Pioneer Square Labs Spins Out First VC-Backed Company, LumaTax
SEATTLE, Sept. 16, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pioneer Square Labs ("PSL"), the Seattle-based startup studio, announced that it has spun out its first venture-funded company, LumaTax, a sales tax automation solution for small businesses. PSL has spun out two additional companies and plans announcements for those companies shortly.
LumaTax announced yesterday that it raised $2.0 million from Madrona Venture Group, Greycroft Partners and several strategic angel investors.
PSL teams with exceptional entrepreneurs to validate new business ideas, secure venture funding and help build the resulting spinouts into meaningful companies. Longtime venture capitalist Greg Gottesman, super angel Geoff Entress, aQuantive co-founder Mike Galgon and entrepreneur Ben Gilbert started PSL roughly a year ago. The PSL team includes senior software engineers, designers, architects and digital marketing experts.
"Working with PSL took six months off my go-to-market plan," said Robert Schulte, CEO of LumaTax. "We iterated through the idea, the PSL team built the initial product and we had multiple term sheets within four months. I founded two successful startups and sold three companies before LumaTax. I can tell you from experience the PSL model works."
PSL closed on $12.5 million from 14 venture capital firms and over 50 top angel investors in late 2015. "With the growth of open source libraries and variable-cost infrastructure like AWS, you can start businesses with much less capital than ever before," Galgon said. "The hard part is gathering the right teams, CEOs, and long-term funders and pointing them against the highest potential opportunities. We're really good at that."
PSL is currently working on several other projects. "We are fortunate to be working with other great entrepreneurs like Robert and expect to have more announcements soon," said Entress.
About Pioneer Square Labs
Pioneer Square Labs is a Seattle-based studio that teams with top entrepreneurs to create and launch technology startups. For more information, visit www.pioneersquarelabs.com.
About LumaTax
LumaTax is a sales tax automation service for small businesses, founded by serial entrepreneur Robert Schulte and Pioneer Square Labs. For more information, visit www.lumatax.com.
Media Contact: Greg Gottesman; [email protected]
SOURCE Pioneer Square Labs
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