M13 is an early-stage (seed and Series A) venture capital firm that invests in visionary founders building disruptive software businesses. Established in 2016 with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, we are a full-stack partner that brings a deep bench of full-time operators to help founders outperform and build category-defining companies. Our Propulsion model helps founders execute faster and with less capital towards better outcomes, with 3x people on our Propulsion team for every one investing team member. Our portfolio includes more than 200 direct investments, with 25 exits to date. M13 has seeded seven companies and been in the Series A of five others that went on to achieve unicorn status. Messier 13 (or M13) is one of the brightest star clusters in the northern sky. It’s full of remarkable individual stars, but when those stars come together, they create something that’s truly greater than the sum of its parts—inspiring the M13 philosophy of “brighter together.” We’re proud that M13 has been awarded as a Built In Best Place to Work in both LA and NYC multiple years running.
External link for M13
1920 Olympic Blvd
Santa Monica, California 90404, US
568 Broadway
Suite #405
New York, NY 10012, US
Thanks to everyone who joined us to celebrate the new M13 office in SF! Whitney Hazard Brent Murri
M13's SF office is officially warmed!! We hosted our office warming party this week and brought together many of our closest friends and partners in the venture and startup ecosystem. So exciting to celebrate this milestone - and we're just getting started!! M13 Brent Murri Karl Alomar Win Chevapravatdumrong Abby Weisman
It's been an exciting fall at M13 🥳 ICYMI, we invested in: Allocate, an M13 co building the future of wealth creation, delivering on what the next generation of investors need and setting a new bar for access and efficiency in private markets. We were one of the first to back Allocate and are thrilled to keep building alongside this team in their Series B and beyond! Samir Kaji Hana Yang Carter Reum Sarah Tomolonius Morgan Blumberg Anything, co-founded by Marcus Lowe and Dhruv Amin. They're building the personal AI engineer enterprises need - testing apps in real environments, detecting bugs, and shipping fixes without user intervention. More in TechCrunch from Marina Temkin, CFA: https://lnkd.in/dFEfJr-H Brent Murri Daylight, co-founded by Jason Badeaux, Udit Patel, and Evan Caron to build a consumer-grade decentralized energy network that helps homeowners produce, store, and share power back to the grid. The result? Decentralized utilities that scale faster than subsidy-driven systems, leading to resilience, affordability, and ownership to millions. Read more from Christine Hall: https://lnkd.in/gWqs8Mk8 Mark Grace Estuary, building the right-time data platform for the AI era. They’re making data pipelines dependable, cost-predictable and AI-ready. Read why Karl Alomar invested: https://lnkd.in/gaGa5zqM David Yaffe Johnny Graettinger Teleskope, the startup helping CISOs sleep better at night. Their platform turns detection into action in data security - and they believe security is as human as it is technical. Fortune’s Leo Schwartz got the scoop: https://lnkd.in/eQrHCTUK Elizabeth Nammour 📸 : Teleskope team with Karl, Anything co-founders, and Allocate's Samir Kaji on stage at an Allocate event!
Congrats to the Emerge® team for delivering a breakthrough ultrasonic MEMS chip, a tiny chip with outsized impact on how we’ll interact with the world. As AI and humanoid robotics accelerate demand for higher fidelity multimodal data, it’s a big win for anyone building what comes after today’s interfaces. Digital experiences with physical nuance. Machines that can sense their environments. So many possibilities! Mauricio Teran Sylvester (sly) Spencer-Lee Isaac Castro García
That tiny speck of silicon on my fingertip is the world’s most powerful micro ultrasonic sensor. And our relentless team in Marina del Rey, California, just pulled it off. Hard to believe something so small packs so much power. This is the most challenging technical breakthrough we’ve ever tackled at Emerge. We’ve dreamed of this moment since 2016. We had no clue how hard it’d actually be, but maybe that bit of naivety kept us going. 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗠𝗘𝗠𝗦 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 MEMS are microscopic machines built on silicon wafers. The same process behind the gyroscopes, mics and accelerometers in your phone. Ultrasonic MEMS are just emerging. At Emerge, we spent years packing power into the smallest MEMS chip possible. And in the process of optimizing for the richest tactile sensations and the highest precision, we ended up creating a best-in-class ultrasonic chip—now also enabling best room-scale sensing. All patented. And here right in time for the AI and humanoid robotics race that demands ever more multimodal data. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝘃𝗼𝘁 After launching our beta and proving the experience in homes, we evolved. Today, we support companies as they integrate our technology into next-generation products. Our phones and interfaces already feel like relics. We’re helping partners reimagine devices for a future where we can 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡 and they can 𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙚: ➜ So we can physically feel: from the hands of our mother on a Zoom call, to the spin of a neutron star as a kid explores the universe, to organs and tissues a doctor touches in a virtual surgery. ➜ And so they can sense the world around us: more deeply aware robots, more intuitive spatial computing, and spaces that are genuinely intelligent. What started as a scribble on a whiteboard in 2016 (“PMUT MEMS!”) became a years-long pursuit for Mauricio, Sylvester (sly) and our Emerge® team. Big gratitude to Sarah, Alissa, Leland "Chip", and everyone who contributed to make this major accomplishment possible. And thank you to our investors, partners, and everyone who believed in this improbable journey. We’re actively in conversations with industry leaders to bring this sensing capability to market. If your team is exploring next-gen sensing and interfaces, DM me. #hardware #sensors #MEMS #physicalAI #AI
