We're thrilled to share that our legacy portfolio company, LeagueApps, has concluded a significant financing round led by Accel-KKR. LeagueApps proves the Laconia B2B investment rule: discover an MVP solving a high pain-point workflow problem combined with great founders who embrace a steady customer-focused go-to-market execution; over time tremendous value gets created with an exciting exit. Congratulations to Brian Litvack and Jeremy Goldberg for a tremendous accomplishment and continued success bringing the company to higher heights alongside Accel-KKR.
The Founders of Laconia first invested in LeagueApps in 2011. We were introduced to Brian and Jeremy as “two really good & smart guys passionate about sports”. They set out to alleviate the pain of managing a recreational sports league. Solutions to that point, if they weren’t paper- or Excel-based, were kludgy at best. This was a huge market waiting to be served.
From Laconia’s perspective, LeagueApps was an early indicator that our B2B investment thesis, the digital workflow transition from manual and legacy software, was also untapped. LeagueApps perfectly lined up with the transition that we were seeing across most industries then and now. Despite the rise in popularity of the B2B investment focus, this transition has not abated. Instead, it is further evolving with the rise of new technologies and AI-enabled platforms.
Still, a market insight is only as good as the people who discover it. Brian and Jeremy showed intelligence, adaptability, keen salesmanship, excellent executive ability, and most importantly patience and honest character. This is not hyperbole: these are always the qualities that bring great companies to fruition in our experience. An idea is only as good as the jockey(s), especially when investing at the seed stage. Seeing our Laconia jockeys cross the finish lines could not be more rewarding!
Portfolio Spotlight: Trestle
We’re thrilled to announce our investment in Trestle alongside Lerer Hippeau, MetaProp, Alumni Ventures, The LegalTech Fund, Redbud VC, and Meridian Ventures (talk about a party!).
We first met co-founder & CEO Victor Zhang in an unusual way: he sent us a cold pitch submission. Standing out in a sea of inbound messages is no easy feat, but his relevant background and clear value proposition were impossible to ignore.
Trestle is the construction industry’s only subcontractor and supplier data centralization and performance management solution. By creating a centralized platform that seamlessly collects and connects key subcontractor and supplier information from internal and external systems, Trestle empowers contractors to choose the right partners, improve project transparency, share real-time feedback about third-party performance on projects, and mitigate risk before it impacts their bottom line.
Prior to Trestle, Victor spent 15 years in the heavy construction industry. He led large estimating and procurement teams on landmark projects nationwide, including a $3.8 billion construction project, the largest in Virginia’s history. Co-founder & CTO Jason Chen designed and developed countless web and application experiences as a software engineer and team lead. Joining forces at Trestle, they are providing modern software solutions for construction, specifically in areas that are deeply complex and often misunderstood by outsiders without direct experience.
If you are interested in learning more, read Trestle’s announcement here and reach out to Victor directly.
Portfolio Spotlight: LiquiDonate
We are excited to announce that we have led a $3.75M seed round for LiquiDonate. Investing alongside us are Uncork Capital, Kapor Capital, Ganas Ventures, MTV Ventures, Graham & Walker, Maccabee Ventures, and more. (Big thank you to Christopher Lee, a Venture Fellow in our Venture Cooperative program, for surfacing this opportunity!)
LiquiDonate is an innovative inventory management software for retailers' $800 billion+ problem with excess inventory. Today, retailers like Williams-Sonoma, Room & Board, Tuft & Needle, and Liquid Death use LiquiDonate to remove their excess inventory (instead of a costly and hassle-ridden liquidation process) from their overfilled warehouses seamlessly. Retailers also can take advantage of Magic Matches, LiquiDonate’s proprietary AI-powered solution to match unsellable customer returns with local organizations instantly, saving retailers at least 50% on their reverse logistics costs. Furthermore, LiquiDonate increases its customers' net revenue by decreasing fraudulent returns. On the demand side, nonprofits worldwide have about $1 trillion in unmet needs on an annual basis and there are $816 billion worth of returns. LiquiDonate’s solution is efficient, economical, and sustainable for all parties.
Prior to starting LiquiDonate, founder & CEO Disney Petit was an early employee at Postmates where she launched its first five markets and its sales team, signed its first 500 restaurants, and started its first three social impact verticals. Disney has the expertise, vision, and heart to build LiquiDonate into a category-defining company, and we can’t wait for this next stage of the journey.
