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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Mattel Isn’t Just Playing Anymore

🔦 Spotlight

Hello Los Angeles,

AI just became Mattel’s newest playmate.

This week, Mattel announced a new partnership with OpenAI, setting the stage for a toy box transformation powered by artificial intelligence. The El Segundo-based toy giant will use ChatGPT to breathe new life into its iconic brands, including Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Masters of the Universe. The collaboration will start with interactive AI experiences and creative tools to support product development internally.

It's a bold move for Mattel, which has been steadily shifting its identity from a traditional toy maker to a modern entertainment company. Between box office hits like Barbie and now this AI integration, Mattel is showing that legacy brands can still lead the charge into the future. The partnership supports CEO Ynon Kreiz’s long-term vision to expand Mattel's intellectual property into a broader, multi-platform universe. OpenAI is now playing a key role in that strategy.

This also points to a larger trend unfolding in Los Angeles. The lines between tech, entertainment, and consumer products are blurring quickly. AI isn’t coming to the mainstream; it’s already here. And if Barbie is getting an upgrade, other LA-born icons may not be far behind.

We’re keeping an eye on how this unfolds and whether it becomes more than just a flashy concept. One thing’s certain: Mattel isn’t just playing around.

Catch the latest LA venture deals, acquisitions, and fund updates below.

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

  • Coco Robotics, a Santa Monica-based startup specializing in last-mile autonomous delivery robots, has raised $80M in a strategic funding round led by angel investors Sam Altman and Max Altman, with participation from Pelion Venture Partners, Offline Ventures, Ryan Graves, and others. The company will use the funding to scale its AI-powered platform, grow its zero-emission robot fleet to 10,000 vehicles by 2026, expand partnerships with delivery platforms like Uber and DoorDash, and broaden its presence in more cities across the U.S. and internationally. - learn more
  • PopID, a fintech startup specializing in biometric payment and loyalty authentication using face and palm recognition, has closed a new equity financing round backed by major strategic investors including Verifone, PayPal, Commerce Ventures, Chipotle’s Cultivate Next, and Visa Ventures. The fresh capital will support the expansion of its global biometric network by leveraging Verifone’s terminal infrastructure to integrate secure and seamless biometric payments and loyalty programs across merchants worldwide. - learn more
  • Rosebud, an AI-powered journaling app designed to serve as a personal growth mentor, has raised $6M in seed funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The funds will be used to expand the team, advance its proprietary memory-driven AI engine, and pursue partnerships with therapists, educational institutions, businesses, and clinics to enhance access and deepen the app’s reflective capabilities. - learn more
  • Impulse Space, the in-space mobility startup founded by ex-SpaceX engineer Tom Mueller, has raised $300M in a Series C funding round led by Linse Capital with participation from Trousdale Ventures and others, bringing its total financing to $525M. The company designs and builds orbital transfer vehicles—like Mira and upcoming Helios—to transport satellites between orbits, and the new funds will scale production, hire new staff, accelerate R&D (including electric propulsion), and fulfill a backlog of over 30 commercial and government contracts worth nearly $200 million. - learn more
  • dataplor, a Manhattan Beach, CA-based provider of global location intelligence, has secured a $20.5M Series B round led by F‑Prime Capital. The funds will help dataplor scale its privacy-focused point-of-interest and foot traffic mobility products, expand global coverage, enhance data capabilities, and accelerate product growth for enterprise clients seeking real-time consumer insights. - learn more

