"There's not too many times in life that you get to do what you love and cultivate your leadership prowess," she said.
Her company uses AI and algorithms to analyze data collected by satellites and aerial drones in real time.
Nieman said she learned from her past roles at in business development and strategic partnership at tech startup companies There, she said, she soaked up as much as she could and learned a lot about fundraising. She tried several companies before landing on Toucan, her first venture-backed company.
"Tapping the best people to come on board first was the key to unlock," she said. "That's how we attracted investment, our first check."
Watch the full discussion below, and sign up for our newsletter to get notified about the latest dot.LA events.
Female Founders Stories: featuring Slingshot Aerospace & Toucanwww.youtube.com
Melanie Stricklan, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer
Melanie Stricklan, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer
In 2016, Melanie Stricklan combined her military experience and indomitable spirit to co-found Slingshot Aerospace, a situational intelligence company that applies advanced analytics and computer vision to earth and space data, empowering customers with clarity in complex environments. Today, she is the company's Chief Strategy Officer where she leads the strategic vision and growth strategy. Having proudly served in the United States Air Force for 21 years, Melanie possesses a unique blend of leadership and technical expertise that enables her to create and execute winning business and product strategies.
She was named the 2019 Entrepreneur of the Year for El Segundo, California, and named one of Inc. Magazine's 2019 Top 100 Female Founders in the United States. Melanie was named a Techstars All Star mentor, a recognition from her peers within the prestigious aerospace accelerator for her gold standard of mentorship. A trailblazer in the industry, Melanie frequently speaks at conferences about the value of situational intelligence and advancing space awareness, and hosted a TED Talk discussing how images from space help us protect earth. She is a champion for STEM initiatives, and enjoys inspiring youth to challenge themselves and pursue their dreams.
Taylor Nieman, Co-Founder and CEO of Toucan
Taylor Nieman, Co-Founder and CEO of Toucan
Taylor Nieman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Toucan (jointoucan.com), a platform that helps people learn new things as they go about their day browsing the web. Right now, Toucan will teach new languages, such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and German. Within a year, Toucan raised close to $3 million from Investors including Wonder Ventures, GSV, and Golden Ventures. Prior to building Toucan, Taylor joined many notable startups and helped scale them from Seed to Series B, including Headspace and Fair. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Taylor is a graduate of Cornell University.
Kelly O'Grady, Chief Host & Correspondent at dot.LA
Kelly O'Grady, Chief Host & Correspondent at dot.LA
Kelly O'Grady is dot.LA's chief host & correspondent. Kelly serves as dot.LA's on-air talent, and is responsible for designing and executing all video efforts. A former management consultant for McKinsey, and TV reporter for NESN, she also served on Disney's Corporate Strategy team, focusing on M&A and the company's direct-to-consumer streaming efforts. Kelly holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. A Boston native, Kelly spent a year as Miss Massachusetts USA, and can be found supporting her beloved Patriots every Sunday come football season.
From Your Site Articles
- 'Female Founders Stories' Event: WeeCare and DropLabs - dot.LA ›
- Slingshot Aerospace Melanie Stricklan on Aerospace's Future - dot.LA ›
- Slingshot Aerospace Co-Founder Melanie Stricklan Named CEO - dot.LA ›
- Gen. Susan Helms & Melanie Stricklan Are Diversifying Space - dot.LA ›
- Toucan Language-Learning App Raises $4.5 Million - dot.LA ›
- Slingshot Aerospace Raises $40 M to Expand Telescope Network - dot.LA ›
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annie@dot.la
Perelel, a doctor founded, research backed supplement company for women, just raised 27 million dollars in growth funding led by Prelude Growth Partners, with existing investors including Unilever Ventures, Willow Growth Partners and Selva Ventures coming back in. Co founded by CEO Victoria Thain Gioia, who comes from a background in finance and operating roles at consumer brands, former media executive Alex Taylor, and OB GYN Dr. Banafsheh Bayati, the company has spent the last five years quietly building a profitable business that has doubled revenue year over year and has some of the strongest subscriber retention in its category.
