Social Startups

Base is a membership-based social club that curates intimate gatherings and experiences for members seeking meaningful conversations and authentic connections beyond traditional networking. The club brings together professionals and creatives across industries through small-group dinners, workshops, and community events held at rotating venues across the city.

4 investors

Beam is a platform that connects consumer purchases with nonprofit donations, allowing brands on the platform to direct a portion of sales to nonprofits chosen by customers. The company aims to redirect consumer spending power toward social and environmental impact.

4 investors

Behance is a portfolio and community platform for creative professionals to showcase their work, discover clients, and grow their careers. The platform connects creators with potential business opportunities and clients globally.

4 investors

bemyfriends provides fandom business solutions that combine IT platforms with consulting services, helping creators and brands build sustainable businesses around their fan communities. It targets organizations seeking to grow and monetize their fandoms.

4 investors

An educational content platform that publishes curated Bible verses and spiritual guidance, with a complementary mobile app that provides biblical teachings and daily devotional content.

4 investors

Bluesky is a social networking application built on the AT Protocol (atproto). It is an interactive web app operated at bsky.social.

4 investors

Breaker is a mobile application for listening to and discovering podcasts, with plans to distribute premium podcasts through exclusive deals under a paid subscription. It also offers podcasters tools to connect with their community, gather feedback, and view analytics on content performance.

4 investors

Caribu is a video-call platform where children and adults can read, draw, and play games together in an interactive format. The service targets families and is positioned as an educational technology product for children's learning and entertainment.

4 investors

Castro Labs develops consumer social products designed to help people feel connected. The company is based in San Francisco.

4 investors

CloudStudio is an AI-powered content production tool for social media agencies that automates routine post creation, captions, and visual generation while preserving human review and client approval workflows. It helps agency teams reduce production overhead so they can focus on strategy and creative work.

4 investors

Cobu is a community building platform that helps residents of apartment buildings form genuine communities and combat loneliness. The platform serves apartment building owners seeking to differentiate and retain residents, and residents seeking belonging in their residential communities.

4 investors

College Pulse is a research and analytics company that collects and analyzes opinion data from college students, drawing on a panel of over 700,000 student participants across 1,500 U.S. universities. It helps clients understand the college demographic through survey and polling data.

4 investors

Crowdly connects brands with their customer advocates to foster authentic relationships and community engagement around products.

4 investors

Daze is a mobile chat application available for iPhone and Android, with a community hosted on Discord.

4 investors

Disqus provides a commenting system that websites embed to host reader discussions, operating a network across millions of sites along with an advertising network and its own content platform. It serves website publishers and online communities in the web content and media space.

4 investors

Ditto is a matchmaking service that pairs students with each other by analyzing their profiles and preferences using large language models. It uses an agentic system with specialized agents for analysis, matchmaking, personalized posters, and scheduling to curate dates.

4 investors

EGFH operates game-agnostic national esports leagues for high schools, providing a turnkey competitive structure focused on leadership, teamwork, and experiential learning. The program organizes competitive seasons across multiple esports titles with regional and national championship tournaments.

4 investors

Fam is a group video calling social network for talking with friends and meeting new people. The company was part of Y Combinator's Summer 2017 batch under the name FriendSpot.

4 investors

Feels is a social and dating app that lets users create story-like profiles, add prompts, and send personalized direct messages to meet people who share their interests. It is aimed at consumers looking to connect over shared experiences.

4 investors

Forem is open source software for building online communities in any niche, powering DEV, a community where software developers share knowledge and collaborate. DEV has partnered with Major League Hacking (MLH), a developer programs platform.

4 investors

Guild is a community management platform with 100+ integrations that lets teams control access using token-gating and on-chain activity, automate Discord roles and permissions, and track member contributions through scoring systems. It serves teams building online communities, particularly in the crypto/web3 space.

4 investors

Heartbeat is an all-in-one platform for community builders to run memberships, courses, events, and payments on their own branded website, with channels, live rooms, DMs, and a member directory. It includes an AI assistant (Pulse) that sets up channels, courses, offers, workflows, and signup pages, and integrates with tools like Zoom, Stripe, and Zapier.

4 investors

Hivebrite offers AI agents and smart features for community management platforms, handling tasks like content moderation, member matching, analytics, and plain-language search. Its tools help community teams reduce routine work while giving members recommendations, content summaries, and profile-building assistance.

4 investors

Horao Group (HGL) offers ENGAGE, a subscription, membership and rewards platform with a built-in social network, e-commerce, gamification and AI tools for sports organizations, brands and creators to build communities and generate new revenue and audience data. Its clients include projects for motorcycle riders (FIM), resto-mod car clubs, medical cannabis/CBD buyers, and the Pride movement.

4 investors