District, founded by three Snapchat alumni, raises a $14.7 million seed round to help independent sellers build community-driven marketplaces

Eddie Koai, Patrick Mandia, and I are watching Crazy Lamp Lady on someone’s computer. It’s a town hall of sorts. Crazy Lamp Lady is actually a big deal—her real first name is Jocelyn, but as Crazy Lamp Lady, she has more than 800,000 followers across platforms and an online marketplace attracting thousands. She’s reassuring her audience of hundreds that they shouldn’t be worried about listing items that aren’t ultra-rare (TJ Maxx last season can count, too) and generally talking shop. We’ve dropped in on her regular “state of the union” check-in for her followers on District, an AI-powered platform that helps online sellers build stores and marketplaces without technical know-how. It was founded in 2022 by former Snapchatters Koai, Mandia, and Khoi Tran. “We came in with a very ‘duh’ hypothesis, which is that people actually like to buy from people who they like and from people who they trust,” said Koai. “It’s the same reason you buy something in a store.” District recently raised a $14.7 million seed round, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kindred Ventures, Fortune has exclusively learned. Other investors include Greylock Partners, SV Angel, and 20VC. District also attracted an eclectic group of angels, including ex-Depop CEO Maria Raga, famed solo investor Gokul Rajaram, and former Snap executives Peter Sellis and Imran Khan. “Services like Amazon, Facebook, and eBay were built two to three decades ago for another era when making payment transactions or social feeds work were hard enough to get right,” said Steve Jang, Kindred Ventures founder and managing partner. “Today, people want to have that all happen fluidly in one easy, real-time, community-driven experience where transactions happen instantly.” Jang additionally points out a few simultaneously true things: the $7 trillion worldwide ecommerce market is in flux as consumer behavior ever shifts towards the instantaneous, while live shopping finally takes hold in the U.S., particularly with the rise of compan