OfferUp CEO Nick Huzar on Evolving as a Leader

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

OfferUp CEO Nick Huzar on Evolving as a Leader

Nick Huzar is co-founder and CEO of OfferUp, the largest mobile marketplace in the U.S. The company has reinvented the model for local, peer-to-peer commerce, and its engagement metrics are incredible. In 2017, the company reported that it had over 60 million downloads and 43 million users who use the platform as frequently as popular social media apps. Today, OfferUp is one of the highest valued private companies in the Pacific Northwest, officially gaining unicorn status. In this episode, Nick offers advice for leaders about scaling a company, the importance of building trust and how his leadership style has evolved with OfferUp's growth.

Press Play to hear the full conversation or check out the transcript below. You can also subscribe to Office Hours on Apple Podcasts.


Spencer Rascoff: I'm in Bellevue, Washington today, near Seattle, with co-founder and CEO, Nick Huzar, of OfferUp. Hey, Nick. Thanks for having me.

Nick Huzar: Hey, really nice to be here.

Spencer: So for those unfamiliar with OfferUp, tell us a little bit about the company and the product, from a consumer standpoint, and when you started it, what the mission was.

Nick: Sure. Well, I started OfferUp from a personal pain point. I had a baby on the way, and I literally had a room full of stuff, and I was just thinking to myself, “Kill me. There's gotta be a better way to sell all this," and there really wasn't, so –

Spencer: Pre-baby decluttering, nesting phase.

Nick: Yeah.

Spencer: I'm very familiar with that.

Nick: Yeah. For all the parents out there, they can relate to what I was going through. So what I saw at the time was a huge opportunity. I believed that the smartphone would be something that everyone would have, and at the time – this was seven years ago – not everyone – most people, in fact, didn't have one.

Spencer: Now remind us. There were iPhones, but no App Stores?

Nick: Yeah, and Android was barely a thing, right?

Spencer: Right.

Nick: So I think there was a few assumptions me and my cofounder made. One, everyone would have one of these, which today you look back and say, “Well, duh." Two, we thought the cameras would get better, and three, ultimately we just felt that everyone would pay from these devices. So I think all those trends had started to manifest in some way. So for me, when I was kinda building and designing the initial app, I was really building it for myself.

Spencer: And that's the way the best products are built.

Nick: Yeah, and I still, to this day, you know, a lot of stuff in my house is from OfferUp. My kids, most of the stuff now – I have two kids now. Most of the stuff that they get is all from OfferUp. I don't buy them new stuff because they don't like it very long. So I think the opportunity I saw was big. I think a lot of the existing players that were out there were respectable, but they were built in a desktop era, and I think mobile gave us an opportunity to really reimagine the entire local buying and selling experience.

And so when we think about OfferUp in the long term, our vision is to really help to transform local buying and selling, and we think the opportunity is way bigger than where we are today. Our mission is to be the largest, simplest, and most trusted marketplace for local, and so I think we still have a very long way to go. It's amazing to see how fast we've actually grown. We're one of the top shopping apps in the country, definitely the largest mobile marketplace out there, so OfferUp's really starting to become a household name in a lot of markets around the country, and again, I think there was a lot of people that were like me. They just didn't have the time to deal with the existing solutions, and they found OfferUp to be something easy to use.

Spencer: So I want to come back to growth and scaling and how the company is, which is now a couple hundred employees, has changed since its founding seven years ago. Just to round out the picture of the competitive landscape, I guess in those early days, you were really competing with Craigslist online, on desktop, and then whatever other hacky, offline solutions people found, if it was at college campuses, putting a poster on a board in a shared space or something. And then there's some newer digital competitors as well on mobile, but I mean, do you think of traditional e-commerce, like Amazon for new goods, as a direct competitor as well?

Nick: So, to be clear, we've had competitors the whole way. Every year one will come and go, and it's just been probably, you know. This is kinda how it's evolved over time. I like to really obsess, so – and my belief is it's – we're really expanding the market, so I never went into this business to even convert a single Craigslist user. I believed that the market was way, way bigger. I believed there was more people like me that weren't using it, and we see that today.

We see a lot of people that said, “I never used X, Y, Z platform," and I use OfferUp all the time, because it's simple, and it works, and so 85 percent of commerce is still local, even in the world of eBay and Amazon, all these amazing e-commerce sites, and that's what we're after. We wanna expand into that market. Now, clearly, Amazon's an amazing company, and they'll continue to kind of chip away at that, but I really think of that as the opportunity. Our biggest focus is reducing friction, and our belief is the more we do that, the more people participate in commerce in this way.

Spencer: How competitor focused is your company versus product focus? This is something a lot of startups kind of struggle with, trying to find the right balance.

