There's a particular breed of optimism required to launch a live commerce platform in 2026—especially when your most formidable competitor just hit an $11.5 billion valuation and TikTok continues to eat the world. But Eddie Koai, who spent years building product at Snapchat, believes the category's biggest opportunities haven't been captured yet. They're hiding, he argues, in what he calls "informal, high-trust marketplaces"—the Discord servers, Instagram live streams, and niche communities where commerce happens despite the platforms, not because of them.
Koai's Los Angeles-based startup, District, just raised $14.7 million in seed funding to prove that thesis. The May 6 round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kindred Ventures, with checks coming from Greylock Partners, SV Angel, and 20VC. A handful of operators joined as well: former Depop CEO Maria Raga, Gokul Rajaram, ex-Snap executive Deborah Liu, and Imran Khan. It's the kind of investor roster that suggests either genuine conviction or very effective networking—perhaps both.
Building for the Gaps Between Platforms
District has been in the works since 2022, a quiet build led by Koai (now CEO), Patrick Mandia (President), and Khoi Tran (CTO)—all alumni of Snapchat's product and engineering teams. The three spent the better part of three years constructing what amounts to infrastructure for people who shouldn't need to think about infrastructure. Creators, brands, and community organizers can spin up online stores, marketplaces, and live-selling experiences without touching code.
The platform's AI Builder generates storefronts from text prompts. A Commerce Manager handles the messy backend work—payments, fulfillment, fraud prevention, buyer-seller protection. Transactions run through Stripe and PayPal. Native mobile apps let sellers broadcast live shows that simultaneously stream to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, a feature born from the reality that audiences live across platforms, not on just one.
Pricing tiers—Basic, Pro, and Enterprise—offer sliding scales of features. Live co-hosting, custom integrations, varying allocations of AI credits (290 monthly on the low end, 990 on Pro). The details matter less than the underlying pitch: Koai wants District to be the operating system for commerce that doesn't fit neatly into Amazon or Shopify's templates.
The Early Customers Tell a Story
Over 1,000 businesses have signed on since launch, though the headline numbers come from a few standout cases. Stacked Golf, an independent marketplace for golf gear, reportedly processes $150,000 in weekly sales across more than 1,000 sellers. NikNax—run by creator Jocelyn, who goes by "Crazy Lamp Lady"—generated north of $5 million in sales throughout 2025, stitching together a network of 5,000-plus sellers hawking vintage finds and oddities.
Then there are the more eclectic use cases. Midwest Box Breaks deals in sports cards. Quentin Tarantino's New Beverly Cinema sells memorabilia. The customer base suggests District isn't chasing a single vertical so much as enabling anyone with an audience and something to sell.
"The Cost of Developing Software Approaches Zero"
Bryan Kim, who covers consumer and AI investments at Andreessen Horowitz, offered the kind of thesis statement that venture capitalists excel at: "As the cost of developing software approaches zero, the platforms that will win are those that combine speed, adaptability, and real infrastructure." It's a bet that no-code and AI-assisted tools will unlock a new wave of micro-entrepreneurs who couldn't previously afford custom development.
Steve Jang at Kindred Ventures pointed to the live and community commerce opportunity more broadly, emphasizing favorable market dynamics. Left unsaid: the market is also ferociously competitive.
A Crowded, Chaotic Playing Field
District is walking into a space that's equal parts gold rush and demolition derby. Whatnot, the live-shopping platform that's become synonymous with the category, closed a $225 million Series F in October at an $11.5 billion valuation. The company's gross merchandise volume more than doubled over the course of the year, fueled by collectibles enthusiasts and an interface designed for impulse.
TikTok Shop, meanwhile, notched over 50% year-over-year growth in U.S. shoppers during Black Friday Cyber Monday last year, with 760,000-plus livestreams pulling in 1.6 billion views. Even eBay, a platform not exactly known for bleeding-edge innovation, has expanded its eBay Live feature into Germany and Australia.
The question for District isn't whether live commerce works—it clearly does—but whether there's room for another layer in the stack, and whether "infrastructure for informal marketplaces" is a category that scales or a feature that gets absorbed by larger players.
What Comes Next
The $14.7 million will go toward expanding District's AI-powered tools, beefing up operational services (payments, fulfillment, buyer and seller protections), and generally trying to grow faster than the competition. The company didn't disclose valuation terms, a common move for seed rounds but one that leaves questions about how investors priced the risk.
Koai and his co-founders are betting that the future of commerce isn't monolithic. It's fragmented, community-driven, and happening in spaces that legacy platforms treat as afterthoughts. Whether that vision translates into a durable business—or becomes another well-funded experiment in a market that's already figured out what it wants—remains an open question.
For now, District has capital, credibility from its Snap pedigree, and a handful of early customers generating real revenue. That's more than most startups get at the starting line. Whether it's enough depends on how quickly they can turn "informal, high-trust marketplaces" from a compelling pitch into a repeatable, defensible model. The clock, as always in venture-backed land, is already ticking.
