# Stu Smith

> Stu Smith is a seed investor at Racket (Los Angeles) backing Software and Artificial Intelligence. See 5 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Racket](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/racket-com)
- Location: Los Angeles, United States
- Total investments: 5
- Last investment: Jul 2026
- Lead investor: 0%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/imstusmith
- X (Twitter): http://twitter.com/stuartdsmith
- Website: https://x.com/stuartdsmith

Stu Smith is a seed investor at Racket in Los Angeles focused on Software and Artificial Intelligence. Stu is General Partner at Coughdrop Capital and Vice President at Fullscreen (acquired by AT&T/WarnerMedia in 2018), where he runs the Creator Labs, Public Figures, and Creator Partnerships business units. He focuses on fulfilling Fullscreen’s promise of being the most strategic social content company in the world.Stu has spent themajority of his career driving innovation in the entertainment and media space. With nearly 20 years of experience, Stu led the North American launch of CrowdSurge (later merged with Songkick) and helped scale Red Light Management, the largest music management company in the world. Since then, he has held executive positions leading the revenue organizations at Teespring and Omaze.

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Software | 2 | 40% |
| Artificial Intelligence | 2 | 40% |
| Audio | 1 | 20% |
| Mobile | 1 | 20% |
| Banking | 1 | 20% |

18 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 3 | 60% |
| Pre-Seed | 1 | 20% |
| Series A | 1 | 20% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Hostie | Hostie is an AI-first customer experience platform designed for restaurants, automating guest inquiries, reservations, and takeout orders. We proudly partner with some of the world’s top restaurants, including Flour + Water, Nisei, Slanted Door, ILIS, and more. Co-founded by a product designer-turned-restaurateur and an AI engineer, Hostie blendshospitality expertise with cutting-edge technology to enhance restaurant operations. | $12M | Series A | Jul 08, 2026 |  |
| howie | howie an email-based scheduling assistant, uses artificial intelligence to automate the scheduling and rescheduling of your meetings. | $6M | Seed | Sep 22, 2025 |  |
| Kobalt Labs | Kobalt Labs provides an AI copilot for risk and compliance teams at financial institutions. |  | Seed | Oct 01, 2023 |  |
| Racket | Let's make a racket. |  | Pre-Seed | Jan 01, 2021 |  |
| Zaraz | Sweeps makes any website 40% faster with a single line of code, by optimizing how it loads third-party tools. This results in x2 conversion rates and better SEO rankings. Sweeps' third-party manager enhances web performance metrics across all industries: ecommerce, publishing, gaming, b2b and more. With its innovative web infrastructurecompanies can easily integrate all types of third-parties, such as data & analytics tools, marketing technologies, CRM, advertisement technologies, widgets, and more, without slowing down their websites. | $2M | Seed | Jun 01, 2020 |  |

5 of 5 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Obvious Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/obvious-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Y Combinator](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/y-combinator) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [a16z Scout Fund](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/a16z-scout-fund) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Burst Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/burst-capital) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [CABRA VC](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/cabra-vc) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [F2 Venture Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/f2-capital) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## About Racket

VC Fund · Los Angeles, United States

Let's make a racket.

4 contacts available at Racket.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Stu Smith | COO | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/stu-smith |
| Austin Petersmith | CEO | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/austin-smith-9d37 |
| Matthew Guay | Founding Editor | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/matthew-guay |
| Sarah Zhang | Front-End Developer | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/sarah-zhang-043b |

## Similar investors

### Similar stage
- [Antler](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/antler-be9c) — VC Fund
- [Alumni Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alumni-ventures-group) — VC Fund
- [Right Side Capital Management](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/right-side-capital-management) — VC Fund

## FAQ

### What does Stu Smith invest in?

Stu Smith invests primarily in Software, Artificial Intelligence and Audio startups, most often at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. Most of the 5 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### When did Stu Smith last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Stu Smith closed in Jul 2026. Shizune tracks 5 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 Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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