XRC Labs

Diana Melencio is a General Partner and co-founder of XRC Labs, and she leads investment decisions alongside the firm's partnership team. She previously served as a director at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, where she focused on urban innovation and technology-based economic development programs (per public record).

XRC Labs launched as a joint venture with Parsons, and the school's faculty helped design the accelerator curriculum. Portfolio companies receive design-thinking mentorship from Parsons instructors, and the collaboration gives XRC privileged access to student talent for pilot projects and prototyping.

XRC operates both an accelerator and a follow-on seed fund. The accelerator typically provides $100,000 in seed capital to cohort companies, and the firm can deploy up to $500,000 in follow-on funding to the strongest performers. This allows XRC to maintain ownership as companies scale beyond the initial program.

Publicly disclosed corporate limited partners include Kohl's, Express, and QVC (per The New York Times, 2017). These retailers do not merely provide capital — they serve as pilot partners, testing portfolio company technologies inside their own stores and supply chains.

XRC sources heavily through university partnerships, the Parsons design community, and direct applications to its bi-annual accelerator program. Corporate partners also refer companies whose technologies they want to explore. The firm's pipeline is weighted toward founders addressing problems in physical retail infrastructure rather than pure software startups.