What if every process could be a seamless experience? M13 co Maven AGI is featured as part of the Microsoft for Startups Pegasus Program at Ignite 2025, where they'll be sharing how their platform helps enterprises harness agentic AI to optimize operations, enhance efficiency, and deliver scalable impact, powered by their existing tools and Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem. We first invested in Maven in their seed round, where we were really excited by the idea that they had a much bigger vision to go across the enterprise. It wasn't just about a chatbot for customer service. They wanted to build on integrations that would be necessary to really build a complete AI agentic solution to solve problems, not just in customer service, but in customer support, customer success, sales, marketing and business intelligence---and that's what they're building now. More on Maven at the link in the comments. 📸 : Co-founders Jonathan Corbin & Sami Shalabi with Carenostics’ Kanishka Rao, MS Anna Barber Latif Peracha
ICYMI: In a modern AI world, data is everywhere. M13 co Estuary has built the next-gen platform enterprises need to connect, move, and manage that data across systems. This is an area we’re super excited about at M13: the companies creating the infrastructure other companies need to build and grow. Managing partner Karl Alomar discusses on NYSE below. David Yaffe Johnny Graettinger Ashley Mastronardi
The grid can’t keep up with AI, which means higher prices and more outages. We can’t wait for public systems to solve this growing strain. Startups are stepping up with bottom-up tools to expand energy capacity, as M13’s Mark Grace writes in Crunchbase. “The path forward requires optimizing what we already have and building what we need next.” On the optimization side, companies like Rhizome, ThreeV Technologies, Inc., and Gridware are modernizing aging grid assets to handle rising demand and extreme weather. On the capacity side, decentralized energy is gaining momentum. Distributed resources like rooftop solar and battery storage can unlock bottom-up growth. M13 co Daylight aligns homeowner participation with grid needs through a virtual power plant model that eliminates hardware and financing barriers. AI isn’t slowing down and neither is climate volatility. Private sector innovation can scale the energy backbone faster than traditional systems. Full article in the comments. Reach out to Mark if you’re building in this space! 📸 : Mark out in the wild! Featuring Brent Murri and a dinner Mark hosted for people innovating in the energy space.
Web Summit’s startup stage featured Karl Alomar with Prashant F. at Fundbox, Monika Liikamaa at Enfuce and moderator Charlie Perreau on how fintech is evolving as capital expectations rise. A few points Karl shared that reflect how M13 works with founders: • Focus creates lift. We help early stage teams identify the three to four key drivers that truly move the business over the next 12 to 24 months. This sharpens execution and strengthens the case for the next round. • Fintech scales on balance sheet strategy. Our operating background helps founders build the capital structures required to win in regulated environments. Strong runway and disciplined capital planning drive investor confidence. • Context matters. US investors back long-term category leadership even with messy early economics. European investors lean harder on current performance. Founders who understand this raise smarter and position themselves better. • AI is now built into every model. We look at whether it expands the market, strengthens margins or increases customer value. Thanks to the panelists for an energizing discussion. If you’re building in fintech or the infrastructure around it, we’re here to help you navigate each stage with precision.
M13’s annual Friendsgiving Happy Hour in NYC: no pitches, no presentations. Just a cozy gathering to enjoy a drink, share a laugh and celebrate what makes our NYC community so special. We’re incredibly grateful to be #BrighterTogether with you ❣️ Anna Barber, Mark Grace, Zachary Naglieri, Will Fisher, Brittany Jiang, Morgan Blumberg, Amedeo Lorenzotti, Samantha Hughes, Kristin McDonald, Clayton Petty
During the pandemic, Harvard-trained physician Jenny Shao, MD saw how badly isolation and disconnection were impacting people and how badly they needed support. So she left her medical career and launched M13 portfolio company Robyn 🪺: an empathic, emotionally intelligent AI built to solve emotional disconnection. It's not a clinical replacement, it’s like chatting with someone who knows you very well. "Usually, their role is to support you. You can think of Robyn as your emotionally intelligent partner,” Jenny says. M13 partner Latif Peracha says that Robyn’s ultimate goal is to foster human connections and emphasizes how critical it is for AIs operating in this realm to build in guardrails like Robyn has, “especially as AI will be part of our lives just like our family and friends.” Peek at the app + get the full scoop in TechCrunch from Ivan Mehta at https://lnkd.in/ecv_zUGM 📸 : Robyn (and another M13 portco Rho!) IRL in NYC 🩵