Nick: Yeah, so I don't think we really obsess or talk about competition hardly at all. We acknowledge them and definitely wanna understand kind of what are they doing out there in the world, but our obsession is really internal in our customers and really building this simplest and trusted experience, so we really obsess over that. And our belief is the more we do that, the more people continue to use OfferUp, and we believe that that's what the winning approach is. You can try all these other marketplaces, but if you're gonna have – whatever one's gonna yield the most success, where you're either buying or selling, is the one you're gonna use the most, so we really obsess over the product quite a bit.

Spencer: Yeah, so I think competitor aware, consumer focused, consumer obsessed is probably the right balance.

Nick: Yeah.

Spencer: I mean I've done two startups, Hotwire and Zillow. Hotwire was competitor focused. When we started it, we were really focused on competing with Priceline in the discount travel space. Zillow was consumer focused. We certainly have competitors, have had competitors, have acquired some competitors, but we've never been overly consumer focused at all, and I will tell you that from an employee standpoint, it is a much more inspirational, aspirational place to work if you're consumer obsessed and not competitor obsessed. It was kind of soul-sucking at Hotwire to – every accomplishment, every metric was always being measured against Priceline, this other competitor, and it was –

Nick: Yeah.

Spencer: Yeah, I guess it was good motivation, I guess, but it wasn't nearly as fun.

Nick: Yeah, really, and in our case, you – the great thing about OfferUp is you have to go meet and talk to people. It's not a product where – you know, our whole office is furnished from OfferUp. The chairs we're sitting in, in the room we're in, and that's great, because as an employee, you get to go meet them, and talk to people, and learn how to make it better, and actually get to interact with people, and I think in most companies you don't have that opportunity.

Spencer: So the product, from a consumer standpoint, is take a photo of this thing in my garage, press a button, post it, find a buyer, and then I meet them in an OfferUp kind of safe community space, which addresses some of the trust and safety issues that other local marketplaces have encountered, and do you charge the buyer or the seller? What's your revenue model?

Nick: Yeah, so today we have an advertising product. We just introduced shipping. There's many other, I think, exciting things we'll be introducing in the future, but it's kind of a combination of an ad model and then there's a small take rate for transactions that do happen on the platform.

Spencer: Let's fast forward to today. You started about sevenish years ago. Today, 2018, how much capital have you raised? How many employees? What other business metrics can you share with listeners so they get a sense of the scale of the company?

Nick: Sure. So we have over 230 employees today. We've probably raised over $230 million in capital, and we've had over 70 million installs in the US, and like I said, if you go into the App Store, under shopping, you'll see that it's usually one, two, or three. We either trade with Wish or Amazon and OfferUp, and so I felt pretty proud considering how well funded and large both those companies are. That we're in good company considering how small we are relative, you know, as a team, and so, you know, people use OfferUp a lot, and we're becoming kind of a – people engage in OfferUp more like social media. People spend on average, 20 minutes a day, almost every other day of the month.

Spencer: Wow.

Nick: And so people are really engaged, and they're trying to find and discover things that are nearby, and I think – or they're selling something, but it's really interesting to see how people engage in OfferUp versus other e-commerce platforms. We were designed to be visual and discovery-based and I think a lot of other marketplaces are just not built for, you know. They weren't built around all the power in the smartphone, and so we just took a different lens and a different approach to all that.

Spencer: Is there even a desktop product?

Nick: What's interesting is our web team, until probably 18 months ago, was one guy, and he's awesome, but we kind of – that's been growing quite a bit. Actually, our web metrics are now growing and usage is continuing to grow there. So we've been investing a lot more there in the recent number of years, but we're definitely a mobile-first company. That's where a lot of our innovation and focus is, but still, spending more time on the desktop than before.

Spencer: Now you're a Seattle-based company. You're in Bellevue, which is sort of suburban Seattle, and yet you are a unicorn. That's kind of a weird term. I don't know if you embrace it or not and you accept that descriptor.

Nick: No.

Spencer: But it seems to me that the way you've built OfferUp is a little different than some Bay Area tech companies. I mean you're very focused on the consumer and consumer PR, for example, but you haven't been as front and center in the tech trade press as a lot of other tech companies at similar stages. Is that fair to say?

Nick: Yeah.

Spencer: And why is that?

Nick: I think historically, our focus is really again, just customer, and really honing in on the business and really trying to get deep local market and kind of penetration and so a lot of this I think was fairly strategic and very, you know, forward thinking, where even after Andreessen Horowitz invested, we said, “Don't put us on your website." Like, “Mark, please don't tweet about us," and that gave us a number of years to grow around the country before we had more serious competition.

And it enabled us to build these beach heads in some of the most important, I think, markets in the country. And so if you live here, you know kind of what markets and the dynamics are, and you're local, and I think being local has a huge advantage. You really know kind of what's going on, and so I think a lot of this was, you know, we always believed there would be big companies trying to come after this space, and there are now, but again, years ago we kind of planned for this, and I think that was very, very important and strategic, so –

Spencer: Interesting. How very Seattle. I like it.