        LA Venture Funds

        • WndrCo participated in Meter’s $170M Series C financing. Meter provides a full-stack, enterprise-grade internet infrastructure solution that covers routing, switching, WiFi, and cellular for businesses ranging from single offices to large data centers. The new funds will accelerate global expansion, grow its channel partnerships with companies like CDW, Microsoft, and WWT, and support further deployment and R&D. - learn more
        • Sound Ventures participated in Landbase’s $30M Series A round, co-leading the investment alongside Picus Capital. Landbase uses AI, leveraging a GPT‑4o-based model trained on 40 million marketing campaigns, to automate and enhance outbound sales outreach, helping small and mid‑size businesses build trust and scale customer acquisition. The funding will support expansion of its team, product development, and go‑to‑market efforts as it rapidly grows its customer base. - learn more
        • Rebel Fund participated in Outset’s $17M Series A round, which was led by 8VC. Outset uses AI-powered agents to conduct and analyze in-depth video interviews at enterprise scale, serving clients like Nestlé, Microsoft, and WeightWatchers. The new funding will accelerate growth by expanding its go‑to‑market and engineering teams, enhancing its AI agent capabilities, and scaling its platform globally. - learn more
        • Anthos Capital returned as a participant in Laurel’s $100M Series C round, led by IVP. Laurel, the world’s first AI-powered “Time Platform” for professional services firms, automates time tracking and links how employees spend their time directly to business outcomes. The new funding will be used to scale the platform globally, enhance AI-driven time categorization and analytics, and help firms optimize resource allocation and profitability. - learn more
        • Vamos Ventures participated in Trustible’s $4.6M Series Seed round led by Lookout Ventures. Trustible provides an AI governance platform that helps enterprises inventory AI use cases, manage risk, comply with regulations like the EU AI Act, and accelerate responsible adoption. The funding will power product development, hire engineering and go‑to‑market talent (particularly in the D.C. area), and scale operations to help enterprise and public-sector customers deploy AI safely. - learn more
        • Village Global participated in Qanooni’s $2M pre‑seed round, joined by Oryx Fund, TA Ventures, and a group of strategic angels. Qanooni, founded in 2024 and based in the UAE, builds an AI-powered legal platform that integrates directly into Microsoft Outlook and Word to help lawyers draft, review, and manage documents using their own style and standards. The new funding will fuel expansion into the UAE and UK and advance its proprietary AI engine tailored for legal workflows. - learn more
        • Muse Capital and Rocana Venture Partners participated in Eli Health’s $12M USD Series A round, led by BDC Capital’s Thrive Venture Fund, boosting the company’s total funding to around $20M USD. Eli Health has developed the Hormometer™, a real-time, saliva-based hormone monitoring system currently in beta for cortisol with plans to expand to progesterone and other biomarkers. The new capital will scale production, add biomarkers, support commercialization, and accelerate global rollout of its instant hormone health platform. - learn more
        • Crossover VC participated in ai.work’s $10M seed round led by A* and lool ventures. ai.work has emerged from stealth to launch an “AI Workers” platform—autonomous agents designed to streamline enterprise workflows across IT, HR, Legal, Finance, and more. The funding will be used to scale operations, accelerate product development, and deploy AI Workers into pilot programs with large enterprises. - learn more
        • MANTIS Venture Capital participated in AIM’s $50M funding round. The company has built the first embodied AI platform that retrofits heavy machinery, like bulldozers and excavators, for autonomous operation, aiming to boost safety, efficiency, and productivity in construction and mining. The new capital will help AIM scale deployments, advance its AI technology, and expand its plug-and-play autonomy solutions across heavy equipment fleets worldwide. - learn more
        • Watertower Ventures led Finofo's $3.3M seed round, with continued backing from Motivate Venture Capital, SaaS Ventures, and several angel investors. Finofo offers a modern business banking platform that automates accounts payable, treasury, and global receivables, enabling seamless, low-fee payments across more than 90 countries with ERP integration. The funds will support expanded AP and AR automation features, the launch of a small-business plan, and hiring across product, engineering, and go-to-market teams. - learn more
        • Finality Capital Partners participated in RISE Chain’s latest $4M raise, bringing its total funding to $8M. RISE Chain is building an ultra-fast Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain using "Shreds" architecture to deliver sub-5 millisecond transaction confirmations and scale toward 100,000 transactions per second. The new capital will support the mainnet launch, accelerate product and app development, and expand its real-time performance capabilities for advanced DeFi and high-frequency applications. - learn more
