The Anti-VC
We're not unicorn hunters and don't believe in uneconomic high burn models reaching for market share. We look for businesses built by founders who are cash efficient, scrappy, and pragmatic. We focus on companies with $2mm+ of run-rate revenue and year over year growth of 50%+. We'll invest anywhere in the US or Canada, especially in markets most venture capital firms overlook. We prefer leading $1mm to $10mm Series A or B rounds, but can also follow. We like plain-vanilla preferred stock in traditional growth rounds, inside rounds, recaps, and restructurings. We can also do secondaries.
Who We AreThe Numbers
18
Companies Funded
16
Invested
1
Check Size
3-4
Decision Process
Our
Portfolio
SaaS, e-commerce, marketplaces, and low-tech are all areas of interest. Our portfolio is diverse and includes HR software, app tech, parking, sales & marketing software, greeting cards, dating, e-commerce, and healthcare software.
See Our Full Portfolio
Startup learnings from the best founders in the world
Founders at Work interviews founders of well known technology companies about their earliest days. It’s well worth the full read, but below I summarized portions that really stood out to me. Introduction “Perseverance is important because, in a startup, nothing goes according to plan. Founders live day to day with a sense of uncertainty,…
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You don’t need to be profitable to exit
I cringe writing that title because we’re sticklers for cash efficiency and achieving cash break even. However, we looked at tech 94 companies at IPO and determined 72 of them were not profitable (77%) and 60 were not generating positive cash flow (64%). The data and additional observations are below. Ecommerce, Hardware, and…
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The hidden upside of debt covenants
Debt covenants can be scary. If you trip a covenant such as minimum net revenue, minimum liquidity, or minimum EBITDA, you’re in default. Your lender: i) will look to you to remedy the situation immediately (perhaps by raising more equity which means dilution); ii) may increase the pricing of the loan in the form of…
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Are Strategic Investors Important? No
Entrepreneurs are always looking for “Strategic Investors” – corporate VC such as Intel, Verizon, SAP, Microsoft, etc. The view is that these investors provide not only capital, but also guidance on the product roadmap, engineering/dev resources, critical introductions, and they’re often customers themselves. For instance Cloudera was 22% owned by Intel prior to the IPO. …
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