Nick: Yeah. One of the last markets we ever launched, by the way, was the Bay Area, on purpose, like, years, and so by the time anyone woke up in the Bay Area, we were already pretty deep in many markets, like I think where you live in LA, it's a massive market for us.

Spencer: Yeah.

Nick: But that was one of the earliest markets we launched, and so San Francisco actually came a lot later.

Spencer: That's interesting. I mean most tech companies obsess over the number of Recode and TechCrunch mentions that they get, and you've taken a pretty – a very different approach. Okay, so here we are today, late 2018. You're building out your strategic plan for 2019, 2020, and beyond. Put us in your shoes. What are the things that you as the CEO and the founder face? What do you worry about? What's top of mind for you?

Nick: Yeah. So I think a few things. So, one is just scale and structure. And so when you're small, you don't need a lot of structure, because you're all sitting together. Everyone's aligned and understands, but as you fast forward over the next number of years and you've seen this movie more than I have, but you need that.

You need to get ahead of it. You need to kind of lay out mile markers that help everyone be aligned on where they're going. You need to be able to bring in more leadership that's also seeing the moving, so that's a lot of what's top of mind for me, is continuing to elevate my team and the leadership team to help us on the next chapter of growth. I think in many ways I always say that we're Amazon in the book phase. We are nowhere near where I see this company going.

So how do we start to layer in other things that we think are game changing to the business, and so I think there's multiple things that we have incorporated that have been proven, but there's also a lot of things that we've built as a company that we pioneered that no one else has done. And I think that's really critical, so like an example would be all the things we do around trust and safety. So early on, we built out our TruYou program, and we did it because we knew trust really mattered. We're bringing two people together face-to-face.

Well, who is the person that you're actually engaging with? And so how TruYou works is you can opt in for it. First step is you scan an ID. Second step is we ask you to take a selfie, and then we actually do some image recognition, and match that. If you do it, you have a really prominent badge on your profile that says you're a TruYou member, and that's a big endorsement, we think, in the community.

Spencer: It's pretty much everything that Craigslist is not.

Nick: Yeah, they didn't do that, or where do you wanna meet? That's a logistic challenge, and people go back and forth on that. We try to make that simple, so we leverage natural language processing. We actually suggest meetup locations, and as you've seen, we have this in this lobby. We have thousands of these meetup locations around the country, in retail stores, in police parking lots. That's something, again, that we pioneered. We kinda just said, “We wanna make it easier and find well-lit locations to have people transact," and so that's another thing that I think we focused on and we said, “Trust matters, and we're gonna do something that hasn't been done before."

Spencer: Do you find competitors now trying to drop behind that and use those spaces and –

Nick: Not, I think, to the degree that we do. I think that it's easy to say, “Oh, yeah, we care about trust," but I think you have to really kind of look at how much investment and time are you really focused, and we really – it's a core part of our team and our company's trust, so –

Spencer: So for listeners who are scaling their own company and thinking about how to take their company to the next stage, I guess one of the things that I'm hearing is you're very deliberate and thoughtful about this. You're not just a boat kind of letting the waves take you in one direction or another. You're trying to be really circumspect about what do I need to position the company for success over the next couple of years? And what do I need from my management team? What do I need for me? I mean you're probably asking yourself, how do you need to change as a CEO?

Nick: Yeah.

Spencer: I mean, at least when I was at – when my company was at your size, I was in the process of changing things, like what meetings do I go to? How do I communicate? What input do I give? So when you're 30 employees, 50 employees, 100 employees, the CEO, or other executives that doesn't even figure, but as the company gets bigger, I've had to change the way I communicate. Does this resonate? Is this –

Nick: Totally.

Spencer: Yeah, okay.

Nick: [Laughter] Yeah. I'm going exactly through this metamorphosis right now. Yeah, and I think the – sometimes I miss the days when we used to sit at one table with 20 people.

Spencer: Right.

Nick: Like you didn't have communication challenges. Everyone knew what you were doing. The downside, you can kind of limp along at that stage and do one thing. As you get bigger, alignment and communication becomes the challenge, and you have to over-index on that. And so I've had many mentors tell me the same thing. You need to repeat yourself, and again, I feel like I'm treating people like children, but I realize, “Hey, wait. You have new people here. They haven't heard the same message."

Spencer: Yep.

Nick: I find lately I'm kind of evolving into more of a coach role too, where I'm trying to help other people do the same, where they'll get frustrated and say, “Well, I already said this to Bob," and I said, “Yeah, but you need to say it again. We're evolving. Just make sure it's top of mind." And so that's one. I'm very focused on my calendar and my time and wonderful people on my team that are helping me to kind of manage my time, but I'm also – I'm looking at it now and I'm already mapping out next year.