        • Emerging Ventures participated in Taiv’s $14.4M CAD (≈ $10.5 M USD) Series A round, led by Denmark’s IDC Ventures. Taiv equips bars, restaurants, and retail venues with free hardware that transforms existing TVs into targeted advertising and content delivery tools, then shares ad revenue with the venues. The funding will power expansion across North America (starting in Canada this summer), grow the team, and enhance its AI-driven content delivery platform. - learn more
        • Matter Venture Partners led an $18.4M investment in Kargo. The company offers an AI-driven inventory management system, including hardware like "Towers" and Lifts, that automatically captures and processes freight data at warehouse loading docks to improve accuracy, real-time visibility, and operational efficiency. The new funding will be used to develop new products, expand deployment across their customer base, and scale their computer vision platform in global supply chains. - learn more
        • Bam Ventures and Trust Fund participated in the $10.6M funding round for Nectar Social, a Seattle-based startup that helps brands convert social media engagement into revenue using AI-powered “social copilot” agents. The platform consolidates comments, DMs, mentions, influencer outreach, and analytics into one interface to streamline brand interactions and boost performance. The funding will support product development, team expansion, and scaling operations with enterprise customers. - learn more
        • MTech Capital participated in Voxel’s $44M Series B funding round. The company has developed an AI-powered workplace safety platform that integrates with existing cameras to detect hazards and unsafe behavior in real time, reducing accidents and operational risks. The new funding will accelerate R&D in computer vision, deepen its AI capabilities, and grow its team of industry experts to scale deployments across high-risk industries such as manufacturing, logistics, and ports. - learn more
            LA Exits
            • Hennessey Digital, a leading legal marketing agency known for its SEO, digital PR, PPC, and web design services, has been acquired by Herringbone Digital. The acquisition expands Herringbone’s platform into the legal marketing space while retaining Hennessey’s leadership and team. With added resources and support, Hennessey Digital plans to scale its services and integrate new AI-driven marketing tools to better serve law firms nationwide. - learn more
            • Prosthetic Records has been acquired by MNRK Music Group and will now operate under its MNRK Heavy division. The deal brings Prosthetic’s extensive heavy metal catalog - featuring pioneering acts like Lamb of God, Animals as Leaders, and The Acacia Strain - under MNRK’s umbrella. MNRK plans to amplify the label’s legacy through anniversary reissues, remastered editions, curated collections, and new releases from standout acts such as Pupil Slicer and God Alone. - learn more
            • RKO Pictures, the legendary film studio behind classics like King Kong and Citizen Kane, has been acquired by Concord Originals, the film and TV division of Concord. The deal gives Concord derivative and adaptation rights to over 5,000 RKO titles, including sequels, remakes, stage adaptations, and unproduced screenplays. RKO will continue as an imprint under Concord Originals, co-led by Sophia Dilley and Mary Beth O’Connor, with plans to revive its storied catalog through reissues, new productions, and adaptations. - learn more
            • StartADAM has been acquired by LeapXpert, bringing its AI-powered chat agent technology and founding team into LeapXpert’s fold. The acquisition enhances LeapXpert’s communication intelligence platform with advanced AI features, new messaging channel support, and deeper CRM integrations. StartADAM’s founders, including co-founder Adam Stone, who became LeapXpert’s VP of AI Product will lead development to scale these capabilities globally. - learn more
            • CASHét has been acquired by Entertainment Partners, integrating its suite of digital payment services including p-cards, automated accounts payable, and vendor verification into EP’s production finance ecosystem. The acquisition ensures that CASHét will continue supporting productions worldwide, regardless of their payroll or accounting systems, while expanding its services into new global markets. With this move, EP enhances its end-to-end financial workflow offerings, bringing faster, more secure, and fraud-resistant payment tools to film and TV productions. - learn more
            • Element Brand Group has been acquired by The Lede Company, with founder Heather Leeds Greenfield joining as a partner and head of brand partnerships. Greenfield’s senior team, including two SVPs, will move over to expand The Lede Company’s integrated marketing and communications offerings. The acquisition strengthens Lede’s cultural campaign capabilities and equips both firms with enhanced resources and scale for brand-driven initiatives. - learn more

