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XRC Labs
XRC Labs launched in 2014 as a joint venture between the Parsons School of Design and several retail-centric corporate backers, including Kohl's, Express,...
XRC Labs
XRC Labs launched in 2014 as a joint venture between the Parsons School of Design and several retail-centric corporate backers, including Kohl's, Express, and QVC. Co-founder Diana Melencio, previously a director at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, designed the firm to close the gap between consumer-goods innovation and the legacy retail supply chain. The firm operates from Aiken, South Carolina, with a secondary presence in New York City tied to its campus collaborators. The firm runs a two-pronged deployment model: a biannual 14-week accelerator that provides $100,000 to each cohort company in exchange for equity, and a follow-on seed fund that can invest up to $500,000 per portfolio company. The accelerator focuses on retail technology, consumer packaged goods innovation, and supply-chain software. Publicly named portfolio companies include Hullabalu, a children's interactive storytelling platform, and Lumi, a packaging and supply-chain platform for e-commerce brands (per The New York Times, 2017). The firm sources heavily from university partnerships and corporate pilot programs, giving portfolio companies direct access to retail distribution channels. XRC structures its cohorts to run through a curriculum developed jointly with Parsons faculty, emphasizing design thinking and rapid prototyping. The firm has publicly stated it ran over five cohorts, graduating more than 50 companies. Its corporate limited partners function as active pilot partners — Kohl's, for instance, tested in-store technologies from multiple XRC graduates. The firm has not disclosed total assets under management or aggregate deployment figures, making it a relatively small but operationally distinct vehicle within the early-stage consumer-tech landscape. The firm's structural differentiator is its embedded relationship with a design school and a rotating set of corporate retail partners — a model that makes XRC function less as a conventional venture fund and more as a curated R&D pipeline for its backers. This configuration gives portfolio companies faster path-to-pilot opportunities than a typical seed investor can offer, but also ties the firm's value proposition tightly to the strategic relevance of its corporate partners' physical retail footprints.
General information
Firm type
Private Equity
Year founded
2014
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Aiken
Corporate office
Aiken, SC, United States
Principals
Diana Melencio
General Partner
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment decisions at 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).
What is XRC Labs' relationship with Parsons School of Design?
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.
Does XRC Labs invest directly or only through its accelerator program?
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.
Which corporate partners are affiliated with XRC Labs?
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.
How does XRC Labs source its deal flow?
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.
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