thinx, and ILIA Beauty. LA TechWatch caught up with Nacelle CEO and Founder Brian Anderson to learn more about the state of headless commerce, the company’s strategic plans, and recent round of funding from Tiger Global Management.
Involve.ai Raises $16M for its Customer Intelligence Platform Designed to Reduce Churn and Accelerate Sales
Customer acquisition, lifetime value, and customer attrition (churn) are some of the main metrics that need to be managed closely for any growing business. Churn is one of the critical metrics that closely impacts the others from lifetime value, growth rate, virality, and CAC payback. In fact, 80% of a company’s revenue comes from existing customers. A small increase in retention can have an oversized impact on profitability. Involve.ai is a customer intelligence platform that leverages a company’s existing data points to build detailed profiles to determine which customers are most likely to churn, allowing teams to triage the relationship before it’s too late. Customer success teams are often manually going through disparate records across internal and external tools to do this work, neglecting revenue enhancement opportunities; Involve’s platform automates this laborious process with AI with a reported 94% accuracy in predicting churn. The business is born from an internal tool built at the founding team’s previous startup; the team recognized that this tool had widespread adaptability as a stand-alone product. LA TechWatch caught up with Involve.ai CEO Gaurav Bhattacharya to learn more about the Aha moment, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding from investors that include Sapphire Ventures, Bonfire Ventures, Greycroft, Launch Capital, BDMI, GTM Fund, Fenwick, Gokul Rajaram, Stanford University, and Michael Whitmire.
Coco Raises $36M for its Last Mile Robotic Delivery Service
Grubhub is piloting the use of delivery robots, manufactured by self-driving startup Yandex, at Ohio State University this academic year. The convergence of autonomous vehicle technology and robotics is bringing a future that we only saw in movies to us today, and rapidly. However, the accuracy of autonomous technology aspect has always been the stumbling block that has prevented widescale deployment in the case of delivery. This LA startup has found the answer. Coco is a last-mile delivery service that uses remote human-piloted robots to power deliveries. The technology is versatile enough to be used by restaurants, groceries, convenience stores, and pharmacies; basically, all the essentials that you have become accustomed to ordering on-demand. These industries have been forced to adopt technology in a rapid fashion to address the pandemic and Coco makes local delivery faster, smarter, and more cost-efficient. In fact, Coco estimates that it is able to save up to 30% on delivery times while reducing the environmental footprint. The company, founded in 2019, already has 50+ customers using the technology and has scaled the team to 120. LA TechWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Zach Rash to learn more about the state and future of the delivery market, the inspiration for the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding from investors that include Sam Altman, Silicon Valley Bank, and Founders Fund.