early-stage-vc
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Inspired Capital Wants the Napkin, Not the Hype Cycle
The New York firm has nearly $900 million, fewer than 10 new bets a year and a taste for founders still sketching the future. Its wager is that operating experience and patient conviction can beat venture capital by trend cycle.
The Fund That Bets on 30 Companies and Backs Teenagers
While rivals raise billion-dollar megafunds, A* is doing the opposite: fewer bets, bigger conviction, and a willingness to wire money to founders who are not old enough to rent a car.
R7 Is Betting the Next Great Software Company Will Have Moving Parts
The Chicago venture firm hunts where code meets atoms - backing lab robots, electric trailers, ocean maps and the stubborn machinery of everyday life.
The VC Firm Betting That Software Is About to Get Its Hands Dirty
Converge VC backs pre-seed through Series A companies where AI, software infrastructure and machines meet the stubborn physics of work. Its pitch is capital with operating memory - and fewer scripts for founders to follow.
The Climate Fund Betting the Future Still Runs Through a Pipe
Energy Capital Ventures built a narrow venture thesis around an unfashionable premise: decarbonization will have to work with existing gas infrastructure, not merely wish it away. Now data centers, industrial demand and a portfolio of strange machines are putting that bet to work.
CapitalX
CapitalX is a San Francisco early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2020 by general partner Cindy Bi. It writes $100K-$500K seed checks into enterprise, SaaS, AI, fintech and developer-tools startups, with larger follow-on positions through SPVs, and runs an online-first, high-conviction model backed by an unusually operator-heavy base of limited partners. The firm points to a portfolio that includes Zapier, Rippling, Cruise, Turing, Flutterwave and Boom Supersonic, and a run of unicorn outcomes as its calling card.
First Move
First Move is a founder-led early-stage venture capital firm backing founders across Southeast Asia, often writing the first cheque before there is a pitch deck. Founded in 2023 by former Fave executives Joel Neoh and Audra Pakalnyte, it uses YC-style SAFEs to fund pre-seed startups - increasingly AI-native ones - across consumer, health, and technology, and pairs its capital with a Consumer Tech Angel Syndicate of operators who co-invest and advise.
Asher Siddiqui
Asher Siddiqui is a General Partner at Sukna Ventures, a Riyadh-based early-stage venture fund backing software and data-infrastructure startups across MENA. He spent a decade running global M&A and corporate venture at Etisalat (around $15bn in deals), then joined 500 Startups as a partner and investment committee member before settling into the GP role at Sukna. He advises a constellation of funds from Palo Alto to Pakistan and splits time between the San Francisco Bay Area, Dubai, and Riyadh.