Reflections 3.5 Years On
What a Fund ride it's been
When we set out to contribute to the early-stage founder community in New York, we had no idea that our little experiment would have us running 6 pre-seed micro-funds (soon to be nine!) across the globe just a few years later. What began as an attempt to blend the best of an angel network, and a venture fund, is now a unique many-to-many platform of over 400 founders supporting founders across multiple geographies from Australia to Chicago, LA to London, NYC to Denver.
Over these past 3.5 years we’ve invested in over 140 world-positive companies, everything from fin-tech to consumer, healthcare to AI. We are not afraid to go in super early, full of conviction but lacking metrics and data. In fact, we thrive at the stage that most investors just can’t really stomach. As average round sizes and valuations have bloated beyond recognition, we’ve stayed true to our roots generally writing our first check in the $4-7M valuation range. The impact this has on our funds and for our LPs is meaningful and material, with outliers like Headway, backed by A16z, up well over 100x from our entry valuation.
As times have changed, we’ve also evolved what we do. In 2021 we began investing more heavily in our pro-rata and follow-on rounds as our companies grew up. This allowed us to continue to support the entrepreneurs we loved, and also allowed our LPs and friends to double down and build positions in some of our breakout CEOs and problem solvers. Somehow we looked up and had 20M AUM with a portfolio of 140 core investments and a side job of running 1-2 SPVs per week, yes per week!
We’re “only 1% done,” as the saying goes. Really what that means is that we’re excited to keep doing what we’re doing, building an incredible global founder community. When people told us, you can invest in seed locally, or growth globally, we politely smiled. And now many micro-funds later, maybe they’re starting to see that it’s possible to write first checks into amazing founders around the planet.
Thanks for supporting us on this journey, and thanks to our incredible global partners, limited partners, portfolio founders, and team at AngelList. If you’d like to check out the action, join us! https://angel.co/s/the-fund/gTxLa
Jenny & Scott