One Way Ventures

🎉 One Way Ventures has invested in AI edtech startup Buddy.ai's impressive $11M seed round! TechCrunch covered the raise in the article below. One Way first backed Buddy’s first conversational AI tutor for children in 2017. Since then, it’s taken the world by storm. Buddy is the most popular kids #language app globally, reaching over 20M students a year. In 2023, the platform saw 90%+ YOY growth in annual users, and 93% YOY growth in monthly recurring revenue. Buddy was launched by founder Ivan Crewkov after he moved with his family from Siberia to the United States, and saw his young daughter struggle to learn English. So, Ivan built a fully virtual #AI powered tutor that children can actually converse with. Ivan’s daughter became an avid Buddy user. With over 25,000 hours of children’s speech in their dataset, Buddy’s Speech Recognition (BSR) technology outperforms Google and other off-the-shelf speech recognition systems when used by children. It is COPPA compliant and fine-tuned to understand children’s accented voices. We look forward to seeing Buddy develop the gaming and world-building elements of the app, and expand partnerships with schools. 💡 See our post on *Why we invested* below! Congrats team! TechCrunch 👉 https://lnkd.in/dXhR6kGs #seed #seedround #edtech #edutech #AIedtech #languagelearning #tutor #AItutor

🔝 It’s fantastic to see our portco BRELYON recognized by TIME as one of The 200 Best Inventions of 2024! Brelyon's futuristic desktop monitors provide virtual reality-like immersive experiences, without the headset. See them 1st on the list 👉 https://lnkd.in/ekZTJCpd

🎉 Our portfolio company Tabs has raised an impressive $25M Series A led by General Catalyst in a highly competitive round, only months after it came out of stealth mode in April 2024 with a $7M Seed. Tabs is the world’s first AI revenue automation platform. They’re answering a longstanding problem for B2B - actually getting money into their pockets is a messy process, with 50% of invoices not being paid on time. That’s because traditional #B2B finance software is fragmented and inefficient. Solution: Tabs uses AI to run a company's entire #revenue lifecycle on a single platform - including billing, receivables, payments, revenue recognition and reporting. By fully automating the complex revenue lifecycle, Tabs saves hundreds of human hours a year, and gets money through the door faster. Congrats on this huge milestone! If anyone wants to hear more about the product, reach out to Ali Hussain and Deepak Bapat. Links to the announcement in the comments. #seriesA #revenuelifecycle #revenueautomation #automation #B2Bautomation

NBC Boston Stations just featured our Founding Partner Semyon Dukach in a story about how giving foreign students permits to remain in the country could benefit #Boston and the United States. The hypothetical policy would enable the US to retain #talent, and greatly benefit #startup creation and innovation. #Immigrants have founded 55% of all US unicorns and 65% of top AI startups. 70% of students in AI-related fields are international students. See the article here 👉 https://lnkd.in/d4TsMYFS #international #internationalstudents #UScolleges #foreigntalent

Last week, Leonardo Arango took to the main stage at RAISE Global Summit to present our VC fund to a conference of GPs and LPs. Out of nearly 900 funds, One Way Ventures was one of just 24 GPs to present their organization on the main stage. Leo showcased why #immigrant entrepreneurs are an overachieving cohort, and why supporting them - even when others won’t - is a mission that all our partners hold dear. During his presentation, Leo speculated with the crowd on who would win the US election. Whatever happens 1 week from now, we know that the next US president will be the child of immigrants. That’s something we should be proud of as a nation built by immigrants, but that at times denies just how integral immigrants continue to be to the fabric of the United States. If you want to get to know One Way and the community we’re building, reach out. #immigrantentrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #VC #VCimpact

Big Think has just published an interview with Semyon Dukach on the nuances of “founder mode,” the risks of nano-management, and Elon Musk’s controversial leadership style. We’re proud to be featured alongside some of the world’s most prominent brains in science and business in this nearly 20-year strong magazine. Give it a read if you’re interested in 🔃 how a founder’s role must transform once the startup begins to scale … (and how it should stay the same) ⚖️ balancing your instinct for control vs. letting go 🙋🏽♂️ the vital importance of the #recruitment process. Q&A here https://lnkd.in/d9akXXsb #entrepreneurship #leadership #management #founder

Fortune recently asked our Founding Partner Semyon Dukach to share his personal story with them. The resulting op-ed gives a more intimate insight as to why Semyon (and all of us at One Way Ventures) so firmly believe that immigrants are the obvious choice for investors. Semyon talks about fleeing the USSR, coming to the US as a child refugee, and the unconventional twists and turns his life has since taken. He explores his realization that not “fitting in” is a hidden super power. That some people in business are able to come in from the outside and, for that very reason, take their vision to phenomenal heights. One Way Ventures has proved as much over the years: Our 2018 Fund I is up 2.5x on paper with a lot of upside still ahead. Our portfolio is 56% founded by minorities, which is way above the industry. Semyon and our other immigrant partners have brought together a widespread community of people with extraordinary life stories across borders. We’re proud to be part of a network that is committed to seeking out the most resilient and stubbornly ambitious founders out there. 👉 https://lnkd.in/dA3nhx2Q #immigrantfounders #immigration #VC #diversity #immigrantentrepreneurship #immigrants

⭐ We’re excited to share that One Way Ventures was selected as one of 24 GPs presenting at RAISE Global Summit - one of the best GP-LP events of the year! We were chosen from over 900 GPs to showcase our fund and our thesis that immigrant entrepreneurs make the best founders. Our partner Leonardo Arango will be on the main stage - he’s One Way’s fintech wizz, Forbes’ 30 under 30, and an advocate for increasing Latino/a presence in VC with SomosVC. We’re looking forward to meeting top LPs, GPs and business leaders at his hotly anticipated event! If you’re at the event in San Francisco later this month, reach out to Leo - we’d love to tell you more about our fund’s unique mission. https://lnkd.in/e-_fWYRp #RAISEGlobalSummit #VentureCapital #EmergingManagers #VC #immigrantentrepreneurs

SO thrilled to share that I'll be joining as a mentor for the Yale Entrepreneurial Society! I get so energized talking to aspiring entrepreneurs - can't wait for this.

🎉 Series A fundraise alert! Corvus Robotics has just announced their latest raise, bringing their series A and seed up to $18M to power their fully autonomous inventory management robots. Corvus Robotics is the only autonomous, infrastructure- and human- free system of its kind. Its drones execute real-time, accurate #inventory tracking and navigate using an AI world model. 🌙 The team is also announcing the new Corvus One upgrade, which can operate in a lights-out environment without added infrastructure like reflectors or beacons. Meaning it can operate through day and night shifts to boost operational efficiency. We invested in Corvus Robotics’ pre-seed in 2020. Since then, they can boast the following: 👷🏽♀️ 10x labor productivity  📉 Hundreds of thousands of $$$ in labor savings ✅ 99.9% inventory accuracy 🤖 Robot as a Service (RaaS) model with free future upgrades to hardware and software 🤏 Ability to operate in aisles as small as 50 inch wide 💾 Optional warehouse management system (WMS) integration Users have called its ability to “run inventory checks 24/7 without operator assistance” a “game changer.” This latest raise was led by S2G Ventures and Spero Ventures. Reach out to the Corvus Robotics team to hear more! #warehousemanagement #inventorymanagement #logistics #warehouselogistics #RaaS #warehouserobotics #robotics #drone