Gary Clayton

Storyteller

📍 San Francisco Bay Area, United States🔄 Updated September 2026💼 11 investments📅 19 years investing🗓 Last invested Jul 2025𝕏 @upgrade_to_unlock
Operator-angel🌍 United States
11
Total investments
8
Early stage
1
Mid stage
1
Late stage
19y
Years active

Portfolio

11 investments · sorted by recency
All investments
Early stage
Mid stage
Late stage
Investor
Jul 2025
We exist to help anyone tell their stories through games. Storycraft is the first mobile video game creation platform with AI-powered maps, characters, and gameplay. Players create custom heroes, then play through your daily episodic games. Every game makes an impact on your expanding world, surprising you with new choices to advance your story.
early stageComputer Games
Investor
Jul 2022
Lightspark is the easiest, low-cost, most reliable, enterprise-grade way to send and receive payments globally, enabling money to move just like bits and bytes do on the Internet. Were delivering open payments for the Internet at scale, using the Lightning Network. We aim to help businesses around the world benefit from real time payments and build amazing new experiences for themselves and their customers. Were laser-focused on solving real problems for our customers with best-in-class innovative software solutions and designs.
Investor
Apr 2021
We believe in a more human, connected, and collaborative world. Our mission is to bring our voice back to conversations by reimagining the ways we use voice to communicate. Over the past 25 years, weve been immersed in and passionate about voice, communications, platforms, and distributed experiences. We are beta testing with customers now. Reach out to join us in bringing our Voices back to Conversations.
Board Member
Jun 2014
Automatic, a SiriusXM company, empowers drivers with knowledge about themselves and their cars so they can worry less whenever they hit the road. We believe you shouldn’t have to buy a new car to have a better driving experience, and that Automatic can bring the future of driving to today’s automobiles. With Automatic's low-profile, install-it-yourself adapter and mobile app, most vehicles model year 1996 or later can be transformed into connected vehicles. Automatic helps customers drive safer and smarter with applications that diagnose engine trouble, detect accidents, send emergency response when needed, save money, and more. Acquired by SiriusXM in 2017, we’ve evolved into a connected vehicle service with the infrastructure and capabilities to deliver Automatic across several distribution channels. We are based in San Francisco, but our team comes from every corner of the world. We obsess about creating beautiful and well-engineered products to deliver a service platform that makes a real difference in people’s lives. We’re big on ideas, low on ego, and love working together.
mid stageAutomotive
Investor
Sep 2013
AnyRoad is the leading experiential marketing platform that enables brands to operate and optimize their events, tours, activations, and classes to grow consumer brand loyalty, drive more revenue, and increase the ROI on every experience. AnyRoad allows companies to streamline and scale their experiential operations with a flexible, configurable platform and provides the powerful insights needed to accelerate business growth. Leading brands like Anheuser-Busch, Diageo, Westfield, Just Egg, and Sierra Nevada all count on AnyRoad to optimize operations for and prove the impact of their experiential marketing programs.
Investor
Aug 2013
Directly is a pioneer in customer service for many of the world’s leading brands. Customer service leaders partner with Directly to support customers with cutting-edge AI and on-demand solutions for the modern enterprise. Companies like Airbnb, Microsoft, and Samsung improve their customer experience, boosting CSAT by up to 20% while significantly reducing contact center volume and saving millions per year. Directly is based in San Francisco and backed by Microsoft’s M12 Ventures, Samsung NEXT, True Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Industry Ventures, Triangle Peak Partners, and Northgate Capital. Come join Directly and contribute to our culture of curiosity, authenticity, and innovation!
Investor/Advisor
May 2012
Snip.it lets you keep an annotated, shareable library of the best content you find online. You can snip anything on the web, add your opinion, then organize it into collections themed around the topics you want to catalog. Great pieces of journalism, funny videos or memes, articles for a research project — your Snip.it library lets you save the content you care about and express yourself through your interests. What’s more, you can discover new content by subscribing to other Snippers’ collections. All the snips from collections you’re subscribed to will show up in your My Subscriptions tab. You can also browse snips from collections we’ve featured on the Featured page, or search any topic to see what people are snipping around it.
Investor/Advisor
Feb 2012
Yelp for Restaurants is the newest team at Yelp dedicated to the restaurant industry. Restaurants need more, so 250 people built and offer a tool to help you embrace the future and attract more diners with less staff. Meet Yelp Guest Manager. In one software product, you get a collection of reservation, waitlist, table management, takeout, host stand, and marketing features that expand your digital reach, increase seated diners, and help you reopen safely. #1 Site for Diners More diners use Yelp to find restaurants than any other review site. 433 Million Diners Seated Diners can book a reservation or join your waitlist directly from Yelp. Never Pay Cover Fees $800/month average savings on cover fees for every 1000 online reservations.
