A weekly roundup of must-read L.A. tech investments and acquisitions.
Quick.ly
$5.1 million
Type: Equity
Location: Pasadena
Investors: The round included Idealab
Description: Incubating at Idealab of Pasadena, Quickly is an early stage company “exploring how to help people find what they are looking for faster and more efficiently” on their mobile devices, according to a company spokeswoman, who decline to disclose much else. Founded this year, it has yet to launch a product.
Mobcrush
$4.9 million
Type: Equity
Location: Venice
Investors: Seed round included Raine Ventures, First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital, CrunchFund, Rincon Venture Partners, Crosscut Ventures, Lions Gate Entertainment, Advancit Capital, CAA Ventures, BAM Ventures and MTGx Ventures.
Description: Mobcrush’s iOS app streams video of people playing mobile games. Live video game broadcasting of another sort, on PCs, is already dominated by Twitch, purchased by Amazon.com in August for $970 million. Mobcrush is looking to duplicate that success, but on mobile phones. Related: Seed Round Streams into Mobcrush
Little Labs
$3 million
Type: Equity
Location: Venice
Investors: Round led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lowercase Capital, Crosscut Ventures and AmplifyLA. (Previously, received a small undisclosed pre-seed round from Crosscut and Amplify.)
Description: Smartwatch app developer has two smartwatch apps, “Facer,” a watch face app for Android smartwatches, and “Slots Time,” a slot machine casino game. Plans call for a few more to be released this summer. The company is part of Venice accelerator AmplifyLA and is betting that they can master the smartwatch app market. Related: Big Time for Little Labs?
Clutter
$2 million
Type: Equity
Location: Los Angeles
Investors: Round was led by Resolute Ventures, with AmplifyLA, Joanne Wilson, David Sacks, Matt Coffin, and other undisclosed investors participating.
Description: If you have stuff lying around your house, Clutter wants you to use its app to order a team of movers to pack it up and store it. When you want your stuff back, Clutter’s team will pull it out of storage and return it. Pricing based on the volume of items stored monthly.
Karma
$800,000
Type: Equity
Location: Los Angeles
Investors: Seed round led by Great Oaks Venture Capital with participation from Wildwood Capital of the United Kingdom and undisclosed angel investors.
Description: Karma has a browser extension that rates the trustworthiness of other users in peer-to-peer marketplaces. The extension, now being tested, operates on sites like Airbnb, Craigslist and eBay. The ultimate goal is to create an all-encompassing “Karma Score” for individuals that follows users from site to site.
Mucker Capital
$50 million
Type: Institutional fundraise (in process)
Location: Los Angeles
Investors: To be determined…
Description: The fund, which is focused on pre-seed and seed round investments, is led by general partners Erik Rannala and William Hsu. This will be Mucker’s third fund. Out of its prior funds, Mucker has invested in online flower marketplace Bloomnation of Santa Monica, customer loyalty analytics company Retention Science of Santa Monica and retail analytics company Bridg of Los Angeles. Related: SPECIAL REPORT: Seeding the Future