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                  Billion-Dollar Beauty. Billion-Dollar Radios. Only in LA.

                  🔦 Spotlight

                  Hello Los Angeles,

                  This week, LA proved it can scale in silence and shine in the spotlight, sometimes in the same breath.

                  Let’s start with the quiet powerhouse.

                  Culver City-based Silvus Technologies is being acquired by Motorola Solutions for $4.4 billion in up-front consideration, with the potential for an additional $600 million in earnout payments, bringing the total deal value to $5 billion. Silvus builds tactical mesh radios, rugged high-bandwidth systems used by militaries, emergency responders, and defense contractors in more than 40 countries. These aren’t just walkie-talkies. They are engineered to deliver secure, uninterrupted communications in places where cell service and Wi-Fi don't stand a chance. Think natural disasters, war zones, and remote terrains. The tech spun out of DARPA-funded research at UCLA, and this deal is a reminder that LA isn’t just cranking out consumer apps and AI models. We’re exporting national security infrastructure too.

                  But while Silvus was locking down defense contracts, another LA startup was breaking the internet.

                  e.l.f. Beauty Chairman and CEO Tarang Amin and Rhode Founder Hailey BieberImage Source: e.l.f. Beauty

                  Rhode, Hailey Bieber’s skincare brand, is being acquired by e.l.f. Beauty in a deal valued at up to $1 billion. The structure includes $600 million in cash, $200 million in stock at closing, and up to $200 million in earnout payments tied to Rhode’s performance over the next three years. Not bad for a brand that launched in June 2022 and built a cult following off just a handful of products and a crystal-clear brand identity.

                  Yes, it’s celebrity-founded. But Rhode didn’t just ride a name. It built a movement. The brand cut through a saturated beauty market by doing less: launching with a few standout hero products, keeping the aesthetic clean and consistent, and using community-first marketing that turned product drops into cultural events. The results speak for themselves. $100 million in net sales over the past year and a loyal fanbase that treats peptide lip treatments like limited-edition merch.

                  Bieber wasn’t just the face of the brand. She helped shape the strategy, led product development, and drove creative decisions from day one. Following the acquisition, she’ll continue as Chief Creative Officer and Head of Innovation, while also stepping into a new role as strategic advisor to e.l.f. Beauty. Rhode will continue to operate independently, with its headquarters remaining right here in LA.

                  This isn’t just a win for Rhode. It’s another clear signal that LA is where culture, commerce, and execution come together and scale fast.

                  Keep reading for the latest LA venture rounds, acquisitions, and fund moves making headlines this week.

                  🤝 Venture Deals

                  LA Companies

                  • Bezel, a luxury watch marketplace, recently secured a $670K investment from Hyperspace Ventures as part of a broader $6.8M funding initiative. This investment aims to support Bezel's growth and enhance its platform for authenticated luxury watch trading. - learn more

