aVenture is in Alpha: aVenture recently launched early public access to our research product. It's intended to illustrate capabilities and gather feedback from users. While in Alpha, you should expect the research data to be limited and may not yet meet our exacting standards. We've made the decision to temporarily present this information to showcase the product's potential, but you should not yet rely upon it for your investment decisions.
aVenture is in Alpha: aVenture recently launched early public access to our research product. It's intended to illustrate capabilities and gather feedback from users. While in Alpha, you should expect the research data to be limited and may not yet meet our exacting standards. We've made the decision to temporarily present this information to showcase the product's potential, but you should not yet rely upon it for your investment decisions.
© aVenture Investment Company, 2025. All rights reserved.
44 Tehama St, San Francisco, CA 94105
Privacy Policy
aVenture Investment Company ("aVenture") is an independent venture capital research platform providing detailed analysis and data on startups, venture capital investments, and key industry individuals.
While we strive to provide valuable insights with objectivity and professional diligence, we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information provided on our platform. Before making any investment decisions, you should verify the accuracy of all pertinent details for your decision.
aVenture does not offer investment advisory services and is not registered as an investment adviser. The data provided by aVenture does not constitute recommendations or advice, whether by methodology or a statement written by a staff member of aVenture.
Links to external websites do not imply endorsement or affiliation with aVenture. References or links to providers offering the ability to invest in a primary or secondary transaction in a company are for convenience purposes only. They are not solicitations or offers to buy or sell an investment. Remember that past performance does not guarantee future results, and venture capital and private assets should be a contributory part of a diversified portfolio.
From TechCrunch
By Aisha Malik
May 23, 2024
A new startup called Auggie is aiming to give parents a single platform where they can shop for products and connect with each other. The company’s new app, which launched this week, offers parents a platform where they can share product recommendations, shop vetted products and find community amongst each other to get real-time advice on different parenting matters.
Auggie was founded in August 2023 by Lily Walla, an entrepreneur who previously founded an edible branding startup called SPOTS NYC that sold to Branded Treats, a food-distributor for 1-800-Flowers.
Walla came up with the idea for Auggie when she was pregnant with her first child. She was seeking advice from the people around her to help make decisions about what stroller to purchase or which pediatrician to choose. After finding herself juggling several different spreadsheets and group chats, Walla decided to create a product that would make it easier for parents to find vetted products and get advice from other parents.
Walla decided to name the startup after her son’s birth month: August.
“Parents seek advice and product recommendations during every stage of parenting,” Walla told TechCrunch. “They prefer word of mouth recommendations. I can attest to that and I hear from parents who share similar experiences. But shopping, sharing and building community have kind of always been siloed.”
Auggie wants to solve this by connecting the dots between community and commerce for parents, both expecting and current.
The company launched a WhatsApp community in January to test out a way for parents to connect for real-time advice and the community ended up exceeding WhatsApp’s limit for members and subgroups. After seeing more than 450,000 messages and 35,000 product recommendations shared on the WhatsApp community, Auggie accelerated plans for its own app, which would be the new home for its community. The app is now available on iOS, while an Android launch is expected to come in the next few weeks.
The app aims to help parents find advice, camaraderie and practical tips as they navigate parenthood. Parents can explore topic-based spaces to dive into different discussions, from feeding to sleep to travel and more. You can also find a community based on your due date or geographical location.
The app is currently free-to-use, but the startup may explore a subscription model at some point in the future.
In March, the company launched the second part of its mission: its desktop marketplace powered by the recommendations shared by parents in its community. The marketplace currently has 10,000 products from popular brands like BabyBjörn, UPPAbaby, Skip Hop and more. In addition to products, it also features services, which means parents can use the marketplace to find pediatricians, lactation consultants, doulas and more.
The marketplace isn’t directly integrated into the mobile app, so when a user clicks on a recommended product, they are linked out to the web app. Auggie does, however, plan to integrate the marketplace into its app in the near future.
Auggie’s current business model is based on affiliate marketing, so the company earns commission on each product sold through its marketplace. As for the future, Walla says Auggie is working to diversify its business model by unlocking drop-shipping and partnering with brands.
The startup is targeting the default parent, which Walla says tends to be the mom who is sometimes overwhelmed with decision fatigue. The startup is also mainly targeting parents with children who are under five-years of age.
“Our Northstar is to filter out the noise when it comes to every stage of parenting to have content, community and commerce all in one place,” Walla said. “We’re just really focused on scaling the community, our retail partners, and just building the ecosystem of recommendations when it comes to parenting.”
Auggie raised $1.7 million in seed funding in August 2023 from NFX, Accel, Allison Stern at Mother Ventures, XFactor Ventures, and a few strategic angel investors.
Share:
Sesame, the startup behind the viral virtual assistant Maya, releases its base AI model
AI company Sesame has released the base model that powers Maya, the impressively realistic voice assistant. The model, which is 1 billion parameters in size (“parameters” referring to individual components of the model), is under an Apache 2.0 license, meaning it can be used commercially with few restrictions. Called CSM-1B, the model generates “RVQ audio codes” from text and audio inputs, according to Sesame’s description on the AI dev platform Hugging Face. RVQ refers to “residual vector quan
Mar 13, 2025
Y Combinator’s police surveillance darling Flock Safety raises $275M at $7.5B valuation
Flock Safety and one of its long-time VCs, Bedrock Capital, announced Thursday that the startup raised a fresh $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation. Flock makes computer vision-enabled video surveillance technology used by law enforcement as well as businesses, property management companies, and so on. It’s best known for its automatic license plate recognition tech, but Flock also makes gunshot detection tech marketed to schools, and recently acquired public safety drone company Aerodome.
Mar 13, 2025
Y Combinator urges the White House to support Europe’s Digital Markets Act
Y Combinator, one of the world’s most prolific startup accelerators, sent a letter on Wednesday urging the Trump administration to openly support Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a wide-ranging piece of legislation that aims to crack open Big Tech’s market power. The DMA designates six tech companies as “gatekeepers” to the internet — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft — and limits these technology kingpins from engaging in anticompetitive tactics on their platforms, in
Mar 13, 2025
Don't miss our latest news and updates. Subscribe to the newsletter