Work doesn’t work as well as it could. Dust, an AI-native platform built to augment human workflows is here to improve all our work days.

Here at XYZ, we partner with founders who care about tech-forgotten industries, who have audacious goals for improving the lived experiences of their users. In the case of Parrot, founders Eric and Bryan Baum, along with CEO Aaron O’Brien, have identified an overlooked process in the legal and insurance landscape that needed an overhaul: depositions.

Here at XYZ, we have a belief that certain networks attract exceptional talent and help shape the trajectory of an entrepreneur's journey. Dorm Room Fund is one of those networks — a collection of undergrads, MBAs, and graduate student investors who source and invest in their student peers’ companies. We first me Hillary Bush while she was an investor at Dorm Room Fund (while also maintaining a freelancing business and working at a VC firm). Hillary immediately impressed us with her intellectual curiosity and bias towards action.

Since the Pre-seed round, we have been a part of Manifest’s journey. We are excited to continue the capital partnership as part of their $4.5M Seed funding led by First Round Capital.

We are firm believers in the Entrepreneur in Residence model and love having a front row seat to a company’s formation. Through our EIR program, we partner with future founders to do primary research to unearth a unique insight to a problem

There are well known mafias in every industry. For technology, the most notable one is the “Paypal mafia”, for hedge funds, the “Tiger Cubs”, for entertainment the Mickey Mouse Club comes to mind. These alumni groups have seen greatness before in their industries and take those hard-earned lessons and apply those skills to new problems and opportunities.

Banks are entrusted with people’s life savings. Insurance companies are entrusted with upholding committed terms when disaster strikes. Perhaps most important, health care providers are entrusted with millions of lives.

We’re honored to have been investors since its inception and we’re proud to continue this capital partnership as part of their $25M Series A funding round led by our good friends over at Norwest and B Capital.

Carbon emissions is the new, essential business metric. In the not so distant future, banks will use GHG emissions data in their underwriting process, employees will choose to work for companies based on it, and shareholders will hold companies accountable to it.

We’re excited to be concentrating even more dollars into Sardine’s Series B financing alongside our dear friend, Alex Immerman, at Andreessen Horowitz Growth!

_{Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash}

When I left New York in 2013 to join First Round in the SF office, the NY tech scene still felt intimate and nascent. Before my NYC departure, I was working at WIRED and I made it my job to get to know the companies that were defining Silicon Alley.

This isn’t just another “startup born from the pandemic post” – it is about the pandemic. Still, two years later, we saw powerful institutions fail to deliver care. Auxilius is helping biotechs step in.

Today, we are thrilled to announce two exciting team updates at XYZ, JeanClaude Dorsainvil has been promoted to the role of Associate and Mars Garza will embark on her new role as an Entrepreneur in Residence.

We all have to re-learn how to live with the cost of capital — money isn’t free anymore.

Clearly, collaboration is our thing. Many of our investments center around enabling teams to get more quality work done together and faster. LottieFiles is no exception, democratizing access to best in class motion design and graphics animation.

Over the past two years, we’ve needed more real-time collaboration, knowledge capture, and seamless room transitions. That’s why we’re excited to tell you about Switchboard.

We’re privileged to work with operators who have been knee deep in their industries for decades – Sardine’s team is no exception with years of executive experience at top fintech companies like Coinbase, Revolut, Google Pay, Bolt, and PayPal. This made it a no-brainer to partner with CEO Soups Ranjan and his team at the earliest stages of company building.

We’re passionate about the formation stage of company building. That’s why we’ve loved having a ringside seat to the work Andrew and Praveen have done building Ascend since they first conceived of modernizing insurance payments.

We deeply believe in the Earned Wage Access mission and that’s why it has been such a joy to work so closely with the team over at Refyne, India’s first & largest EWA.

As always, here at XYZ we value insight and experience. It is not lost on us that the importance of these two qualities is nowhere more apparent than the frontlines. That is why we are proud to partner with TurbineOne, the frontline perception company.