                        LA Venture Funds

                        • Sound Ventures participated in the Series A funding round for General Counsel AI, a startup using artificial intelligence to streamline in-house legal work. The platform helps legal teams draft documents faster, stay compliant, and eliminate repetitive tasks by embedding company knowledge directly into its AI workflows. With Sound Ventures' backing, GC AI plans to scale its team and expand the platform’s capabilities to serve more enterprise legal departments. - learn more
                        • Kairos Ventures participated in Vivodyne’s $40M Series A funding round, reaffirming its commitment to advancing human-relevant drug development technologies. Vivodyne, a biotech company based in Philadelphia and San Francisco, is pioneering the use of AI and robotics to grow and test thousands of lab-grown human tissues, aiming to replace traditional animal testing in drug development. This approach addresses the high failure rate of clinical trials by providing more predictive human data, potentially accelerating the development of effective therapies. The new funding will support the expansion of Vivodyne's operations, including the opening of a 23,000-square-foot fully robotic laboratory in South San Francisco, to meet the growing demand from pharmaceutical clients. - learn more
                        • Fifth Wall co-led Wander’s $50M Series B funding round, joining QED Investors and others to support the company’s mission of redefining luxury vacation rentals through technology and consistency. Wander operates a vertically integrated platform that combines premium vacation homes with hotel-grade service, powered by its proprietary AI system, WanderOS. With over 1,000 properties already live and a Net Promoter Score of 85, Wander aims to scale toward 300,000 homes globally, offering a trusted and seamless experience for travelers and property owners alike. - learn more
                        • Clocktower Technology Ventures and Overture VC participated in GridCARE’s $13.5M seed funding round, supporting the company's mission to address the growing power demands of AI infrastructure. GridCARE utilizes advanced AI to identify and unlock underutilized grid capacity, significantly reducing the time required to power data centers from several years to just 6–12 months. By bridging the gap between AI developers and utility providers, GridCARE aims to accelerate the deployment of AI technologies while enhancing energy resilience. - learn more
                        • Clocktower Technology Ventures participated in Monarch Money’s $75M Series B funding round, reaffirming its support for the personal finance platform's mission to enhance financial wellness for households. Monarch offers tools for aggregating financial accounts, visualizing net worth, tracking budgets, and collaborating with partners or advisors. The new funding will enable Monarch to expand its team and further develop its platform to better serve its growing user base. - learn more

                          LA Exits

                          • TinyWins, the LA-based digital creative studio known for blending emotional storytelling with performance-driven content, has been acquired by marketing consultancy The Shipyard.Best known for its work with brands like Disney, Netflix, and Google, TinyWins will continue to operate under its own name and leadership in Los Angeles. The acquisition gives TinyWins access to deeper strategic and media resources, while The Shipyard expands its creative firepower and strengthens its presence on the West Coast. - learn more
                          • Churchill Management Group has been acquired by Focus Partners Wealth, marking the firm’s first external acquisition since its January rebrand. The Los Angeles-based investment advisor manages $9.4 billion in assets and will expand Focus’s national footprint in wealth management. - learn more
                          • Dolby Theatre, renowned for hosting the Academy Awards, has been acquired by Master Investment Group in partnership with Jebs Hollywood. The new ownership plans to introduce a series of events celebrating Middle Eastern culture, aiming to showcase the region's rich heritage, music, and traditions. This initiative seeks to foster community engagement and promote cultural exchange by bringing diverse artistic expressions from the Middle East to a global audience. - learn more

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                                VC Giants Back LA Defense Tech Startup

                                🔦 Spotlight

                                Hello Los Angeles, and happy Friday!

                                Memorial Day Weekend is finally here, and it seems even PCH got the memo, just in time for those coastal drives to kick off summer, traffic jams included. Speaking of navigation, El Segundo based startup CX2 has charted its own impressive course this week, securing $31 million in a Series A round led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, and Pax Ventures, to boost its mission in electronic warfare.

                                Electronic warfare (EW), for those of us who aren't regulars at the Pentagon, involves the tactical use of electromagnetic energy to control the spectrum, essentially jamming or confusing enemy communications and radar systems. CX2 was founded by a diverse and experienced group: Nathan Mintz, who brings deep expertise in defense technology from previous ventures such as Epirus and Spartan; Mark Trefgarne, a software entrepreneur known for a successful acquisition by Meta; Lee Thompson, an expert RF engineer previously with SpaceX; and Porter Smith, whose practical insights stem from his background as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot and subsequent experience as an investor.

                                The new funds will help CX2 scale its team and accelerate the development of advanced tools, including autonomous drones and specialized signals-intelligence systems. These innovations promise precision interference without collateral disruptions, addressing critical defense capability gaps identified by industry experts.

                                With tensions escalating globally, there's big demand for next-gen defense solutions, and CX2’s technology positions them as a major player in shaping future electronic battlespaces.