I'm like, “How do I wanna be spending my time?" So I'm trying to be very thoughtful and deliberate on how I want that to change, and then what meetings I need to be in, and how I need to be in them. I think how I communicate, same thing, where words matter. One word – I've got – you're kind of screwed either way sometimes, and I'm like, “Man, I said that one thing and it made that person upset. Now I kinda wanna follow up and say, 'Hey, you know what? Let me elaborate a little bit more.'"

Spencer: Yeah.

Nick: I think part of the challenge also with communication is I don't have a lot of time in a day. I don't have time to read big decks. I don't have time to go into e-mails. I don't have time to explain for 30 minutes what I mean. I have to be succinct and I need information presented to me that's succinct so I can make an informed decision. So I think that's really happened a lot more in the last year, just being sensitive to my time a bit.

Spencer: We've experimented with different decision making rubrics. LinkedIn uses rapid. There's another one called RACI, R-A-C-I, or something. They're all different acronyms for things that basically say when you're trying to make a decision, determine up front who's the decision maker, who provides input, who needs to be informed, et cetera.

Nick: Yep.

Spencer: Because there are a lot of things, as we've grown, that it's just not clear whose decision it is. Is it my decision? Is it someone's decision? I don't know. Nobody knows.

Nick: Yeah.

Spencer: And we definitely struggle with this. On the communication thing, what I've done is I've tried to make a habit of explaining who is – when these words come out of my mouth, or through my keyboard, or my phone, in what capacity am I saying it? I'll be like, “I'm giving this feedback just as a user of the products. Just take it for – as one person's input."

I'm saying, or I'm saying this as the CEO, “Go do it," or I'm saying it as the, you know, someone that's providing input to you who's gonna go make the decision here, and this is just my advice, do whatever you want. And like, giving that context is helpful, mostly helpful, well, certainly helpful for the recipient, but also helpful for me as well, to like, remind myself of – in what form, in what context am I providing this input [crosstalk] that's helpful? Let's just say five years from now, OfferUp doesn't achieve the success, its destiny that you think it's on the path of. What went wrong? What do you think happened?

Nick: I always say that the problems are internal, not external. I believe that, again, I obsess over shaping culture, I think, and developing people, and helping the team to evolve. So I think that's a challenge. It's even harder, rapid growing companies, especially these days, where if you think about companies and financing and the time horizons a decade ago, you could go for years and do, like – there's just more, faster, and I think my obsession is really trying to help elevate leadership and shape culture and really make sure the right people are at this company and are thinking long term.

And I think that's it. I like to think of our phase as the awkward teenage years where we're not quite the adult yet. We've got acne. Our voice is cracking. We're tripping sometimes. So how do we kind of best get through that and kind of hit our stride and really be high performing? I think we're just kind of in that phase. So I think that's the biggest thing I think about.

Spencer: You're an engineer, and you created the product in your own –

Nick: I wouldn't say I'm an engineer.

Spencer: No?

Nick: More designer product guy I would say. I'm a terrible – I coded on the web, but I'm a terrible developer, so –

Spencer: Okay, so you're a product person?

Nick: Yeah, more product.

Spencer: And you created the product in your likeness to solve a problem that you had.

Nick: Sure.

Spencer: How do you think about your ongoing connection to the product? As the company gets bigger, do you decide to step back a little bit from the product and let others exhibit more product ownership so that you can focus on some other things, or is product – is OfferUp you and you will always be OfferUp from a product standpoint?

Nick: That's a good question. So I would say my obsession and where I wanna kinda evolve is I think I'm really good at the end-to-end experience, and so the first product I designed, and I didn't design in a vacuum. I would draw things in Photoshop. I'd ask my wife on the couch, and she's watching TV. She got sick of me showing her designs, and I said, “Okay. I'm gonna go out and just start to talk to people." So I talked to friends and family. I would go talk to local merchants. “What do you think about this?"

And I would constantly get feedback, and I find I've been doing that ever since, and even today, I'm probably one of the top people in the company to find bugs in the product. I definitely have a lot of opinions about the experience and it only gets more complex as the business evolves, so I don't think I'll ever stop obsessing over the end-to-end experience. And I think just given my visibility and what I understand about the market, I think that's my strength, and I think that's what I bring to the table. Where I think I can evolve is going from, you know. I don't have to be in product meetings and going deep for hours on end.

I think that's things I'd be willing to kind of give up, but I do really care about the end-to-end experience, because I think if you stop focusing on that, it becomes really – it can become spaghetti and not great. And I do believe what I tell our team is, “We're not building a marketplace. We're not building an app. We're building an experience," and I don't think there's many things in this world where you think of that.

I think of the iPhone as an experience. I think of the Tesla as an experience. It is something that kinda grabs you, and it's like, you can't explain exactly what it is, but it's so elegant and easy and it just becomes part of your life that it just – you use it every day. And so I think that's my obsession. I think that's where I'm the strongest, which means I gotta give up other parts of the business.

Spencer: And at 250-something employees, have you already started letting go of some of the detail on product, or that you were forward-looking in what you just ______.

