Venice has been one of the neighborhoods most impacted by the Los Angeles homelessness crisis, but that hasn't seemed to dim its appeal to the wealthy tech crowd that kickstarted the area's rapid gentrification some years ago. Though records indicate the deals were actually quietly inked last year, married high-net-worth entrepreneurs Zach Perret and Afton Vechery have purchased two side-by-side Venice homes for a total outlay of nearly $10 million.

Perret may not be a household name, but Forbes says the North Carolina native, 35, is a certified billionaire - worth an estimated $1.5 billion. That's thanks to Plaid, the fintech company he co-founded nearly a decade ago. The San Francisco-based firm acts as a middleman between banks and the numerous platforms vying to be the banks' choice for consumers to access their cash. In late 2020, Visa agreed to acquire Plaid in a landmark $5.3 billion deal, though the acquisition was ultimately scrapped due to U.S. government pressure.

As for Vechery, 32, she co-founded Modern Fertility, a reproductive healthcare startup. In 2021, four years after its founding, Vechery sold the company in a deal valued at north of $225 million. A lifelong "entrepreneur at heart," Vechery is now presumably working on her next big idea.

The couple's pair of landlocked properties sit on a "hidden" lane laced with other multimillion-dollar homes, many of them boxy and contemporary in style. However, the two Vechery-Perret estates are about as architecturally divergent as they come - one is a spacious "organic modern" structure built in 2014 and kitted out with a full trove of high-tech amenities, while the other is a 1913 Craftsman bungalow. Together, the two homes have seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms and garage parking for five cars - a very rare and covetable feature in tightly-packed Venice.

The modern home was the first one Vechery and Perret purchased; it set them back about $6.5 million, per records. Designed by acclaimed Venice architect Robert Thibodeau, the roughly 4,400-square-foot house sits securely behind walls and gates, and sports vaulted ceilings, walls of glass and marble bathrooms throughout. In addition to the main structure, there's also a studio with its own full bathroom and private patio on the lush premises.

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