Image Source: Perelel
The wellness aisle is crowded with influencer brands and one size fits all multivitamins. Perelel is trying to be the adult in the room. The team designs products with OB GYN input, clinical backing and formulas tailored to specific chapters of a woman’s hormonal life, from fertility and pregnancy to postpartum, perimenopause and beyond. Most of its line now carries a Clean Label Project Purity Award, which is a polite way of saying they’re willing to have someone else check what’s actually in the bottle.
This round is less about a splashy launch and more about upgrading the cap table and the support system. The founders used the raise to buy out early angel investors and bring in Prelude Growth, a women-founded firm with a track record in modern consumer health and beauty. The new capital is aimed at deeper research, more life stage specific products and broader distribution rather than chasing the trend of the month.
In a category that has historically treated women’s health as an afterthought, a clinically serious, women led company raising growth capital to build a full lifecycle platform feels like a meaningful data point. Scroll down for this week’s LA venture deals, funds and acquisitions.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Venture Funds
- Anthos Capital participated in Kalshi’s new $1B funding round, which values the CFTC-regulated prediction market platform at $11B and was led by returning investors Sequoia Capital and CapitalG alongside Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm and Neo. The capital will help Kalshi scale its event-contracts exchange, expand beyond politics into areas like macro data and business events, and compete more aggressively with rival prediction platforms as institutional and retail interest in trading real-world outcomes grows. - learn more
- UP Partners participated in Point One Navigation’s $35M Series C round, backing the San Francisco-based precise location startup alongside lead investor Khosla Ventures and fellow existing investors IA Ventures and Alumni Ventures. The company provides centimeter-level GNSS correction and positioning services for “physical AI” applications like autonomous vehicles, robots and smart equipment, and plans to use the new funding to expand its Polaris RTK network, enhance its location platform and grow its team across R&D, OEM integrations and international operations. - learn more
- Embark Ventures participated in QSimulate’s latest seed financing, which brings the Boston-based quantum simulation startup’s total funding to just over $11M. The company also launched QUELO v2.3, a new generation of its quantum-powered drug discovery platform that uses real-time quantum mechanics to model drug–protein interactions far faster than traditional methods, and it plans to use the capital to scale operations and support growing collaborations with major pharma and tech partners. - learn more
- Cultivate Next, Chipotle Mexican Grill’s venture fund, participated in Athian’s $4M Series A round, backing the Indianapolis-based startup alongside Ajinomoto Group Ventures, Mondelēz International’s Sustainable Futures platform and a roster of existing strategic investors from across the livestock and food value chain. Athian, founded in 2022, operates a platform that aggregates, verifies and monetizes on-farm greenhouse gas reductions so food brands can hit their Scope 3 climate targets, and it says it has already facilitated $18M in payments to farmers as it expands its protocols, species coverage and international footprint. - learn more
- Fika Ventures joined Coverbase’s $16M Series A as a returning investor from the seed round, backing the company alongside lead investor Canapi Ventures and others. The San Francisco based startup uses AI agents to automate vendor procurement and third-party risk review for regulated enterprises, serving customers like Coinbase, Okta and Nationwide, and the new funding will help it expand into contract management, continuous security monitoring and a larger go-to-market team. - learn more
- BroadLight Capital and HeartBeat Ventures are among the investors backing Function Health’s $298M Series B round, which values the company at $2.5B and supports its push to become a new standard in proactive, data-driven healthcare. The Austin-based startup offers a membership platform that combines extensive lab testing with AI to help people track and manage their health, and it’s using the new capital to launch its Medical Intelligence Lab, an initiative aimed at turning that data into personalized medical insights at scale. - learn more