If you are a retailer interested in seamlessly and sustainability managing returns and inventory, get in touch with Disney to learn more.
Learn more in Axios’ exclusive announcement here.
Portfolio Spotlight: Bluefish
We're thrilled to announce that we've invested in the seed round of Bluefish, a cutting-edge marketing platform that helps brands turn AI into a powerful new marketing channel. In this round we are proud to partner with Crane Venture Partners, Bloomberg Beta, and Firebolt Ventures.
The digital advertising industry, a colossal $1TN+ market in the US, is witnessing a seismic shift with AI's emergence, as consumers begin to shift their online behaviors based on AI. Innovations like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini are redefining how consumers interact with information and media online - and specifically how consumers find and purchase products. The resulting implications for online advertising are significant, and the Bluefish team is building the next generation of marketing technology to capture this massive opportunity.
The Bluefish technology will empower brands to reach consumers in new ways on AI media, leverage new forms of analytics to understand how their brands are interpreted by LLMs, and ultimately transform AI into the next major marketing channel to distribute products and services.
We're particularly excited to back Bluefish because of the impressive team. Co-founder and CEO Alex Sherman is a proven entrepreneur, having previously led PromoteIQ (a Laconia Fund I portfolio company) to success and acquisition by Microsoft. At Microsoft, PromoteIQ continued to scale rapidly and remains one of the largest players in the retail media industry. Joining Alex in this venture are two exceptional co-founders: Andrei Dunca and Jing Feng. Andrei co-founded LiveRail (acquired by Facebook for $400M+). Jing brings an extensive operating background in martech, having served in COO and General Manager roles at PromoteIQ, LiveRail, BlackArrow, and more. The team’s track record, technical abilities, and domain expertise give us great confidence in their ability to build the market-leading AI marketing platform.
Currently, Bluefish is onboarding a select group of brands for its closed pilot program. If you're a brand interested in exploring how AI can enhance your marketing strategies, or if you know one who might be, we encourage you to reach out directly to Alex Sherman at alex@bluefishai.com.
We're excited to support Bluefish.ai on this journey. Stay tuned for more updates!
Thematically written with the gentle assistance of ChatGPT :)
Portfolio Spotlight: Auxa Health
We’re thrilled to share our newest investment in Auxa Health, which announced its $5.2 million seed financing round today. We are excited to co-invest alongside lead investor Zeal Capital, AlleyCorp, K50 Ventures (thank you, Adriel, for the connection!), and Chaac Ventures.
Auxa Health is an AI-powered health benefit navigation technology solution partnering with payers and providers to enable more efficient and effective care. Auxa supports value based care providers and enablement organizations and expects rapid growth in the provider and payer space this next year. With this new funding, Auxa can further develop its technology, expand benefit coverage, and grow the team. You can read Auxa’s announcement full announcement here.
As investors, we constantly harp on how important strong founders are to any company, particularly at the seed stage. This team is no exception. Auxa is co-founded by three experts with deep domain expertise and alignment with the mission of improvement health outcomes and the patient experience:
Monica Chopra, Co-founder and CEO, is a seasoned healthcare leader with 24+ years of experience at Oscar, athenahealth, Greater New York Hospital Association, and New York Presbyterian Hospital
Samantha Adelberg, Co-founder and SVP of Operations, brings over decade of operations expertise through Unite Us, NYC Opportunity, and others
Dr. Jeffrey De Flavio, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, is a physician an entrepreneur, with an intensive track record including as Co-Founder of Pearl Health, Groups Recover Together, Diana Health, and more
Benefit navigation is an acute problem, with nearly $100 billion in health and social care benefits remaining unused each year despite 70% of Americans reporting at least one unmet need. Auxa addresses this head-on by offering an end-to-end solution that demystifies benefit and drug coverage details, surfaces eligibility and prior authorization requirements, and efficiently enrolls patients into high-value public benefits.
Our investment in Auxa is a continuation of our focus on sub-sectors of healthtech such as value-based care and the caretaker economy, with our existing investments including Yuvo Health and Tender. We understand the urgent need for solutions that increase accessibility to care in equitable ways, and we are excited to support the teams driving these developments forward.
For now, please join us in congratulating the Auxa team on this milestone, and visit www.auxahealth.com to explore opportunities to partner with Auxa and discover how you can join their dynamic and growing team.