early-stage
(45)
Nana Bianca is growing startups in a Florentine granary
Three veterans of Italy’s internet industry turned their experience into a place to build companies. At Nana Bianca, the offer runs from a €20 desk to startup grants of up to €100,000 - with some hard lessons between the two.
Redstart puts a cofounder on the cap table
The Paris startup studio trades daily operating help for a minority stake. Its real subject is everything that happens between a promising idea and a business that can stand on its own.
FONGIT Takes Care of the Company Behind the Invention
The Geneva nonprofit pairs technical founders with business help, workspace and financing. Its history with Proton shows why the work between a promising idea and a working company matters.
The Chennai Angels Have Something Money Can’t Buy: The Next Introduction
A factory needs customers. A tea chain needs room to grow. Inside the Chennai investment network that puts business experience to work alongside its cheques.
The VC Firm That Measures Its Thesis in 53 Feet
Venture 53 ignores fashionable sectors and backs the software, sensors and services that keep goods moving. Its advantage is less about a secret algorithm than a tightly packed network of people who already know freight.
FUSE Is Betting Seattle’s Best Network Can Beat Silicon Valley’s Biggest Checkbook
The six-year-old venture firm has more than $420 million to deploy and a deliberately local edge: turn the Pacific Northwest’s operators, buyers and repeat founders into an unfairly useful network for the next generation.
The VC Betting That Space Is an Earth Business
Sidney Nakahodo left the World Bank to fund rocket welders, orbital robots and satellite-data startups. His pitch to skeptics: the most useful thing about space is what it does for the planet you can already see out the window.
The Firm That Writes the First Check Before the Company Has a Name
Flybridge has spent more than two decades writing the earliest checks in tech. Now it is betting the whole firm on founders building the AI-powered version of everything.
The Blackstone Alum Betting That Wall Street Runs on Blockchain Next
Alex Marinier left private equity to write the earliest checks into blockchain finance. Six years and one Polymarket later, New Form Capital is raising again - and the institutions it once worked for are finally listening.
The Fund Run by Founders Who Already Did the Hard Part
A micro-fund out of Palo Alto backs early-stage AI and deep-tech founders with small checks and an unusual promise: the people cutting them have already scaled companies of their own.
The Fund That Bets on People Who Read Physics Papers for Fun
Eric Schmidt's Palo Alto firm has spent fifteen years funding PhDs who want to rebuild the physical world - from SoFi and Uber to gene editors and metal-bending robots. Its bet: the boring industries are about to move fast.
The Cyber-Only Fund That Bets on the People Who Built the Industry
A firm run entirely by cybersecurity operators, backing the founders trying to defend everything from cloud workloads to synthetic media - one narrow thesis, executed at scale.
Artemis Goes Hunting in the Markets Other VCs Call Uncomfortable
Stephanie Campbell and Diana Murakhovskaya built a $36 million fund on a plain bet: the founders and problems most investors skip - elder care, divorce, food trucks, lactation - are where the overlooked returns hide.
The Fund That Runs Your Marketing Before It Writes You a Check
Fiat Ventures started as a fintech growth shop, not a checkbook. That order - consulting first, capital second - is the whole pitch, and it is why founders let the firm into the room before the term sheet.
The Only Two Bets BlueYard Will Make: Utopia or Oblivion
BlueYard hands early-stage founders a check between $500K and $5M to chase problems most investors call radioactive - fusion reactors, hypersonic defense, decentralized money, engineered cells. Since 2016 it has backed Solana, Groq, IonQ and Filecoin from a partnership split between Berlin and the US.
Album VC Bet on Fewer Founders - Then Utah Started Minting Unicorns
Album VC built a sizable fund by doing something venture capital says it values but rarely scales: keeping the check count low and the partner relationship close. Its record traces the rise of Utah tech from overlooked outpost to repeat-company factory.
Half a Billion Dollars, One Zip Code, and a Bet That Talent Is Everywhere
Atento Capital deployed more than $500 million from a single Oklahoma foundation - and started flying Latin American deep-tech founders to Tulsa to prove the next big company doesn't have to come from California.
The Fund Betting That 60% of the Economy Will Soon Be Grown, Not Made
Jennifer Kan spent years at a Nobel laureate's bench teaching enzymes new tricks. Now her fund backs the founders trying to grow the physical economy - chocolate, copper, chemicals, even data - one engineered cell at a time.
The Fund That Only Swings at the Ones It Can Hit
A Boston venture firm borrowed its name from the last man to hit .400 in baseball - and built a discipline of only swinging at cybersecurity, healthcare, and data + AI deals where it holds an unfair advantage.
The Alabama Studio That Builds Companies From Problems, Not Pitch Decks
Shegun Otulana already had his billion-dollar exit. Then he stayed in Birmingham to build a factory for the next ones.
The Fund Betting That the Hard Problems Are Made of Atoms, Not Apps
A $66 million debut fund is putting first checks into space refueling, biometric firearms and board games - on the theory that the world's hardest problems are made of atoms, not apps.
The Venture Fund Where the Partners Used to Run the Missions
New North Ventures backs founders building for both the Pentagon and the marketplace - a dual-use bet led by former intelligence operators and the entrepreneur who built Dyn.
The Goldman Banker Who Built a Different Kind of Cap Table
Deborah Jackson left Wall Street to fund the founders it kept overlooking. A decade later, Plum Alley has put $100M-plus into CRISPR, wastewater sensors and autonomous freight - and turned its members into the people writing the checks.
The London VC That Would Rather Fund a Database Than a Dating App
Krishna Visvanathan and Scott Sage have spent two decades funding the plumbing beneath enterprise software. With a fresh $135M APAC fund and about $450M under management, Crane is betting the next category leaders start with infrastructure, not pitch decks.
The Firm That Funds the Things That Probably Won't Work
Vinod Khosla left a top-tier partnership to write checks nobody else would. Two decades and one $50 million OpenAI bet later, the willingness to be wrong looks like a strategy.
The Pritzker Family Turned One Buddhist Parable Into a $190M Venture Fund
One family office. One $190 million fund. A portfolio that already includes two unicorns - and a name borrowed from an ancient story about a pilgrim who needed 53 teachers to figure things out.
The Recruiter and the Rocket Scientist Funding America's Hard Tech
A recruiter who once staffed early Snap and Tinder teamed up with a rocket engineer to fund the companies most VCs can't read a spec sheet for - and got the Space Force to sign first.
The VC Who Sells Before He Wires
Jordan Wan spent ten years staffing the sales teams of a thousand startups. Now he invests in the founders before they have one - and helps them figure out how to sell.
The Fund That Bet on Utah Before Utah Was a Thing
Kickstart wrote the Mountain West's first seed checks in the middle of a recession. Sixteen years and roughly $500 million later, it is still the region's most active early-stage investor - and still betting the frontier is wide open.
The Orlando Fund Betting That the Next Big Startup Won't Come From Silicon Valley
A venture firm in Orlando is wagering that the founders worth backing are the ones nobody in Silicon Valley has a flight booked to meet - and it wants to be the first money in.