District, a Los Angeles-based startup that helps creators, entrepreneurs, and brands build and run online selling businesses without any coding, has raised $14.7M in seed funding. The company was founded by Eddie Koai, Patrick Mandia, and Khoi Tran, three former product and technology leads at Snap. They spent three years building the platform quietly before making it publicly available.
Online commerce has shifted considerably over the past few years. People now find and buy products through live streams, social feeds, and community groups rather than traditional website storefronts. Independent sellers and small brands, however, are still using tools built for an older model. Most major platforms lock businesses into fixed formats, controlling the customer relationship, the data, and the overall experience. That leaves little room for experimentation. AI-powered agentic commerce could account for up to $385 billion in U.S. e-commerce spending by 2030, according to a Morgan Stanley analysis, which gives some sense of how much is at stake for platforms trying to serve the next wave of online sellers.
The seed round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kindred Ventures, with participation from Greylock Partners, SV Angel, 20VC, and a group of individual investors including Jaren Glover, Maria Raga, Gokul Rajaram, Deborah Liu, Imran Khan, and others.
The problem District is addressing is not new, but it has become more visible. For years, small businesses and independent creators had two options: sell through large marketplaces and accept their terms, or build their own platform and absorb the cost and complexity of doing so. Neither option worked particularly well for most people.
Getting off a marketplace meant hiring engineers, managing servers, and spending months before anything was live. Most sellers could not afford that. The result was a market where the tools available to independent businesses never really kept pace with how their customers wanted to buy.
The global AI-enabled e-commerce market is valued at $8.65 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach $17.1 billion by 2030. AI has brought down the cost of building software significantly, and that is central to what District is trying to do.
"As the cost of software development approaches zero, the winners will be platforms that combine speed, adaptability, and real infrastructure. District enables businesses to run complex commerce operations without the traditional overhead, handling infrastructure and operational layers behind the scenes so brands can easily invest in new and changing selling formats. District is well positioned to power a meaningful share of new commerce businesses created in the years ahead." — Bryan Kim, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
The new capital will go toward expanding District's AI tools, growing its operational services, and scaling the platform to handle businesses of different sizes. More than 1,000 businesses are already using it. With the move to General Availability, the platform is now open to anyone.
District is built around three main components. The AI Builder takes a text description from the user and generates a storefront, community features, and selling formats based on it. No design or technical work is required. The Commerce Manager brings together the operational side: listings, inventory, subscriptions, payments, order fulfillment, and moderation, all accessible from a single dashboard. The third component, Backend Services, gives smaller businesses access to tools that are typically reserved for larger companies, including fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and customer support.
"Whenever a group of people forms around a shared interest, commerce naturally follows. We saw it everywhere, in fandoms, resale communities, and employee groups. People were already buying and selling with each other, but they were doing it with makeshift tools. District exists to turn those informal, high-trust marketplaces into real, scalable businesses. We're building infrastructure so anyone with a product, audience, or idea can create their own commerce platform." — Eddie Koai, CEO and co-founder of District.
District was built in Los Angeles by Koai, Mandia, and Tran after their time at Snap. The company spent three years in quiet development before its public launch.
Some of its early numbers are worth noting. NikNax generated more than $5M in 2025 with more than 5,000 sellers on its platform. Stacked Golf produces $150,000 in weekly sales with over 1,000 active sellers. Other businesses using District include Quentin Tarantino's New Beverly Cinema, live shopping marketplace Dibdit, and Midwest Box Breaks.
The platform also serves larger brands that want more flexibility than standard e-commerce tools offer. For those businesses, the appeal is access to selling formats like live shopping, auctions, subscriptions, and gated communities, without building that infrastructure from scratch.
The $14.7M seed round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kindred Ventures. Additional participants include Greylock Partners, SV Angel, and 20VC, alongside individual investors Jaren Glover, Maria Raga, Gokul Rajaram, Soleio, Deborah Liu, Imran Khan, Jacob Andreou, Peter Sellis, and Josh Siegel.
