Ulu Ventures is a leading seed-stage venture fund in Silicon Valley investing in diverse entrepreneurial teams as well as Enterprise IT, EdTech, FinTech, Healthcare, and Sustainability startups.  Ulu is the first Latina-led venture fund in Silicon Valley and is one of the largest in the country with over $200M in assets under management. As well, the firm has designed its investment process to reduce risk and produce better, more consistent returns. Ulu’s process structures intuition and applies it intelligently to investments, avoiding cognitive biases common in VC; systematically identifies key drivers of risk and uncertainty, streamlining due diligence; and calculates a probability-weighted multiple(PWM) on invested capital, ensuring consistent decision-making.

Ulu Ventures

SLICeR

SLICeR is an analytics in the fashion and apparel industry. It is a platform for fashion and lifestyle business analytics products, that help organizations monitor their business performance. They enable multiple types of outputs such as posters, line books, range plans, mood boards, range reviews, and reports.

SLICeR develops analytics platforms for the fashion and lifestyle industry through its flagship product, Kanvas. The platform enables users across different business functions to analyze data, collaborate, and make decisions through its cloud-based interface. Kanvas incorporates AI/ML capabilities to provide automatic insights, similarity search functionality for pricing and quantity recommendations, and bulk generation of store-specific visual merchandising guidelines. The platform allows users to manipulate designs and articles to create collections, enrich images with verbal and non-verbal tags, and generate various outputs including posters, line-books, range-plans, mood boards, range reviews, and reports. The technology helps fashion businesses improve their sales yields, margins, and sell-through rates while reducing markdown costs and report creation time from days to hours.

Fashion and Lifestyle Business Analytics

Incorporating technology into the fast-moving world of fashion

Fashion Tech

SLICeR develops analytics platforms for the fashion and lifestyle industry through its flagship product, Kanvas. The platform enables users across different business functions to analyze data, collaborate, and make decisions through its cloud-based interface. Kanvas incorporates AI/ML capabilities to provide automatic insights, similarity search functionality for pricing and quantity recommendations, and bulk generation of store-specific visual merchandising guidelines. The platform allows users to manipulate designs and articles to create collections, enrich images with verbal and non-verbal tags, and generate various outputs including posters, line-books, range-plans, mood boards, range reviews, and reports. The technology helps fashion businesses improve their sales yields, margins, and sell-through rates while reducing markdown costs and report creation time from days to hours.

NTX provides innovative textile coloration solutions through its flagship product, Cooltrans. Launched in 2020, Cooltrans is a waterless textile coloration system that can process almost any textile material without heat and achieves a 90% reduction in water usage compared to traditional methods. The technology delivers precise color outcomes while preserving fabric texture and functional performance. Compatible with natural, man-made, and synthetic fibers (except polypropylene), including high power-stretch materials, the system operates on a cost-neutral basis.
Key customers and partnerships
The company established a strategic alliance with Ananta Group and partnered with Stella Blu, a product division of Prosperity Textiles, which implemented NTX's Cooltrans technology with panel printing at its manufacturing facility in China. In this collaboration, both companies aim to apply their expertise beyond denim to other cotton twill-like fabrics.

True Fit provides AI-powered sizing technology for apparel and footwear brands, helping solve online fit challenges for retailers. The company's technology decodes size and fit for consumers through its Fashion Genome, a structured data set that connects detailed garment specifications and style attributes to individual shopping behaviors. The platform deploys algorithms to translate how shoes and clothing fit shoppers viewing them online, removing sizing uncertainty in digital shopping. True Fit's technology encompasses men's wear, women's wear, kids' wear, unisex apparel, footwear, swim, and structured intimates categories. The company's solution includes the Fit Hub, which uses generative AI to enhance the online shopping experience.
The platform provides retailers with a dashboard of insights to drive personalization and growth. Through its Fashion Genome database, True Fit combines decades of expertise in fashion, retail technology, and data science to create detailed understanding of product specifications, from dimensions and color to materials and design details.
Key customers and partnerships
True Fit's technology serves 82 million consumers, tens of thousands of brands, and hundreds of retailers globally. The company formed partnerships with Princess Polly and Lucy & Yak to provide AI size recommendations. In 2024, True Fit partnered with Shopify to integrate its AI fit personalization technology into the Shopify platform, enabling merchants to connect their brands to True Fit's Fashion Genome. Through this partnership, True Fit has already supported fashion brands including Few Moda, Greyson, Toast, and Dia & Co.