Nick: To some degree, but I like to do more, because I think we're definitely more complex now. We have more lines of revenue. We have more things that we're getting into, and it's just not scalable for me, so it's again where I'm looking around at the leadership team and saying, “Okay, great, but we also have gaps and roles we wanna fill."

Spencer: I remember the woman that runs product at Zillow, for Zillow products, when I started pulling back, as you're describing, from some of the detailed product decisions, and I started delegating more, as you need to, to free up more time to do other things. And she said to me – there was a particular decision that I delegated to her and to the team to make. And they made a decision that I didn't agree with. It kinda came out the other end in the product, I don't know, three, six months later. It was a tiny little thing. I don't even remember what it was, and I remember when I went back to her and was kind of, you know, giving her a hard time about it, she was like, “When you delegate a decision, you need to accept the outcome."

And I was like, “Oh, yeah. I guess she's right. I guess I do need to accept the outcome, whether I like it or not." So I mean what I found at this stage, from like, 200 to 400 or 500 employees, as you're going to experience soon, as I started pulling back from some of the product details, that was definitely the right decision. It was the right thing for the company.

Well, congrats on the success of OfferUp so far. I'm excited. I mean, the last time we got together without microphones, I think you were like, 50 employees and the company was a lot smaller. It's amazing to come in today, and see new office space, and an incredibly vibrant culture, and the success that you've had, and I'm excited to see what's next for you.

Nick: Thanks. Well, thanks for having me.

Spencer: Thanks, Nick.

The post OfferUp CEO Nick Huzar on Evolving as a Leader appeared first on Office Hours.

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California Passes Landmark AI Law as Russell Westbrook Backs Eazewell

🔦 Spotlight

Good Morning Los Angeles,

What do a new California law and Russell Westbrook’s latest startup have in common? AI at its most powerful and most personal.

California has officially passed the nation’s first AI safety law (SB 53). Signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, the measure requires companies developing large scale AI models to disclose risk assessments and safety testing. On the surface, it sounds procedural. But in practice, it is a potential reset on how quickly AI companies ship new products. For years, the narrative has been “innovation first, oversight later.” With this law, California is betting that transparency can move in tandem with progress. Whether it becomes a model for federal policy or a cautionary tale depends on how the industry responds.

Meanwhile, Eazewell, a newly launched startup co-founded by NBA All Star Russell Westbrook, is tackling one of the most difficult spaces in tech: end of life planning. The company offers an AI platform designed to guide families through complex care transitions. It is not the kind of space most founders rush into. It is emotional, often uncomfortable, and full of fragmented systems. But precisely because of that, the potential impact is significant. By blending AI with healthcare navigation, Eazewell is aiming to make one of life’s hardest processes less overwhelming. Westbrook’s involvement draws attention, but the real story is a startup willing to bring technology into conversations many people would rather avoid.

Taken together, these stories capture the stretch of AI right now. On one end, lawmakers are moving to contain its risks. On the other, founders are pushing it into the most intimate corners of our lives. It is not often that state legislation and end of life care land in the same conversation, but that is the reality of AI in 2025.

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      • GordonMD Global Investments joined new and existing backers in Star Therapeutics’ oversubscribed $125M Series D financing round. The biotech, co-led by Sanofi Ventures and Viking Global, is deploying the capital to push forward its lead program VGA039, a monoclonal antibody targeting bleeding disorders. The funds will help accelerate its clinical trials and advance its pipeline toward commercialization. - learn more
      • Hawke Ventures joined a funding round in Tie, which raised $10M in Series A to support its AI identity platform for e-commerce brands. Tie helps retailers reclaim hidden website visitors by identifying and enriching anonymous traffic to build better marketing audiences. The capital will go toward scaling the team, deepening integrations with commerce and marketing stacks, and expanding reach among D2C brands. - learn more
      • Foxhog Ventures led a ₹44.37 crore (~$5.3M USD) seed investment in Assessli, a Kolkata deep-tech startup developing what it calls “Large Behavioural Models” (LBMs) that combine genomics, psychology, and digital life data into highly personalized AI twins. The funding will support Assessli’s expansion into the U.S. and U.K., accelerate product commercialization, and increase its technical hiring to scale out its platform. - learn more
      • Bonfire Ventures participated in Alvys’ $40M Series B round, alongside RTP Global, Alpha Square Group, Titanium Ventures, Picus Capital, and others. Alvys offers an AI powered transportation management system (TMS) that streamlines freight operations including dispatch, load management, billing and analytics by automating workflows and integrating across platforms. The funding will help the company build out enterprise features, scale engineering, deepen integrations, and accelerate growth in the logistics and freight sector. - learn more
      • M13 participated in an $11M Series A round for Anything, an AI platform that turns natural-language prompts into production-ready mobile and web applications. Rather than just generating prototypes, Anything’s backend includes infrastructure like authentication, payments, and storage under the hood. With this funding, the company will scale development, expand its user base (now over 700,000), and deepen its platform capabilities to support full app deployment. - learn more
      • Halogen Ventures closed a $30M Fund III and has committed to invest in early stage startups in Alabama, becoming the first out of state VC to partner with Innovate Alabama’s InvestAL program. They have already begun deploying capital into the state, backing startups like Moxi, Auditocity and Croux, and are actively running pitch events to build a local pipeline. - learn more