Investor/Advisor
Feb 2012
Yelp connects people with great local businesses. Our users have contributed more than 265 million rich, local reviews of almost every type of local business, from restaurants, boutiques, and salons to dentists, mechanics, plumbers, and more. We are powered by a global community of collaborative people with shared values. Our employees are tenacious individuals who believe in our mission to connect people to great local businesses. In our remote-first workplace, your work makes a difference, you are seen as a whole person, and you are supported in your personal and professional growth. Your #FiveStarCareer starts here.
Investor
Aug 2008
Jelli has recently announced we are joining forces with Triton Digital. Triton Digital is the global technology and services leader to the digital audio and podcast industry. Combining both teams under the Triton Digital brand will allow us to accelerate the development of innovative technology and solutions for the entire audio ecosystem – broadcast radio, streaming, and podcasting. Please follow @TritonDigital on LinkedIn to receive updates on our next chapter.
Investor
Sep 2007
Jawbone® is a world-leader in consumer technology and wearable devices, building hardware products and software platforms powered by data science. Jawbone’s UP® system helps people live better by providing personalized insight into how they sleep, move and eat. Its open API – the UP Platform – includes an ecosystem of apps and services that integrate with UP to offer new, customized experiences. The company’s approach to lifestyle tracking is unique, with over 600 patents granted or pending related to its ecosystem and wearable technology manufacturing processes. The next era of technology will be defined by products that are smarter, more connected, and seamlessly integrated into our daily routines—and Jawbone is leading the charge. If youre in search of a place to push the edges of whats possible and youre ready to do the best work of your life with insanely smart people: hello, nice to meet you.
Experience · 15 entries
All (15)
Investments (11)
Founder (4)
Board (1)
2025
Investor
Jul 2025
We exist to help anyone tell their stories through games. Storycraft is the first mobile video game creation platform with AI-powered maps, characters, and gameplay. Players create custom heroes, then play through your daily episodic games. Every game makes an impact on your expanding world, surprising you with new choices to advance your story.
early stageComputer Games
2023
Co-Founder
Aug 2023
We are the place to create, share and… ‘remix’ the best of AI. If you can imagine it, you can make it. From artists to beginners, get inspired by others around you and create your best work. Our unique feature ‘remix’ allows you to iterate, mashup and reimagine posts in the feed to create collaborative threads that tell a story, make us smile, and unlock the creativity in all of us. Participate in fun remixes, including challenges, themes, and explorations, by trying our collaborative AI engine to transform your ideas into amazing images in seconds. Why Remix, and why now? AI may be the largest technological advancement in our lifetime, as important as the internet or mobile. It is a transformational shift and one that we believe will radically change our culture in the coming years. As with prior technology shifts, we believe AI will create new media experiences, requiring a new platform to share and discover them. We view this as the dawn of a new type of media - not exactly youtube shorts, not exactly tiktok, not exactly what music videos were when MTV launched - but sort of like all of those in that new technology is enabling new creative outlets. But now all of us can be creators.
2022
Investor
Jul 2022
Lightspark is the easiest, low-cost, most reliable, enterprise-grade way to send and receive payments globally, enabling money to move just like bits and bytes do on the Internet. Were delivering open payments for the Internet at scale, using the Lightning Network. We aim to help businesses around the world benefit from real time payments and build amazing new experiences for themselves and their customers. Were laser-focused on solving real problems for our customers with best-in-class innovative software solutions and designs.
2021
Co-founder
Nov 2021
Easy is the new social wallet that makes exploring web3 fun, safe, and easy. Real-time feeds from your friends and communities. A better way to discover web3, together. App available on iOS and Android.
Investor
Apr 2021
We believe in a more human, connected, and collaborative world. Our mission is to bring our voice back to conversations by reimagining the ways we use voice to communicate. Over the past 25 years, weve been immersed in and passionate about voice, communications, platforms, and distributed experiences. We are beta testing with customers now. Reach out to join us in bringing our Voices back to Conversations.
Show all 15 entries ↓
Investment activity
2007–2025 · 11 investments
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