- Hallwood Media joined Menlo Ventures and other investors in Suno’s $250M Series C round, which values the AI music startup at $2.45B. The Cambridge based company lets users generate fully produced songs from text prompts and is using the new funding to expand tools like its Suno Studio workstation and next-generation music models, even as it navigates high-profile copyright lawsuits from major record labels. - learn more
- Upfront Ventures joined the $7M seed round for alphaXiv, investing alongside co-leads Menlo Ventures and Haystack, plus Shakti VC, Conviction Embed and several high-profile angels. The San Francisco based company runs a platform that helps AI practitioners and researchers discover, compare and apply cutting-edge AI papers, benchmarks and implementations, and it plans to use the new funding to further bridge the gap between fast-moving AI research and real-world production deployments. - learn more
- Regeneration.vc joined TULU’s $37M Series A extension as an existing investor, backing the company alongside GreenSoil PropTech Ventures, Bosch Ventures, New Era Capital Partners and others. TULU runs an AI powered product access platform that installs shared, IoT enabled units inside residential and commercial buildings so residents can rent or buy items like appliances, e scooters and household essentials on demand, and the new funding will help the company scale its “TULU Brain” data engine and expand its footprint beyond the 500,000 residents it already serves across North America and Europe. - learn more
- WndrCo has joined Method Security’s $26M combined seed and Series A round, alongside Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Blackstone Innovations and others. The startup, which operates out of New York and Washington DC, is building an autonomous cyber platform that combines offensive and defensive tools into a digital twin of an organization, helping US government agencies, the Department of Defense and large enterprises continuously test and strengthen their defenses against AI driven threats, a thesis that fits neatly with WndrCo’s focus on infrastructure and security. - learn more
- Coral Tree Partners has led a new Series B round for KERV.ai, backing the Austin based company as it scales its AI-powered contextual commerce and video advertising platform. The funding will be used to invest in R&D, technology, talent and infrastructure so KERV.ai can further expand its interactive, shoppable video solutions and first-party data targeting tools for brands, agencies and publishers, while pushing into new markets and strategic partnerships. - learn more
- CIM Group and Group 11 are backing Venn’s new $52M Series B, with CIM co-leading the round alongside NOA and Group 11 re-upping as an existing investor. The New York and Tel Aviv based company builds an operating system for multifamily housing that unifies data and workflows so landlords and operators can run buildings more efficiently and treat them like modern consumer brands. Over the last 18 months, Venn says it has expanded across dozens of U.S. states, partnered with hundreds of owners and operators, and grown annual recurring revenue ninefold, setting up this round to fuel further product development and market expansion. - learn more
- Walkabout Ventures led Barker’s $3.5M seed round, backing the New York based fintech as it builds warrantied AI valuations for illiquid, hard-to-price assets in asset-backed lending. Barker’s platform uses an “agentic valuation system” and insurance from Munich Re to warranty its AI-generated prices on assets like aircraft, equipment, art and GPUs, so lenders are protected if the collateral ultimately sells for less than the model predicted, and the new funding will help the company expand into more asset classes and deepen partnerships across banks and private lenders. - learn more
- Freeflow Ventures joined Erg Bio’s $6.5M seed round, investing alongside lead Azolla Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, Plug and Play and other strategic backers. Erg Bio is developing its Aspire platform, a flexible, low-temperature pretreatment and catalytic process that turns agricultural and forestry waste into intermediates for synthetic aviation fuel and critical biobased chemicals, and the new capital will help scale the technology, expand engineering and bioprocessing teams, and move toward pilot-scale demos. - learn more
- Pinegrove Venture Partners participated in Ramp’s new $300M financing round, joining Lightspeed Venture Partners and a long list of existing and new backers as the company’s valuation hit $32B. The New York based spend management and corporate card platform now generates over $1B in annualized revenue, serves more than 50,000 business customers and processes upwards of $100B in annual purchase volume, and this fresh capital will support continued product expansion and enterprise growth. - learn more