      LA Exits

      • Griffin Club has been acquired by Bay Club, deepening Bay Club’s footprint in Los Angeles. Griffin Club is a legacy athletic, aquatic, and social club in West LA, known for features like tennis and pickleball courts, pools, wellness classes, and high-end amenities. Bay Club intends to bring Griffin into its LA campus and integrate it into its broader network of fitness and lifestyle clubs. - learn more
      • Beverly Hills Rejuvenation Center has been acquired by Motivant, with Sarah Gabriel installed as its new CEO. The deal brings the med spa franchise into Motivant’s portfolio, aligning it with a growth-focused investment platform. Gabriel’s appointment signals a strategic push to leverage new leadership and scale operations under Motivant’s guidance. - learn more

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            Salt AI Secures $10M to Untangle Healthcare’s Toughest Workflows

            🔦 Spotlight

            Hello Los Angeles,

            Not every startup raise deserves the spotlight, but this week’s news from Salt AI is worth paying attention to. The LA based company just closed a $10 million round led by Morpheus Ventures with participation from Struck Capital, Marbruck Investments and CoreWeave. The goal is to expand what it calls “contextual AI,” and if it works, it could quietly change how some of the most complex corners of healthcare get untangled.

            Healthcare is notorious for slow, clunky systems. Even the smallest workflow, like drug trial data, clinical documentation, or compliance reviews, can drag on for weeks because the tools were never built for speed. Salt AI is betting that the fix is not flashy consumer apps or billion parameter models, but something more practical: AI that slots directly into the day to day grind of life sciences. Their platform lets non technical teams visually build and deploy workflows that would normally take months of coding. Drag, drop, done.

            It sounds simple, but the implications are not. Imagine a biopharma team testing a new drug, able to cut through compliance hurdles in days instead of months. Or clinical researchers spinning up experiments and seeing usable results in real time. Salt AI’s pitch is not about replacing scientists, it is about giving them back time in an industry where time can literally mean lives.

            The new capital will help scale engineering, grow its customer footprint, and push further into healthcare and biopharma. But more importantly, it gives Salt AI the chance to prove that “contextual AI” is more than a buzzword. If they succeed, the company will not just chip away at bottlenecks, it could reshape how innovation itself moves through one of the world’s most heavily regulated and mission critical industries.

            🤝 Venture Deals

                LA Companies

                • Bonsai Health raised $7M in a seed round led by Bonfire Ventures and Wonder Ventures. The Santa Monica based company builds an agentic AI platform that automates front office healthcare workflows, things like patient outreach, scheduling and clinical follow-ups, working behind the scenes to keep patients connected to care and reduce administrative burden. It plans to use the funding to accelerate its specialty AI agents, expand into new medical specialties, and scale its commercialization nationwide. - learn more
                • Genstore raised a $10M Seed round led by Weimob, with participation from Lighthouse Founders’ Fund. The Los Angeles based startup is building an AI-native e-commerce platform that lets merchants launch and run online stores using conversational prompts, automating everything from product listings and copywriting to customer service. The funds will go toward accelerating product development, expanding into new markets, and refining features that simplify online commerce for small and midsized sellers. - learn more
                • TransAstra secured a $5M investment to scale its asteroid capture technology in partnership with NASA. The company aims to advance systems that can snag and repurpose small bodies in space, contributing to sustainable space infrastructure and debris mitigation. With this funding, TransAstra will expand development, deepen its relationship with NASA, and accelerate deployment of its capture hardware. - learn more

