Pioneer Square Labs

Pioneer Square Labs (PSL) is a microventure capital firm and startup studio based in Seattle, Washington that focuses on seed and incubation investments of firms. Founded 2018, the company invests in seed and early stage companies and works to create and launch technology startups. PSL's studio develops ideas internally, builds products, conducts customer validation, and recruits entrepreneurs, technologists, and designers to serve as founders of spin-out companies. To achieve this, the company employs engineers, data scientists, designers, digital marketers, and business analysts to help validate new ideas and work with founders to launch companies.

PSL's studio works to help entrepreneurs to build venture-fund companies with a focus on rapid customer adoption. To achieve this, PSL offers early investment, as well as the following services for investors:

• Market research
• Concept validation
• Engineering
• Data Science
• Go-to-Market
• Visual and UX design
• Product management
• Recruiting
• Fundraising
• Marketing
• Company formation
• Finance
• Operations
• Legal and human resources

After early development, PSL Studio spins the company out while continuing to offer services and financing to help the company continue to grow. And to increase funding, PSL Studio works with venture firms that have previously invested in Pioneer Square Labs.

Through the Studio, PSL spun out twenty-five companies in its first five years, including over six in a six-month span during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company's spinout represents around 15 percent of early-stage technology companies that have raised capital in the Washington state. The company's studio focuses on the Pacific Northwest and seeks to increase the startups coming out of the Pacific Northwest. Pioneer Square Labs raises equity funding from other venture capital firms to build out its platform.

The other foundation of Pioneer Square Labs is the company's Ventures, which is the investment in early-stage companies that the company feels have the opportunity to develop into market-defining companies. For companies that PSL invests in, they offer the experience of the PSL's members as well as the ecosystem the company is developing, to allow companies that PSL is investing in to work with companies coming out of PSL's Studio program, and vice versa.

Through PSL Ventures, the company invests in technology-driven, early-stage companies with a focus on the Pacific Northwest and a preference to lead or co-lead pre-seed, seed, and Series A investment rounds. The company does not tend to invest in biotechnology, energy, or pharmaceutical companies. Rather, the focus is on companies working on technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, voice, and cloud computing.

The PSL Ventures program began with raising an $80 million venture fund in April 2018, which was intended to help Pioneer Square Labs to invest in startups that did not necessarily fit into the company's Studio model, but it wanted to invest in regardless.