Cody Simms
Managing Director @ Techstars
Los Angeles, United States
Cody Simms is a seed investor at Techstars in Los Angeles focused on Mobile and Enterprise Software. Cody Simms resides in Los Angeles and is Managing Partner at MCJ, a venture capital firm backing founders driving the transition of energy and industry and solving the inevitable impacts of climate change. Cody is also co-host of the firm’s podcast, Inevitable.He is co-founder of Climate Changemakers, a climate action non-profit, and co-author ofthe Amazon-bestselling book Levers: The Framework for Building Repeatability into Your Business (leversbook.com). Cody previously served as Senior Vice President of Climate & Sustainability at Techstars and as an investing Partner in Techstars' institutional venture funds. Cody joined Techstars in 2013 as the first Techstars Managing Director in Los Angeles while establishing the Disney Accelerator powered by Techstars and co-investing with Disney in 20 startups from 2014-15.Earlier in his career, Cody held roles including Chief Product Officer at StumbleUpon, Vice President of Product Management at Yahoo, and Product Manager at The New York Times, Sprint, and NBC Internet / Snap.com. He has taught graduate programs at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and he was four time Kansas state tennis champion in high school. He studied Chinese in college and lived in both Beijing and Guangzhou in the late 1990s, including time interning at the US Consulate during President Bill Clinton’s trip to China in 1998. He got into tech in 1999 via pre-IPO Snap.com / NBC Internet after he moved to San Francisco to try to get a job using his Chinese language skills and instead accidentally fell into the dotcom boom. Cody holds an M.A. with Distinction in Transnational Communication and Global Media from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and a is a Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude graduate of the University of Kansas with a B.A. in History and East Asian Languages and Cultures.
- Total investments:
- 16
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 44%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Cody Simms invests in
Stages Cody Simms invests in
Countries Cody Simms invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
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| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
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Investment Focus
Industry
- Mobile 3 (19%)
- Enterprise Software 3 (19%)
- Artificial Intelligence 3 (19%)
- Apps 2 (13%)
- Video 2 (13%)
Stage
- Seed 7 (44%)
- Pre-Seed 5 (31%)
- Series A 1 (6%)
Country
- United States 9 (56%)
- United Kingdom 2 (13%)
- Nigeria 1 (6%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Verse helps large energy buyers Connect, Contain, and Control their global power portfolios: connect to the grid faster leveraging flexibility; contain energy cost and risk with real-time analytics and strategic procurement; and control assets to maximize portfolio value through real-time optimization. Verse team blends deep energy-market expertisewith modern software engineering and product design to deliver usable, scalable tools to manage power costs and risks. | $20.5M / Series A / May 22, 2024 | ||
| Upsie is a mobile app that provides an easier and better way to protect your stuff. You get the same warranties and coverage offered by other companies but at an affordable price. No annoying sales pitch. No big price markups. All warranty pricing and coverage options are right there in the app. Even your receipts are photographed and stored! Youcan purchase coverage, start a claim or even scan a barcode while shopping to see what warranties are available for that item. | $5M / Seed / May 28, 2019 | ||
| Farmcrowdy is an agric-tech platform that gives Nigerians the opportunity to participate in Agriculture by selecting the kind of farms they want to sponsor. They use the sponsor’s funds to secure the land, engage the farmer, plant the seeds, insure the farmers and farm produce, complete the full farming cycle, sell the harvest and then pay the farmsponsor a return on their sponsorship. While this farm process is ongoing, the farm sponsors are able to keep track of the full-cycle by getting updates in text, pictures and videos. | $500K / Seed / Mar 21, 2019 | ||
| Pulse Labs provides actionable and business-centric insights on how people and technology work together in natural settings. Leading companies use Pulse Labs insights to make crucial. quick and informed business decisions to stay competitive. These insights apply to the life of your products, from ideation to creation to pore-launch testing toin-market validation. Our insights anchor on a multi-modal approach of video, audio, consumer feedback, and AI processing.Pulse Labs is expanding globally and needs key innovators to join our crew. Nobody wants a bad user experience with any product. We're here to help.Pulse Labs was one of nine startups in the inaugural Alexa Accelerator Powered by Techstars, an accelerator for startups working in the Alexa space sponsored by Amazon's Alexa Fund and Techstars Seattle. | $2.5M / Seed / May 02, 2018 | ||
