A Lightweight LLM Experimentation Platform and Social Commerce's New Frontier
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Welcome to another edition ofOpen Scout, where we showcase the most exciting early-stage startups, job openings, and valuable resources, all in a single newsletter.
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Startup Spotlight
Freeplay
What? - Prompt engineering, testing & evaluation tools for your whole team.
Why? - When software teams start building with large language models (LLMs), they quickly realize they need new tools to ship production-ready software. And they need more than just 'developer tools,' since the whole team’s getting involved.
Developers play a key role in integrating LLMs into existing software. But product managers, designers, and other domain experts are increasingly involved in prompt engineering and QA too. They crave the freedom to experiment, without distracting engineers — especially when code needs to run to generate realistic test results. And everyone involved is eager to find faster & less-manual ways to test, and to make sure their systems are improving (not regressing) as they iterate.
Freeplay is a lightweight, flexible platform that lets product managers, designers, domain experts, and developers collaboratively experiment, test and deploy LLM-powered features in their software.
Founded: 2022, Boulder, Colorado
By: Ian Cairns (CEO) - VP of Product @ Firstbase (backed by A16Z), Director of Product (Developer Platform) @ Twitter; Eric Ryan (CTO) - VP of Engineering @ MainStreet (backed by SignalFire, Gradient Ventures), Senior Director of Engineering @ Twitter.
Industries: AI, Developer Tools
Stage: Pre-seed
Funding (public source): US$ 3.3M Pre-seed
Investors: Conviction Ventures, Matchstick Ventures, Exponent Founders Capital
Bandit
What? - Bandit is a social commerce app enabling consumers to buy directly from loved brands (or as close as they'll let us in), in groups. Unbeatable deals (think B2B prices) to consumers, better earnings for producers.
Why? - The concept behind Bandit is straightforward: it aims to ensure that those who create the products receive a larger share of the profits. By reducing the involvement of middlemen who simply facilitate the movement of goods, Bandit strives to offer better prices to consumers.
Statistically speaking, social commerce will be two trillion USD in the US by 2025. And that’s just the US we’re talking about! The future of social commerce is also booming in other countries and regions, including China as well as European and Asian nations.
Founded: 2022 in Norway
By: Markuss Rozins, CEO - ex-Product Owner @ Quickorder; Espen Myklebust, COO - Owner @ Foundraisr, ex-Management Consultant @ PwC; Lasse C. Smedsvig - Co-founder and Partner @ Askeladden & Co; Petter Samuelsen (CTO) - ex-WeWork, Bekk (Coinbase app); Tim Nilo (CMO) - Awarded as Norway’s best marketer 2022.
Industries: Social commerce
Stage: Pre-seed
Funding (public source): N/A
Investors: N/A
Which early-stage startup should we feature next? Send us a reply. (Criteria: Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A startups)
Funding
Daedalus, a Karlsruhe, Germany-brd company using AI to build precision parts factories, raised $21 million in Series A funding. NGP Capital led the round and was joined by Addition and Khosla Ventures.
Polycam, a San Francisco-brd 3D image creation tool for smartphones, raised $18 million in Series A funding. Left Lane Capital and Adjacent led the round and was joined by AdobeVentures and angel investors.
Jow, a Paris, France-brd personal grocery shopping platform, raised $13 million in a Series A extension. Northzone led the round and was joined by existing investor Eurazeo.
Code, a Waterloo, Calif.-brd micropayments platform, raised $6.5 million in seed funding. M13 led the round and was joined by Union Square Ventures.
GalileoAI, a San Francisco-brd generative AI tool designed to turn text prompts into user interface designs, raised $4.4 million in seed funding. KhoslaVentures led the round and was joined by angel investors.
Elemind, a Cambridge, Mass.-brd developer of wearable neurotechnology designed to improve the user’s health, raised $12 million in seed funding from VillageGlobal, LDV Partners, Embark Ventures, E14 Fund, and others.
Dexa, a New York City-brd AI-powered search engine designed for users to search for specific parts of podcasts and videos, raised $6 million in seed funding. Abstract Ventures and The General Partnership led the round and were joined by Maple VC and others.
Metronome, a San Francisco-brd billing platform for software companies, raised $43 million in Series B funding. NEA led the round and was joined by existing investors a16z and General Catalyst.
Coris, a Palo Alto, Calif.-brd provider of automated underwriting and risk infrastructure software, raised $3.7 million in seed funding. Lux Capital and Exponent Founders Capital led the round and was joined by Y Combinator, Blank Ventures, and angel investors.
A little bit of news, as a treat
Cloud-native development tooling startup Weavorks is shutting down.
Threads reaches more than 130M monthly users.
Neuralink has implanted the first brain chip in a human.
Byju's seeks new funding, slashing valuation from $22B to under $2B.
How a $700k/year SaaS pivoted and found PMF a year later.
New job openings
Kumospace: Virtual office provider
Business Development Representative - Remote (US)
SMB Account Executive - Remote (US)
Mana: Research lab building an artificially intelligent investor
Full-Stack Product Engineer - Hybrid (San Francisco)*
Superpower: Platform for managing personal health
Founding Full Stack Engineer - Hybrid (San Francisco or Los Angeles)*
Magic (YC S22): Stripe for closed-loop payments
Founding Engineer - Hybrid (New York City)*
*Interested in any of these jobs? Send us a reply for more info or a referral.
That's a wrap for this week.
Thank you for sticking with us until the finish.
We're open to hearing your suggestions for future newsletter topics, so feel free to share what you're grappling with or what you'd like to see from us in upcoming editions.
Have a great week.
Kenneth ✌️
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