About Operate
Operate is a venture capital firm founded in 2020. It is primarily based out of Newport Beach, United States. As of Sep 2023, Operate has invested in 22 companies. It primarily invests in Seed round in United States based startups. Its investments are spread across a wide range of sectors from Enterprise Applications to Consumer and FinTech. Most recently it participated in the $***** Series A round of Bevz Overall, Operate portfolio has seen 1 unicorn and 3 acquisitions including key companies like RAMPED, Torpago and Grin Gaming. A lot of funds co-invest with Operate, with names like Hustle Fund sharing a substantial percentage of its portfolio. Operate has team of 6 people including 6 partners.Key Metrics
Team Members
Portfolio Sectors
Portfolio Locations
Rounds of Entry
Seed & Series A
Portfolio Acquisitions
Portfolio Unicorns
Operate's List of Top Investments
Operate has a portfolio of 22 companies, one of which is a Unicorn. Their most notable investments are in Mustard and RAMPED.Their portfolio spans across United States and Israel. They have invested in Enterprise Applications, Consumer, FinTech and 15 other sectors, across stages such as Seed, Series A stages. Here is the list of top investments by Operate:_1571292148882.png?format=webp&height=120&width=120){kind=logo}
1. Cheese
Cheese is an internet-first bank for immigrants. It offers services such as savings & deposit accounts, prepaid cards for online/offline purchases, money transfers, and more. It also enables direct depositing of paychecks.
Key facts about Cheese
- Founded Year: 2019
- Location: Pasadena (United States)
- Stage: Seed
- Total Funding till date: $3.6M
- Employee Count: 6 as on Aug 31, 2026
- Investors: Elysium Venture Capital, 75 & Sunny and 13 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Seed, Nov 14, 2023, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick
2. Knit
Provider of an AI platform for consumer insights and market research. The platform offers tools for survey creation, sample and fielding, analysis, and reporting. It automates repetitive tasks while researchers provide strategy guidance. The platform delivers insights across both quantitative and qualitative data. It also validates respondents through video to reduce fraud.
Key facts about Knit
- Founded Year: 2015
- Location: Austin (United States)
- Stage: Series A
- Total Funding till date: $30.9M
- Employee Count: 145 as on Sep 30, 2026
- Investors: Revolution, Sound Ventures and 23 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Series A, Jul 31, 2025, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick
3. RAMPED
Key facts about RAMPED
- Founded Year: 2019
- Location: Los Angeles (United States)
- Stage: Acquired
- Total Funding till date: $3.1M
- Employee Count: 83 as on Aug 31, 2026
- Investors: Graph Ventures, Northwestern Mutual and 10 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Seed, Mar 22, 2022, $*****
- Highlight: Acquired
4. Spoonful
Provider of food scanner & grocery shopping application. The platform offers a grocery app that helps customers to scan a product and discover the ingredients that match the diet like gluten-free, IBS/low FODMAP, vegan, vegetarian, and more. It also offers a community platform that allows the users to find other shopper's diety by share the profile on the platform. The company offers mobile applications for Android and iOS platforms.
Key facts about Spoonful
- Founded Year: 2018
- Location: Orinda (United States)
- Stage: Funding Raised
- Employee Count: 41 as on Sep 30, 2026
- Investors: Precursor Ventures and Operate
5. Arnie
Provider of retirement account servicing solution with open, developer-friendly APIs. It empowers retirement plan providers with a unified but modular retirement account servicing solution. It is built as a replacement for traditional recordkeeping infrastructure, offering a cloud-native, real-time, and flexible system. It supports various account types and simplifies back-office operations by eliminating manual oversight. It consolidates activity into a single brokerage account per trust.
