Seed stage investment
We are a new mission driven venture capital firm looking for compelling startups that are created by diverse founders or increase diversity. We focus on helping companies succeed by providing the mentorship and capital they need to get to the next level.
Who are we
Tomás Puig - Managing Director
Tomás Puig is a managing director at Test Kitchen Capital who currently works in San Francisco, California USA.
His experience includes growing multiple companies from single to 25%+ quarterly growth rates, building marketing organizations within companies that go from 20 to 500+ employees, scaling demand generation from zero, and building large social presences from scratch, and multiple current valuations over $500M.
His work has been featured in Fast Company, VentureBeat, Gigaom, CNET, CBS News, Network World, TechCrunch, and The Bold Italic.
Tomás' deep interest in diversity comes, in part, from his father coming over to the USA as a refugee from Cuba during the revolution.
Dale Stephens - Managing director
Dale is a managing director at Test Kitchen Capital and former founder who currently works in San Francisco, CA USA. He is a superconnector who loves to speak about the future of work and education to audiences worldwide: from TED to the New York Times--more than 250 events and counting!
In 2011 Dale became one of the first Thiel Fellows, and in 2013, Forbes named him a 30 Under 30 in Education, and Penguin published his book “Hacking Your Education. Dale is the founder of Uncollege.org (now Gap Year Global” and grew the organization to $2M in revenue.
Dale has a deep interest in diversity and is a member of several LGBTQ groups.
Marcy Swenson - Managing Director
Marcy is a managing director at Test Kitchen Capital and a founder with multiple exits. She was co-founder and VP of Engineering at Critical Path, Inc. which went public and was voted “the best-managed, fastest growing tech company” by Forbes ASAP in 1999. She is a UCLA and Stanford alumna (Math/Computer Science/AI), and earned her coaching certification from Sofia University.
For the last decade, Marcy has been a leadership coach for some of the world’s most successful tech startup founders through her company Startup Happiness.
Marcy is passionate about increasing diversity, given her experience as an LBGTQ female founder.
Investments
VINA
HEY! VINA IS tinder for (girl) Friends! Swipe right to meet new friends, join communities of people like you,. take quizzes, and read awesome articles about living your best life. "For women who travel, or have relocated to a new city,. a like-minded social circle is now quickly within reach." - the New York Times.
Olivia the CEO truly believes in the companies mission to connect women, create friendships that last, and combat the modern loneliness that eats away at mental health.
Moesif
RAVE SOCIAL
Every game publisher’s greatest asset is mobile game players and their relationships with each other. Rave Social helps publishers build experiences that connect players and leverage the connections between them in ways that add deeply to gameplay, offer a richer online experience, improve overall player experience and make the game feel more alive, resulting in more engaged audience, improved virality and greater retention.
Rave Social's CEO and founder Maggie brings a rare mix of leadership and technical expertise from Microsoft, Upsight, and U of Illinois to her team.
Union Crate
Union Crate is a SaaS platform that acts as an all-in-one supply chain platform for CPG brands. It is already used by KraftHeinz and others and has a MRR run rate.
The platform does two things:
Demand Planning & Forecasting
Union crate automates 80 to 90 percent of tedious demand planning tasks and ensures higher accuracy forecasts in a lot less time. Traditional demand planning require cross-functional teams to manually collect and analyze internal, external and 3rd party data. This process requires massive amounts of time, and resources that only lead to highly inconsistent and mediocre results. Union crate uses machine learning and data science to solve this.
Order and Data Management
Streamlines the trading of purchases orders, shipment messages and data on one platform. It allows you to easily send, receive and manage data in any format. Union Crate removes the high costs associated with EDI and frees you from the burden of managing multi-format orders and data.
The CEO Shastri is from a very diverse background and currently lives in NYC.
CONTACT US
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