| Upsie is a mobile app that provides an easier and better way to protect your stuff. You get the same warranties and coverage offered by other companies but at an affordable price. No annoying sales pitch. No big price markups. All warranty pricing and coverage options are right there in the app. Even your receipts are photographed and stored! Youcan purchase coverage, start a claim or even scan a barcode while shopping to see what warranties are available for that item. | $1.7M / Seed / Jan 30, 2018 | ||
| Farmcrowdy is an agric-tech platform that gives Nigerians the opportunity to participate in Agriculture by selecting the kind of farms they want to sponsor. They use the sponsor’s funds to secure the land, engage the farmer, plant the seeds, insure the farmers and farm produce, complete the full farming cycle, sell the harvest and then pay the farmsponsor a return on their sponsorship. While this farm process is ongoing, the farm sponsors are able to keep track of the full-cycle by getting updates in text, pictures and videos. | $1M / Seed / Dec 18, 2017 | ||
| Farmcrowdy is an agric-tech platform that gives Nigerians the opportunity to participate in Agriculture by selecting the kind of farms they want to sponsor. They use the sponsor’s funds to secure the land, engage the farmer, plant the seeds, insure the farmers and farm produce, complete the full farming cycle, sell the harvest and then pay the farmsponsor a return on their sponsorship. While this farm process is ongoing, the farm sponsors are able to keep track of the full-cycle by getting updates in text, pictures and videos. | Pre-Seed / Jul 10, 2017 | ||
| We are HYP3R. Our innovations help top marketers acquire high-value travelers directly and at scale.For the first time ever, travel halted. Travel needs to rise like a phoenix for society to thrive again in the post-COVID era. We are energized by this elevated purpose.The best marketers will reignite bookings. Hotels, casinos, cruises andentire destinations depend on it. We are confident that travel will come back roaring. We know this in our bones because we miss it so much.Our platform and innovations were built specifically for the travel industry. We use location insights to drive direct bookings at scale. To do this, we organized every hotel, casino, airport and even restaurant in the world. Without ever looking at individual profiles, this location insights help drive bookings directly to a property or destination. We partner with our clients to lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) and increase ROAS. | $120K / Pre-Seed / Jul 06, 2015 | ||
| FEM operates as a personalized video engagement platform based on neuroscience and psychology. The company launches Prizma, a video engagement platform that offers video discovery and smart syndication powered by a robust content recommendation engine. Prizma makes it possible for any website to create an engaging video experience for its audience,quickly and easily. For publishers that have video content, Prizma improves discovery, recirculation, and offers syndication to quality websites; for those that want more video content, Prizma offers monetized, relevant content from high-quality creators.FEM was founded by Rachel Payne, Dr. Meghana Bhatt, and Natasha Mohanty in late 2012 and is based in San Francisco, California. | $120K / Pre-Seed / Jul 06, 2015 | ||
| Decisive is a social content analytics platform that helps brands measure, understand, and benchmark the impact of their social content. Every brand that wants to reach consumers must become a content company.With Decisive, it’s now easy for brands to quickly understand how their content is performing across major social media platforms withone content score, understand how their audience is feeling about their content, and benchmark their content against their competitors’ content. | $120K / Pre-Seed / Jul 06, 2015 | ||
| See all 16 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About Techstars
Techstars offers a pre-accelerator initiative designed to equip participants with training and tools for business development. Additional offerings include three-day sessions that allow aspiring entrepreneurs to experience the process of launching a startup. The company also organizes events featuring speakers, educational sessions, and pitch competitions to support entrepreneurship. Its operations involve connecting founders with a network of mentors and peers across various technology verticals.
Techstars Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Alina Hoon
Mentor
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Andrew Cleland
Chief Investment Officer
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Artur Hasselbach
Mentor
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Atlanta Daniel
Mentor
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Beata Puncevic
Chief Technology Officer
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FAQ
What does Cody Simms invest in?
Cody Simms invests primarily in Mobile, Enterprise Software and Artificial Intelligence startups, most often at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. Most of the 16 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Cody Simms?
Public channels for Cody Simms include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Cody Simms last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Cody Simms closed in May 2024. Shizune tracks 16 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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