pre-seed-investing
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Primary Built a 60-Person Pit Crew for the Riskiest Lap in Startups
Most seed investors sell access and advice. Primary has spent a decade building something more concrete: a scaled operating bench that helps young companies recruit, find customers and raise the next round.
The VC Firm That Wants the 11 P.M. Call
Oceans built its pitch around a scarce commodity in venture capital: useful attention after the wire lands. Its partners sell founders on operator time, candid advice and help with the hires and customers that decide whether an early-stage company gets a second act.
The VC Firm Betting the Next Big Market Is Simply Being Human
Human Ventures built a venture thesis around ordinary needs - health, work, money, attention and belonging. A decade in, its hybrid of capital, company-building and community offers a revealing answer to what an early-stage investor can still do that a spreadsheet cannot.
The Tiny Florida Fund Reading Every AI Healthcare Deck
Intelligence Ventures is turning an inbox full of early-stage pitches into a map of AI healthcare - then using that map to place small, concentrated bets on founders whose data may outlast the hype.
Lorimer Ventures Is Turning 100 Operators Into a Venture-Capital Product
The Brooklyn-rooted firm writes early checks for enterprise-AI founders, then puts a network of more than 100 working operators on the cap table. Its wager is that access to buyers, builders and follow-on capital can be packaged into something more useful than advice.
The $100,000 Checks Turning Knoxville Into a Startup Town
Market Square Ventures is making a simple regional bet: good founders do not become less investable when they live outside the usual venture map. Its small checks, operator network, and rapidly expanding portfolio are testing how much a hometown fund can change a startup ecosystem.
Giulianna Crivello
Giulianna Crivello is the Founding General Partner of DSH Ventures, the pre-seed investment arm of Draper Startup House — the global co-living and coworking network for entrepreneurs backed by legendary VC Tim Draper. A 2018 valedictorian from Sierra Nevada College, she went from research analyst in Nevada to directing investments across 14 countries in her first year at DSH Ventures. She co-manages the fund with Vikram Bharati and has facilitated over 215 investor introductions to startups spanning the US, Singapore, India, and beyond, while helping build Draper Startup House into a presence spanning 25 embassies across 5 continents.
Seth Berman
Seth Berman co-founded Susa Ventures in 2013 and has since backed 10 unicorns across roughly 100 seed-stage investments, including Robinhood, Flexport, and Expanse. He brings an unusual background to venture capital - nearly a decade as VP of Strategic Marketing at Richemont Group (Cartier, Net-A-Porter, Montblanc) - giving him a luxury-brand consumer lens that shaped Susa's focus on distribution, compounding moats, and founder-market fit. He has since launched Kivu Ventures, a Series A/B fund targeting vertical AI, healthcare, and logistics, with investment partners including Frame.io co-founder Emery Wells and Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra.
Manu Kumar
Dr. Manu Kumar is the founder and Chief Firestarter of K9 Ventures, the firm credited with coining the term 'pre-seed' and pioneering institutional pre-seed investing in Silicon Valley. A serial entrepreneur who bootstrapped his first company with $5,000 and sold it for $100M+ before age 25, Manu holds a PhD from Stanford and has backed companies like Lyft, Twilio, and Carta from their earliest days. He is also co-founder and CEO of HiHello, reimagining professional identity for the digital age.