emerging-managers
(9)
Transpose Platform backs the people who back the founders
A venture firm with about $2.65 billion under management has two ways into the next startup: invest in its founders, or back the fund that finds them. Transpose Platform makes a business of doing both.
Nik Talreja Is Turning Venture Capital’s Paper Trail Into Rails
A lawyer became an investor, discovered the paperwork was the product, and built Sydecar to make private-market deals feel less like bespoke legal projects and more like dependable infrastructure.
The Fund That Writes the First Check Into the First Check
It backs the venture funds nobody else will anchor - the ones run by first-time, underrepresented managers - and it shows up at the moment they need it most: the first close.
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.
Samir Kaji
Samir Kaji is the co-founder and CEO of Allocate, a private markets platform that helps wealth advisors and family offices build and manage institutional-quality portfolios. Before founding Allocate, he spent about 22 years in venture banking at Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank, where he advised more than 700 venture and private equity firms. He also hosts Venture Unlocked, a widely followed podcast and newsletter about how venture capital firms are built and scaled.
Sydecar
Sydecar is a deal execution platform that automates the back office for venture investors. It lets fund managers, syndicate leads, and emerging VCs spin up Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) and funds with banking, compliance, contracts, tax, and reporting handled in one place - turning what used to take weeks of legal and administrative work into a next-business-day process. Founded in 2021 and based in San Francisco, the company has supported thousands of investment vehicles and administers more than $1 billion in assets.
Eric Woo
Eric Woo is the co-founder and CEO of Revere, a data platform that helps institutional allocators evaluate and manage emerging venture funds and other private-market assets. A UC Berkeley-trained mechanical engineer turned CFA charterholder, he spent more than 16 years as a limited partner before founding Revere - building emerging-manager programs at Top Tier Capital and Northgate Capital, then leading Institutional Capital at AngelList. He has helped allocate over $160 million into venture funds and co-investments and is widely regarded as a thought leader in the emerging-manager ecosystem, working to make venture underwriting less mystical and more measurable.
Carolina Huaranca Mendoza
Carolina Huaranca Mendoza is co-founder and General Partner of First Close Partners, a fund-of-funds backing venture firms led by underrepresented managers. She got her start in M&A banking, built Girls Who Code's Clubs program from zero, became a Principal at Kapor Capital where she designed the firm's first LP strategy for diverse emerging managers, and now writes checks into 100+ funds worldwide.
Lo Toney
Laurence 'Lo' Toney is the Founding Managing Partner of Plexo Capital, a San Francisco-based institutional VC firm he incubated at GV (Google Ventures) and spun out independently in 2018. Plexo's distinctive 'full stack' model invests across three layers - LP stakes in emerging diverse fund managers, direct investments in companies sourced through those networks, and equity stakes in the GP management entities themselves. After senior operating roles at Nike, eBay, and Zynga (where he ran Zynga Poker to $250M in annual bookings), Toney moved into VC via Comcast Ventures and GV before building Plexo Capital's $42.5M Fund I with backers including Alphabet, Intel Capital, and the Ford Foundation. Named to Forbes BLK 50: Money Masters 2026, he has championed diverse fund managers as alpha generators long before it became conventional wisdom.