                                Dive deeper into the details and check out this week's roundup of LA’s venture deals and acquisitions below.

                                Here's to a weekend filled with sunshine, clear roads (fingers crossed), and tech that keeps pushing boundaries!

                                🤝 Venture Deals

                                LA Companies

                                • Axle Health, founded by former Uber execs, raised $10M in Gaa Series A round led by F-Prime Capital to expand its AI-powered logistics platform for home healthcare. The software streamlines scheduling, routing, and patient engagement, and is now used by major health systems and agencies across all 50 states. The company has seen 10x revenue growth over the past year. - learn more
                                • Promise, a generative AI studio based in Venice, California, has secured a strategic investment from Google's AI Futures Fund, alongside contributions from The North Road Company, and others. This funding will support Promise's integration of advanced AI technologies into its proprietary production platform, MUSE, and facilitate collaborations with Google's DeepMind researchers to push the boundaries of AI-driven storytelling. The studio plans to commence production on its first feature-length film this year, marking a significant step in its mission to blend human creativity with cutting-edge AI tools in filmmaking. - learn more
                                • Final Boss Sour, a Los Angeles-based snack brand blending gaming nostalgia with sour fruit treats, raised $4M in a Seed 2 round. The funds will go toward expanding distribution, product innovation, and creator partnerships. The company also launched a new tropical sampler box featuring real fruit flavors like mango, pineapple, and kiwi. - learn more
                                • VUZ, a UAE-based immersive media platform, raised $12M in a pre-Series C round led by the International Finance Corporation with participation from CrossWork.us, among others, to fuel global expansion and enhance its AI-powered streaming experiences. The funding brings its total raised to over $35M and will support growth across the U.S., Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. VUZ, now EBITDA positive, hosts 30,000+ hours of immersive content and has exclusive deals with leagues like LaLiga and Serie A. - learn more

                                    LA Venture Funds

                                    • B Capital co-led Data Sutram's $9M Series A funding round, supporting the company's expansion of its AI-driven fraud detection platform into sectors like cryptocurrency, gaming, and insurance. The investment will also aid in strengthening Data Sutram's AI capabilities and facilitating its international growth into markets such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia. - learn more
                                    • Upfront Ventures led Clair's $23.2M Series B funding round, reinforcing its commitment to the fintech startup it initially backed during the seed stage. Clair provides embedded earned wage access (EWA) solutions, allowing employees to access their earnings instantly through integrations with payroll and workforce management platforms like Gusto and TriNet. The new funding will support Clair's expansion across more than 29,000 business locations and enhance its partnerships with additional HR and payroll providers. - learn more
                                    • Rebel Fund participated in Keep's recent C$108M funding round, supporting the Toronto-based fintech's mission to modernize small business banking in Canada. Keep offers an all-in-one financial platform tailored to Canadian small businesses, addressing challenges like outdated systems and limited access to credit. The funding will help Keep expand its services, which include business credit cards, expense tracking, and multi-currency accounts, to more entrepreneurs across the country. - learn more
                                    • MarcyPen Capital Partners participated in SparkCharge's $30.5M funding round, supporting the expansion of its mobile, off-grid EV charging services across North America. This investment will help SparkCharge scale its Charging-as-a-Service model, enabling fleets to adopt electric vehicles without the need for permanent infrastructure. - learn more
                                    • Matter Venture Partners participated in Biostate AI's $12M Series A funding round, supporting the Houston-based startup's mission to revolutionize molecular diagnostics through affordable RNA sequencing and generative AI. Biostate AI aims to build a comprehensive RNA sequencing dataset to train AI models capable of predicting disease progression and treatment responses, thereby advancing precision medicine. - learn more
                                    • Prototype Capital participated in Sensmore's €6.5M funding round, supporting the German robotics startup's mission to retrofit heavy machinery with AI-driven automation. Sensmore's technology enables real-time automation of complex tasks in industries like construction and mining. The investment will help expand Sensmore's Physical AI platform, enhancing productivity and safety in industrial operations. - learn more

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