                LA Venture Funds

                • Fika Ventures led a seed round investing in MaxHome, joining BBG Ventures, Four Acres and 1Sharpe Ventures. MaxHome is building an AI-native platform focused on automating real estate transaction coordination, the messy, manual work that slows deals. Fika backed the team because it sees a huge opportunity in streamlining broker workflows, reducing errors, and improving the experience for agents and homebuyers alike. - learn more
                • MANTIS Ventures joined NEA, Sequoia, NVIDIA, J.P. Morgan and others in leading a $50M Series B for Factory, valuing the AI coding company at $300 million. Factory builds “droids,” AI agents that automate software development tasks across environments, and claims their platform now tops the Terminal Bench benchmark. With this capital, Factory aims to expand enterprise adoption, deepen integrations, and scale its engineering team globally. - learn more
                • SafeHill (formerly Tacticly) announced a $2.6M pre-seed round led by Mucker Capital, with participation from Chingona Ventures, Techstars, Chicago Early Growth Ventures, The Source Groups, and others. The Chicago-based cybersecurity startup is launching from stealth with SecureIQ, a continuous Threat Exposure Management platform that blends AI-driven testing with human validation to help organizations find and shore up attack paths. The funding will be used to expand engineering, enhance AI-assisted ethical hacking, deepen enterprise partnerships, and broaden compliance and monitoring capabilities. - learn more
                • Prototype Capital was among the investors in Nilo Technologies’ $4M seed round, alongside backers like Supercell, a16z Speedrun, KFund, and Flex Capital. Nilo is building an AI native 3D creation platform that makes game development more accessible, letting creators build interactive worlds in their browser without complex tooling. The funding will help accelerate product development, bring in more users as “Founding Builders,” and expand the platform’s capabilities for real time, multiplayer creation. - learn more
                • Rebel Fund participated in a $7.5M funding round for Indian fintech Gold Firm Gullak backed by Y Combinator. Gullak offers digital gold savings and lending solutions targeted at underbanked consumers in India. Rebel Fund’s investment will help Gullak scale operations, deepen financial inclusion, and expand its product offerings. - learn more
                • B Capital joined Wellington Management, General Catalyst and others in a $400M funding round for Capital Rx, which is rebranding as Judi Health. The company, which operates a pharmacy benefits management platform, will use the capital to expand into full-spectrum health benefits, integrating medical, dental and vision claims processing with its existing PBM capabilities. The move positions Judi Health as a unified tech backbone for benefits administration across employer and plan clients. - learn more
                • Supply Change Capital joined a seed funding round that raised $4.7M for Helios AI, a startup building the first AI co-pilot for food and agriculture supply chains. Helios’ platform combines climate modeling, commodity forecasting, and real-time data to help buyers and suppliers make smarter decisions in volatile markets. The funding will be used to scale the product, expand data coverage globally, and bring its AI tools to more players across the agri-food sector. - learn more

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                    ServiceTitan Ups the AI Stakes

                    🔦 Spotlight

                    Hello Los Angeles,

                    ServiceTitan is making it clear: the trades are getting a tech glow up. At its annual Pantheon conference in Glendale, the home services software giant rolled out a bold AI vision and topped it off with a fresh acquisition that could change the way HVAC contractors do business.

                    First, the AI. ServiceTitan unveiled what it calls the “next evolution” of its platform, and this is not just window dressing. Think automated call summaries so techs spend less time typing, predictive scheduling that knows when your AC is likely to fail before you do, and estimates that generate faster than a homeowner can ask, “So, how much is this going to cost me?” For small and mid sized contractors, these are the kinds of tools that level the playing field against the big chains and maybe even help them get home before dinner. It is AI built not for hype, but for the day to day grind of the trades, where minutes saved can mean jobs won and customers kept.

                    Then came the news that ServiceTitan is acquiring Conduit Tech, a Boston startup best known for its LiDAR powered HVAC design software. Instead of squinting at tape measures and crunching numbers in clunky spreadsheets, contractors can now scan a home, generate a 3D model, and deliver a polished, ACCA certified proposal on the spot. Translation: faster bids, more trust, and fewer “I will get back to you next week” moments.

                    Put together, the AI rollout and Conduit deal are more than product updates. They are a signal of where ServiceTitan wants to take the industry. This is not just software that keeps the books balanced or trucks dispatched. It is an attempt to make technology an advantage in a field where labor is scarce, expectations are high, and every interaction with a customer matters. In short, ServiceTitan is not just keeping the lights on, it is rewiring how the trades get work done.

                    🤝 Venture Deals

                        LA Companies

                        • Modern Animal has hit a $100M annual run rate and closed a new $46M funding round led by Addition, True Ventures and Upfront Ventures with participation from Founders Fund. The company delivers veterinary care both in clinics and virtually, and it is using the funds to expand services such as specialty care, 24/7 virtual access, integrated pharmacy and ecommerce, along with extended urgent care hours. The company also announced a board expansion with new leadership added to support scaling operations and enhancing its technology infrastructure. - learn more
                        • MarqVision raised a $48M Series B round led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from investors including Salesforce Ventures, HSG, Coral Capital, and returning backers like Y Combinator and Altos Ventures. Based in Los Angeles, MarqVision offers AI-powered brand protection tools—monitoring marketplaces, removing counterfeit listings, managing trademarks, and protecting brand reputation online. The new funds will go toward expanding its AI and engineering teams, accelerating automation, enabling enterprise-grade features, and growing its global presence in markets like Japan, Korea, China, Europe and beyond. - learn more
                        • Divergent Technologies raised $290M in a Series E round led by Rochefort Asset Management, with $250M in equity and $40M in debt, bringing its valuation to about $2.3 billion. Using its proprietary DAPS (Divergent Adaptive Production System) platform, the Torrance based company builds hardware for aerospace, defense and automotive sectors by combining rapid design, additive manufacturing and automated assembly. The new capital will help Divergent scale its manufacturing capacity, build out its team and develop new capabilities for upcoming product lines. - learn more
                        • Apex raised $200M in a Series D round led by Interlagos, giving the Los Angeles company a valuation above $1 billion. Apex builds configurable “satellite bus” platforms used by commercial and government clients, including for communications, sensing, and national security constellations. The capital will boost production capacity by 50 percent, expand its manufacturing footprint in Los Angeles, and strengthen vertical integration including acquiring propulsion technology and insourcing more subsystems. - learn more

