Strawberry Creek Ventures (an Alumni Ventures Fund)

?? Excited to announce Sotira's $2M raise to build the future of overstock purchasing! Thank you to Aisha Malik for the TechCrunch feature and for sharing how we're using AI to revolutionize the $500B overstock procurement industry. We're specifically focusing on dated items such as grocery, health and wellness, and cosmetics inventory. Sotira is the end-to-end workflow and compliance automation software for surplus inventory offloading, transacting, and logistics. Sotira leverages AI to enable companies to offload and monetize their surplus inventory while reducing the time spent negotiating and reviewing inventory by more than 50%. To date, we’ve launched with the leading players in instant commerce as well as delivery companies, distributors, and enterprise CPG brands. Customers save five figures a month on shrink reduction, earning up to 10x the financial return and recouping up to 50% of costs using Sotira over traditional liquidation solutions. This is significant in an industry where most overstock ends up in landfills, and few sustainable solutions are available to facilitate overstock logistics. ?? ?? Gary Kwong and I are honored to bring on the following investors: John Vrionis, Lars Albright and Tyler Crown at Unusual Ventures, Keenan Rice at K5 Global, Kevin Carter at Night Capital, Chris Howard at Ritual Capital, Matt Hayes at PJC, Mike Williams and Andrew Blachman at Marketplace Capital, Danny C. at Symphony Ventures, Stu S. and Austin Petersmith at Coughdrop Capital, Colin Gardiner at Yonder, Carl Choi at Alumni Ventures and Vikas Reddy as an angel. Grateful to Aneel Ranadive and Nikhita Jaaswal at Soma Capital for continued support. ?? A special thanks to the following for guidance and advice: Ryan O'Neil, Carter Londagin, Brent J. Smith and Malte Witt. If you know any companies that face challenges handling overstock, shoot me a DM! We’re also hiring. See link in the comments.

Ziyuan (Zi) L. and I are thrilled to launch Roame Revamped on Product Hunt! ?? What is Roame? Roame is the easiest way to redeem your points for the best flight deals. We help you reduce the time it takes to book your dream vacations using points from days to seconds. Here’s what’s new: ?? Real-time searches across 21 airline loyalty programs and 200+ partners. ?? 7-day flexible searches in real-time. ??? Super Alerts to track saver fare flight deals automatically. ??? SkyView, allowing region-to-region searches (like United States to Europe). ??? 60-day search windows using SkyView. We started Roame in 2023 because we know firsthand how frustrating it is to redeem points. Nobody wants to spend weeks manually searching multiple airline websites for the best deal. Roame searches across airlines to show you the best prices in points and miles. Since then, nearly 1 million travelers have used Roame to book their dream vacations. We can’t wait to hear your feedback! Drop your questions on Product Hunt (link below). Let’s find those deals together. See you in the skies, Tim & Zi ????

All year long, TechCrunch covers startups, everything from unicorns to tiny seed-stage launches. We are, in many ways, the startup experts. To create this list, we looked back through our year’s worth of coverage for startups that stood out to us. They have fascinating new technologies, business models, or founder stories, or are pushing an industry forward in exciting ways. Read about TechCrunch's most disruptive startups here: https://tcrn.ch/3ZBR3Rb #TechCrunch #technews #startups #founders #tech

Excited to share that Neo Financial has raised $360M to fund our next wave of growth. ?? This milestone isn’t just about the money—it’s a testament to the dedication and hard work of our team, the trust our investors have in our vision, and the belief that we're truly making a difference in people's lives. To have Canadian visionaries like Shopify’s Tobi Lütke, Slack’s Stewart Butterfield, and Roblox's David Baszucki back us is humbling. It’s a reminder that even in times of uncertainty, with the right people, perseverance, and commitment to your customers, the impossible becomes possible. ???? This funding will allow us to accelerate our mission: expanding our innovative financial products, from Canada’s best cashback credit cards, to high-interest savings accounts, AI-enhanced budgeting tools, and competitive mortgage rates. We’re here to build solutions that don’t just meet the needs of today, but redefine what’s possible for the future of finance. And we’re just getting started. The future of finance is here, and it's built by Canadians, for Canadians. ?? https://lnkd.in/gU_xnyBU

Roame (YC S23) was selected as one of the top 3 most innovative startups of the year by Global Flight and invited to speak at the 20th Loyalty & Awards Conference! We presented our leading award flight search engine to over 250 executives and delegates from airline and hotel loyalty programs around the world including Accor, Air France-KLM, Air Astana, Allegro, All Nippon Airways, Asia Miles, British Airways, BWH Hotels, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, EVA Airways Corp., Finnair, Garuda Indonesia, GOL Linhas Aéreas, IAG Loyalty, Malaysia Airlines, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Lufthansa, Miles & More GmbH, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Saudia Cargo, SAS - Scandinavian Airlines, Shangri-La Group, Thai Airways International, Turkish Airlines, Vietnam Airlines, Virgin Australia, WestJet, Xiamen Airlines Big thank you to Ravindra Bhagwanani, Anna Khomukha, Victoria Giglio, and Margarita Onanova for organizing such a wonderful conference! #loyaltyandawards #roame #awardtravel #loyalty #points