- Alexandria Venture Investments and B Capital joined Solve Therapeutics’ new $120M financing round, backing the San Diego based biotech alongside lead investor Yosemite and a broader syndicate that includes Merck & Co. and other life sciences funds. The company is developing next-generation antibody-drug conjugates for solid tumors using its proprietary CloakLink linker platform, and it plans to use the capital to advance its lead programs SLV-154 and SLV-324 through Phase 1b trials and further build out its ADC and diagnostics pipeline. - learn more
- Factorial Funds joined Sakana AI’s $135M Series B round, backing the Tokyo-based startup as it doubles down on building efficient, Japan-focused AI models rather than chasing ever-larger, compute-heavy systems. The financing, which values Sakana at about $2.65B, will help expand its “sustainable AI” research and grow its team as it rolls out sovereign, culturally tailored AI solutions for Japanese enterprises and sectors like finance, manufacturing, and government. - learn more
- Smash Capital joined AVP and other investors in backing Flatpay’s latest round, which raised roughly €145–170M and crowned the Danish SMB payments startup as Europe’s newest fintech unicorn at around a €1.5B valuation. The company, which offers flat-rate card terminals and POS systems for small merchants, has scaled to roughly 60,000 customers and over €100M in ARR, and will use the fresh capital to accelerate European expansion, deepen its product stack and significantly grow headcount. - learn more
- Fusion joined No Barrier’s oversubscribed $2.7M seed round, investing alongside lead backers A-Squared Ventures, Esplanade Ventures and Rock Health Capital to scale the company’s AI-first approach to medical interpretation. The San Francisco based startup integrates real-time, HIPAA-compliant language interpretation into hospital systems and EHRs across 40+ languages, and will use the new funding to expand deployment across U.S. care settings and further reduce health disparities for patients with limited English proficiency. - learn more
- Matter Venture Partners joined Vertex Ventures and other global investors in backing Ruochuang Technology’s Pre A round, which totals tens of millions of dollars to fuel the company’s next stage of growth. The startup develops low speed robotics and related IoT hardware, spanning technology R and D, device manufacturing and sales, and this new capital will help it deepen intelligent hardware research and expand its market footprint as demand for smart manufacturing and IoT applications accelerates. - learn more
- B Capital joined Shipday’s $7M Series A as a participating investor, re-upping after leading the company’s 2023 seed round and backing the Menlo Park–based startup alongside co-leads ECP Growth and Ibex Investors. Shipday provides an AI-powered last-mile delivery and logistics platform for SMBs like restaurants and local retailers, and it plans to use the new funding to build out features such as its AgentFlow automation engine, deepen integrations, and expand its global reach beyond the 5,000 businesses it already serves in 100+ countries. - learn more
- MANTIS Venture Capital participated in Bedrock Data’s $25M Series A round, joining lead investor Greylock Partners alongside Mangusta Capital, Pier 88 Investment Partners and others to back the Menlo Park based data security startup. Bedrock Data provides an AI-native, data-centric security and governance platform powered by its “Metadata Lake,” and it plans to use the new funding to accelerate product development and expand go-to-market efforts as enterprises look to secure data across cloud, SaaS and AI systems at multi-petabyte scale. - learn more
- TenOneTen Ventures and Wedbush Ventures joined Meadow AI’s $6M in total funding, including a $4.5M seed round they backed alongside co-lead Leadout Ventures and other investors. The Seattle-based startup is emerging from stealth with a multimodal AI platform that helps restaurants and retailers monitor real-time operations and automate “secret shopper” audits across 10–300-location chains, already driving more than $2.5M in contracted ARR as it targets further growth in physical retail. - learn more
LA Exits
- Neotech, a long-time provider of high-reliability electronic manufacturing services, has been acquired by private equity firm Arkview Capital in a deal that marks a major new chapter for the company. With Arkview as its new owner, Neotech plans to strengthen its balance sheet, invest in next-generation manufacturing, and expand its capabilities across core markets like defense, aerospace, medical and industrial electronics, while continuing to emphasize quality, reliability and customer service. - learn more