True Fit

unspun is a fashion tech company that has developed Vega, the world's first 3D weaving technology for apparel manufacturing. The technology efficiently transforms thousands of yarns into garments in minutes, enabling almost zero-waste, on-demand manufacturing. The Vega system drastically shortens supply chains and lead times, allowing traditional cut-make-trim facilities to vertically integrate operations. The process is four times faster than conventional methods, achieving a 53% emissions reduction, 49% reduced energy demand, and 39% reduced blue water consumption. The technology generates less than 3% cut waste compared to the industry average of 15%. The Vega machines can create woven garments using almost any yarn, with the current generation focused on producing bottoms, bags, and hats. Future generations of the machines will expand into performance categories, outerwear, shoes, tops, and dresses. The company is also developing circular supply chain applications that will allow garments to be unspun back into yarns and re-woven into new products.
Through its microfactory model, unspun aims to eliminate the need for large order quantities while decreasing transportation emissions and lead times. The company operates a microfactory in Oakland, California, where it has demonstrated the commercial viability of its technology through low-volume production with proven third-party lifecycle assessments
Key customers and partnerships
unspun has secured multi-year agreements with Walmart to deploy its Vega machines for localized production in both North America and Europe. The company partnered with fashion label Eckhaus Latta to introduce the first-ever 3D woven collection at New York Fashion Week, with products now available online and in stores globally. In October 2024, unspun formed a strategic partnership with DECATHLON Pulse, the investment arm of global sports brand DECATHLON, to deploy its 3D weaving technology across Europe through 2030. The company has also collaborated with designer Ana Kraš' lifestyle brand Teget and has worked with brands including Collina Strada, Pangaia, and H&M-owned Weekday

Unspun

Stitch Fix operates as an online personal styling service that combines data science and human expertise to provide personalized clothing recommendations. The company's platform uses algorithms and machine learning to analyze customer preferences through an initial style quiz that captures data on size, fit, and style preferences. Based on this data, Stitch Fix sends customers a curated box of five clothing items and accessories selected from thousands of partner brands, with prices typically ranging from USD 28 to USD 500 for adult items. The company employs a hybrid model where algorithms generate initial recommendations, which are then refined by human stylists before items are shipped to customers. Each delivery incurs a USD 20 styling fee that is credited toward any purchases, and customers receive a 25% discount if they keep all items in their box.
The company's technology infrastructure includes three main components: Foundry for corporate clients, Gotham for government and intelligence customers, and Apollo, their cloud-based scalable platform. As of January 2024, Stitch Fix's revenue has faced challenges, with Q1 net revenues declining 17.8% year over year to USD 364.8 million. In February 2024, the company launched Style Tune Ups in partnership with Spotify, offering personalized outfit recommendations based on music preferences and their 2024 Style Forecast report data.
Key customers and partnerships
Stitch Fix partners with thousands of clothing brands to source its inventory. The company entered a notable partnership with Spotify in February 2024 to launch Style Tune Ups, which combines style recommendations with personalized music playlists. According to their trend report data, nearly four in five of their clients take outfit inspiration from their favorite artists.

Stitch Fix

Katana provides cloud-based manufacturing ERP software that helps businesses manage their inventory, production, and sales processes. The platform offers real-time inventory tracking across multiple locations, production planning, manufacturing execution systems, and shop floor control capabilities. Users can manage orders, raw materials, finished products, production recipes, and stock levels through a unified system. The software enables companies to create multilevel bills of materials with subassemblies for accurate costing and make pricing decisions based on product margins. The platform's manufacturing execution system synchronizes inventory and sales across all channels while prioritizing task lists for production line operators. According to company data, businesses using Katana experienced 60% higher sales year over year and a 1.2x increase in inventory turnover. The software implementation typically takes six weeks compared to 6-12 months for traditional ERPs.
The platform operates on a subscription model with pricing starting at USD 179 per month for the Starter plan with one inventory location, USD 359 per month for the Standard plan with three inventory locations, USD 799 per month for the Professional plan with up to 10 inventory locations, and USD 1,799 per month for the Professional Plus plan.
Key customers and partnerships
Katana serves various industries including apparel, electronics, food, and aerospace manufacturers, primarily targeting small to mid-sized businesses. Notable customers include IDC Componentes, Walk With Me, Buttercream Clothing, and Puppy Cake. The platform integrates with several business tools including Shopify, WooCommerce, Xero, QuickBooks Online, Zapier, and Integromat to provide unified business operations.

Katana

Companies that use technology to capture user's sizes to create custom clothing on-demand.

Platforms that help provide style and outfit recommendations to customers based on their preferences. These are typically provided via apps and are used for recommendation purposes only.

Online platforms that help retailers and manufacturers enable their customers to virtually try on apparel.

Platforms and systems that track trends and data for both fashion brands and retailers to optimize operations.

Platforms that help apparel manufacturers disrupt traditional manufacturing and inventory practices through innovation through processes such as 3D printing.

Providers occasionally incorporate Generative AI into their services to help out with functions such as generating style/outfit suggestions

Some providers use digital twin technology for virtual fitting rooms

Some providers use apps or web portals to offer apparel products and style/outfit suggestions

Some providers offer AR-based virtual fitting rooms to help sell clothing to customers

Providers offer custom clothing and style suggestions based on individual preferences and requirements of customers

Some providers offer newer production methodologies that incorporate emerging technology and industry 4.0 to revolutionize traditional apparel manufacturing processes

SLICeR

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