Key facts about Arnie
- Founded Year: 2021
- Location: San Francisco (United States)
- Stage: Seed
- Total Funding till date: $2.3M
- Employee Count: 56 as on Aug 31, 2026
- Investors: Expansion Venture Capital, Boost VC and 6 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Seed, Feb 13, 2023, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick
Operate's Year-on-Year Investment Trends
Operate has invested in 22 companies over the last 5 years, with an average of 1 new investment annually in the last 5 years. Its most recent first time investment was in Bevz.Year | No. of Investments | ||
|---|---|---|---|
1st Round | Follow-on | Total | |
2026 (YTD) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2025 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2024 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2023 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
2022 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
2021 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
Operate's Investments by Stage
Operate has made 5 investments in Seed stage with an average round size of $2.74M and 1 investment in Series A stage with an average round size of $3.1M.Stage of entry | No. of Investments |
|---|---|
Seed | 5 |
Series A | 1 |
Note: We have considered here, only first round of investments
Operate's Investments by Sector
Operate has a diverse portfolio, with companies operating in the Enterprise Applications, FinTech, Food and Agriculture Tech, Business Services and Consumer. Notably, it has invested in 19 Tech companies, 10 Consumer (B2C) companies, 10 Enterprise (B2B) companies and at least 10 companies focusing on Software.Sector | No. of Investments |
|---|---|
Enterprise Applications | 3 |
FinTech | 2 |
Food and Agriculture Tech | 2 |
Business Services | 1 |
Consumer | 1 |
Others | 2 |
Note: We have considered here, only first round of investments
Operate's Investments by Geography
Operate has made most investments in United States (6).Operate's recent investments
Operate has not made any investment in 2026 so far.Here are the most recent investments by Operate:
Filter this listDate | Company | Location | Round Details | Round Amount | Co-Investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sep 18, 2023 | United States | Series A | 3687 | [+8] | |
Jun 14, 2022 | United States | Seed | 7860 | ||
Mar 22, 2022 | United States | Seed | 1362 | [+5] | |
Nov 09, 2021 | United States | Seed | 1452 | [+2] | |
Oct 28, 2021 | United States | Seed | 8260 |
Unicorns in Operate's Portfolio
Operate has 1 unicorn in its portfolio - Torpago. The most recent unicorn in their portfolio is Torpago which became a unicorn in 2021.Here is a list of unicorns in Operate's portfolio:
Tracxn Score | Company | Short Description | Founded year | Sector | Location | Company Stage | First Investment/ Acquisition Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
40 | Software-based platform for corporate cards and spend management solutions | 2019 | San Francisco | Series B | bvxntyj |
Acquired companies in Operate's Portfolio
3 companies from Operate's portfolio have been acquired. The most recent acquisition was RAMPED in Dec 2025 by Teal for $*****.Here are Operate's portfolio companies that got acquired most recently:
Company | Acquisition Date | First Invested on | First Round of Investment | Round Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Dec 11, 2025 | Mar 22, 2022 | Seed | 4253 | |
Oct 10, 2024 | - | - | 5898 | |
Jun 17, 2021 | - | - | 2358 |
Team profile of Operate
Operate has a team of 6 members including 6 Partners located in United States. Operate's team does not sit on the board of any company as of now.Here is a list of all team members in Operate:
Name | Designation | Location | Board Memberships | Contact Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Partner | Los Angeles | - | - | |
Partner | Orange | - | ||
Partner | Newport Beach | - | ||
Partner | Queen Creek | - | ||
Partner | Costa Mesa | - | ||
Partner | Los Angeles | - | - |
Co-investors of Operate
Over the past 5 years, 48 investors have co-invested in Operate's portfolio companies. This includes funds and angels.
- Invested before Operate: Techstars, Idealab and 5 others have invested in rounds before Operate. There are 2 companies where Techstars has invested before Operate and 1 company where Idealab has invested before Operate.
- Top Co-investors of Operate: 31 investors entered a company along with Operate. These include investors like Hustle Fund (2 companies).
- Invested after Operate: A total of 10 investors have invested in Operate's portfolio after their investments. Top Investors include RevTech Labs Capital (1 company), Revolution (1 company) and Osage Venture Partners (1 company).
Recent News related to Operate
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Bevz Raises $3.1M in FundingFinSMEs•Sep 19, 2023•Bevz, Dynamism Capital, Golden Section, Stage 2 Capital and 7 others
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Capital Markets Entrepreneur Lou Sokolovskiy joins Operate as Venture PartnerOperate•Jul 27, 2022•Operate
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Knit Raises Seed Funding to Fuel Growth in Gen Z and Millennial Market InsightsBusiness Wire•Jun 14, 2022•Knit, Silicon Road Ventures, Bread and Butter Ventures, Alumni Ventures and 4 others
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Aervivo raises another $3M for FWA ambitionsLight Reading•Jun 01, 2022•Aervivo, Kickstart Fund, TDF Ventures, Aries Capital Partners and 11 others
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Ramped Closes $3.1M Seed Funding RoundFinSMEs•Mar 23, 2022•RAMPED, Hustle Fund, Northwestern Mutual, WorkPlay Ventures and 4 others
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Torpago Raises $77 Million, Valued at Over $1 BillionCrowdfund Insider•Oct 28, 2021•Torpago, Operate, Clear Haven Capital Management
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BankTech Ventures Secures Carey Ransom as Its New Managing DirectorFinance Magnates•Oct 20, 2021•BankTech Ventures, Operate
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Cheese raises $3.6M for its digital bank aimed at the Asian-American communityTechCrunch+•Mar 10, 2021•Cheese, Say Cheez Photography, iFly, Amplify and 4 others