                          LA Venture Funds

                          • Mantis Venture Capital joined Benchmark, Uncork, Y Combinator and Mayfield in backing Numeral’s $35M Series B, part of a $57M total funding haul. Numeral is an AI powered platform that automates everything around sales tax for e-commerce and SaaS brands including filing, remittance, exemption certificates, state registrations, nexus detection and more. The money will go to speeding up product innovation, building out its global compliance footprint, and adding smarter automation so finance teams can stop wrestling with tax rules and start scaling. - learn more
                          • Magnify Ventures participated in Series A for Seven Starling, contributing to an $8M funding round led by Rethink Impact. Seven Starling is a virtual women’s mental health company focused on maternal mental health, offering group therapy, medication management, patient advocates, and digital tools. The new capital will fuel its expansion into more U.S. states (aiming for over 30 by the end of 2026), deepen partnerships with healthcare providers, and scale its model to help more mothers. - learn more
                          • Calibrate Ventures led Vibranium Labs’ $4.6M seed round, joined by Mirae Asset and investors including a16z and Franklin Templeton. Vibranium Labs’ flagship product, “Vibe AI,” acts as a full-time AI incident engineer, monitoring, triaging, and resolving IT incidents automatically. The funds will be used to expand the engineering team, accelerate product development, and deepen integrations so Vibe AI can be embedded into more incident response systems across industries. - learn more
                          • B Capital led a $20M financing round in Extend, with additional participation by March Capital, Point72 Ventures, FinTech Collective, and Commerce Ventures. Extend, a spend-and-expense management platform, allows businesses to use virtual cards with their existing bank or card programs while offering workflow tools like receipt capture, approvals, and automated reconciliation. The new capital will help Extend scale issuer partnerships, launch new expense management services, accelerate its path to profitability, and the company also added Francois Horikawa as CFO to help guide the financial strategy forward. - learn more
                          • Alexandria Venture Investments joined Versant Ventures and Qiming Venture Partners USA in a $65M Series A for Dualitas Therapeutics, a South San Francisco company developing bispecific antibodies through its DualScreen discovery engine. Dualitas is advancing two lead programs, DTX-103 for allergic disease and DTX-102 for autoimmune conditions, both showing strong preclinical results. The funding will support these programs and expand the company’s platform to discover new bispecific candidates in immunology, inflammation and beyond. - learn more
                          • Oversubscribed Ventures joined a syndicate that invested in Noble Mobile’s $10 million seed round. Noble Mobile, founded by Andrew Yang, is a telecom startup offering unlimited data plans while giving customers cash back when they use less data. The funds will be used to launch operations, roll out its mobile virtual network service, and build features that encourage better digital wellness. - learn more
                          • Mantis Venture Capital participated in Doctronic’s $20M Series A round, which was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and also backed by Union Square Ventures, Tusk Ventures, Seven Stars, and others. Doctronic is a healthcare AI startup building a platform for fast, personalized medical advice and virtual visits with licensed physicians, aiming to reduce wait times and costs. The new funds will help the company scale its operations across the U.S., expand partnerships with insurers and health systems, and extend its reach to more patients. - learn more
                          • Strong Ventures led a Series A round investing about ₩1 billion in Ares3, with Seoul National University Technology Holdings also participating. Ares3 runs florist subscription service “Honest Flower” for consumers and “FlowerGo,” a B2B platform for floral suppliers, with steady growth thanks to brand partnerships and solid demand. The new capital will help Ares3 extend its reach via offline experience locations and campaigns to shift public perception of flowers from luxury to everyday goods. - learn more
                          • Gold House Ventures participated in MedSetGo’s oversubscribed $2.4M seed round led by TurboStart. MedSetGo is an AI-driven healthcare company based in San Francisco that is working to streamline patient care transitions by helping people find and schedule the right care after discharge. The funding will go toward accelerating product development and hiring, especially expanding the engineering, data science, and commercialization teams. - learn more
                          • March Capital was among the investors in Lila Sciences’ $235M Series A round, which was co-led by Braidwell and Collective Global. Lila builds an autonomous science platform combining AI, robotics and software to automate the scientific method - generating hypotheses, designing experiments, running them, learning from results. The funds will be used to scale Lila’s “AI Science Factories,” expand globally in cities like Boston, San Francisco and London, and accelerate its ability to explore materials, chemistry, life sciences and diagnostics more quickly. - learn more

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