Who are the best shops if you want a strike zone of Series C? I'd be willing to go down to B and willing to go up to D but Series C is generally my sweet spot of interesting and early but mature enough I can use my private equity skillset. Thinking places like Dragoneer or maybe Sequoia growth?
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“Series C” is such a broad category. I have invested in Series C companies that are 2 years away from commercialization and then Series C companies doing $100M+ in revs. Are you looking to invest in commercial stage businesses doing less than $10M in revenue, or more? “Series C” or any stage feels like a moving target nowadays, especially with public markets shut off. Sounds to me like you are interested in mid stage venture/growth.
I'm interested in mid stage growth but use Series C as a shorthand. Businesses that have mid $xx in revenue but not highly speculative non-revenue generating but high growth businesses (e.g., not someone making a moonshot bet in dbt). Faster deal timelines than PE and unbanked, with less process work, less focus on financial due diligence, but still thoughtful diligence about the opportunity fully (as opposed to earlier stage where it is more speculative, even if thoughtfully so). Often cash flow negative but beginning to think about path to profitability while still executing on high degrees of market capture and new product development/innovation to serve market needs rather than just pumping out a new product now and again to maintain 15%+ growth per year i.e. growth buyouts. Mid growth businesses that are on the pre-IPO/IPO track. Tolerance for early growth and late growth as bookend strategy. Thanks.
bump
bump. Would take Series B / C shops too. Thinking places like Addition, Bond, IVP, Sequoia Growth, a16z, Redpoint early growth, Greenoaks, not Altimeter, TCV A-C fund, Index growth fund.
Accel, Benchmark, Bessemer, Founders Fund, Khosla, and Kleiner Perkins are a few I would add to your list. Search Crunchbase for firms that have backed companies in your sectors of interest.
Other names you haven't mentioned include Alkeon, Coatue, SGE (Philly), Norwest, Spark, General Catalyst, Insight, Thrive (they are not C, but B is very much in their strike zone, and given the increase in latest fund size, probably fits for you here), and GGV.
You will find philosophical differences among these, but the business size and stage parameters align well enough.
Spark has made some very interesting investment. I also like Lux as well; they do lot of out of the box investments in nascent businesses.
Thrive is Josh Kushner's fund. Early investor in IG.
I wonder what the compensation is like at these shops. Seems very top heavy, as in you have to be super senior to make the "real" money (via carry in investments that exit).
Lux is a wonderful firm. I did not include them for two reasons.
One, they like to go a little earlier than this poster indicated is his preference. They are seed, A, and B folks at heart. Previously they ran a 'continuation' or 'opportunities' fund to be able to exercise pro rata in later rounds from their winners, but in the last fundraise earlier this year they condensed it all into a single vehicle rather than a core fund and an opportunities fund.
Two, they are science focused. This poster references the 'private equity' skillset, which is not highly relevant to a deeptech place like Lux.
Thanks for your response. It's an interesting point re: Lux. Do you think it is unwise for non-technical people to pursue investing in deeptech? The science is much more interesting but it seems nearly impossible to gain the respect of highly technical founders as someone who is non-technical until their ventures become large enough such that they are in the domain of business/finance more so than they are of pure scientific innovation.
It's an interesting conundrum.
'Unwise' is probably too harsh a term. I'd say it's not a high-probability path.
You're almost invariably going to lose deals to investors with a science background, either by losing the term sheet or by failing to even see the deal.
It will take you 3-5 years to get familiar with a space, and at that point you're still behind your science colleagues who have not only the knowledge but a network from two or three academic institutions that has been compounding.
If you can 'apprentice' yourself at a well-regarded firm where there's a partner willing to invest in your development, show you the ropes, point you towards the best people and resources to learn from, and for lack of a better term sponsor your reputation in the eyes of the people you meet, you've got an intellectually challenging but very achievable path for long-term success.
If you're trying to stand out in a crowded venture marketplace as a science-interested guy at 'Vertical SaaS' Partners, that is not a great path for success.
I have done one deeptech investment. What worked for me was being exceptionally transparent about my limitations in the hope that the candor generated trust. It did, and while I enjoy the 'first call' relationship with the CEO, my primary takeaway was how truly limited my ability to be helpful is.
I can help with Chief of Staff level things. Seriously. Basic bizops or force multiplier things for the founder. I can give more money. That's about it. And given how my life has turned out where I am not giving that space primacy in terms of continued focus, I am not furthering my knowledge or network in a way that will generate value for that company down the road.
This is helpful, and confirmatory... and almost obvious, albeit nonetheless disappointing to hear. Thanks.
Chamath, for all his foibles, has an interesting heuristic of a 'barbell' in investing (Twitter).
You shouldn't lose all hope of investing in deeptech companies. If you care about science and advancing the future of challenging industries, make it a thing with your personal time and capital.
Pick a job that will maximize your earning potential based on your 'zone of genius', the overlap of skill-set and interests. With some of the proceeds from that career path, invest at a smaller level in the things on the left side of the barbell.
Your day job is the right-hand side: the things that require inaction and consume the majority of your resources (time, capital [GP commit or co-invest participation]). Your nights and weekends time can be small checks of $10k (or later in your career, $100k) into deeptech startups you've been researching and geeking out over.
I know a guy who hit with this exact thing twice. Luminar and Archer, which both dumped bags through SPAC deals. Guy does not have to work again. His original capital came from a successful search fund deal. He decided to do it again, but (a) took on a co-founder so he wouldn't have to work as hard on the second one and (b) decided to look for a bigger deal so the absolute return on time would be more favorable.
His day job (second search fund asset he closed on) is his concentrated portfolio. His night job is deeptech moonshots that he trawls through thanks to the GSB community. He is in stuff like Boom, ABL, and some really out there bio.
I appreciate the shoutout to Chamath. My dad almost pulled some of Chamath's capital into two or three of his ventures. I'm not familiar with your domain of experience - appears to be fintech - but was curious if there are any primers on the space or accounts on twitter you highly recommend. Any material really.
For context I'm jumping to a generalist fund (think NMC) in a few months and want to efficiently build out generalist frameworks, expose myself. Thanks for all you do on this forum
The best education is simply to talk to people. If you talk to one person a weekday who has something you want to learn, in a year you'll have 250 conversations to be able to draw on.
Reading materials that are generally helpful are publications like Stratechery and The Information, newsletters like Pro Rata (Axios) and Term Sheet (Fortune), personal publications from good industry participants like Notorious PLG (partner at Wing), Bottom Up (David Sacks at Craft, original COO of PayPal), Lenny Rachitsky, and so on.
People will give you a wider dispersion of insights than you'll get from writings. Writing is polished, authors are obviously trying to put airtight thought product out that will benefit their name. There are innumerable unpolished gems you'll get from conversations.
People share stuff they maybe shouldn't. You can learn about deals shaping up or happening live, deals that already happened but are unannounced, skeletons in people's or companies' closets, carcasses out in a desert from people trying and failing at a commercial or product or geographic strategy, unknown or unsung heroes who have superb skills or knowledge ...
Investing time into this creates an unfair advantage. You become a walking anthology. It benefits your own decision-making, and it also turns you into a lever of value for the people you talk with. Over time, people want to come to talk to you. This makes it easier for you to access higher-quality people to talk to, and a virtuous cycle begins.
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