seed-stage
(88)
Springcamp bets before the proof
The seed investor backs founders before the numbers settle. To follow them from Korea into a bigger market, it first had to change who owned the firm.
Courtyard Ventures puts the campus on the cap table
Berkeley students had proximity to founders, but little money to invest alone. Courtyard Ventures pooled their capital - and built a fund that promises to send part of its upside back to campus.
Transitions First wants your invention on the factory floor
A clever molecule is a beginning. Transitions First backs the hard, expensive work of turning industrial science into something a customer can actually use.
The Batchery makes the founder investable
Before the investor meeting comes the harder work: fixing the business. The Batchery puts experienced operators beside early founders, with practical AI as its next assignment.
Conector puts its mentors on the cap table
The Barcelona accelerator turns advice into an ownership stake. Its history explains the bargain: founders get a small circle of committed advisers, and those advisers get a reason to keep showing up.
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 Fund Betting That the World's Oldest Industry Is Finally Ready to Change
While most venture money chased apps and ad clicks, a small Atlanta firm went looking for founders willing to fix concrete, steel and 3D-printed homes. Here is how Shadow Ventures built a thesis around the industry software forgot.
The Check That Comes Before You Have a Company Bank Account
Farooq Abbasi built Preface Ventures to fund the engineers behind enterprise infrastructure - and got in so early on DX that a $2.8M-funded company became a $1B Atlassian deal.
The Fund Built to Turn UW Lab Coats Into Cap Tables
Ken Horenstein spent years watching University of Washington research spin out billion-dollar companies for investors somewhere else. Pack Ventures is his answer: a fund that shows up on day zero, before the pitch deck is polished.
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 Firm Indiana Built to Fund Its Own Future
For 15 years, Elevate Ventures has written the first check for Indiana startups from Gary to Evansville. In 2025, the state that helped create it started asking hard questions about the books.
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 Venture Fund Teaching Deep Tech to Speak Government
AIN Ventures backs science-heavy startups that can sell to both industry and government. Its edge is less about waving a defense-tech flag than translating between two markets that rarely move at the same speed.
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 Venture Fund With an Admissions Requirement: You Had to Go to Oxford
A Palo Alto fund turned an alumni network into an asset class - if your startup wants in, someone in the founding story has to have walked through an Oxford quad.
The Fund That Bets on Lab Coats, Not Hoodies
A female-founded merchant bank in Singapore is quietly wiring together capital, regulators and non-dilutive grants to push quantum, climate and brain-health science out of the lab - and it is measuring the results in billions mobilized, not just term sheets signed.
The VC That Bet the Cost Curve of a Building Can Bend
Two lifelong construction-tech investors raised $148 million, then handed their startups something rarer than money - a rolodex of the general contractors, builders, and design firms who become their first customers.
The Fund That Bet Its Whole Pitch on the People, Not the Money
Four operators who never quit their day jobs built a venture fund where the check is the smallest thing in the room. The real asset is a rolodex of 100+ people who have already done the job.
The Fund That Bets on Boring: Predictive Hunts Data Moats in the Industries AI Forgot
While most AI money chases chatbots, Kevin Alvarez-Fung is writing seed checks into freight, factories and payments - and handing founders a rolodex of 500 corporations to prove it works.
The VC Firm Where the Founders Salute First
Justin Nahama and three partners are betting that the discipline that runs toward gunfire also builds companies. Their first fund is oversubscribed, their portfolio has raised over $350 million, and a $50 million second fund is now open.
The VC That Bets on the Boring, Broken Industries Everyone Else Skips
Two operators who helped build Oscar Health left to fund the unglamorous machinery of insurance, supply chains and climate. Their pitch to founders is simple: the hardest markets are the biggest ones.
Emmeline Ventures Is Betting the Next Big Market Is the One Women Already Live In
The early-stage firm sorts opportunity into three human needs - health, wealth, and safety - then backs women founders building the missing infrastructure around them.
Icon
Icon is a New York startup that launched in 2024 as 'the world's first AI Admaker' - software pitched as ChatGPT plus CapCut for churning out short-form video ads in minutes. Founded by serial entrepreneur Kennan Davison (aka Kennan Frost) and backed by a $9.2M seed round led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Icon paid a reported $12M for the icon.com domain and drew backing from OpenAI, Cognition and Pika executives plus celebrity angels. After users complained the fully-automated product fell short, the company pivoted toward human-filmed UGC ads (six ads for $999) branded 'The Human Admaker,' before reports in early 2026 said it had gone quiet.
Wildwood Ventures
Wildwood Ventures is betting that the next important consumer technologies will help people live more fully - then putting an operator bench beside founders to help build them.
Finality Capital
A Santa Monica firm that has been quietly backing blockchain builders since 2018 - before it had a fund - now runs venture, liquid, and credit strategies on a single conviction: the next internet gets settled onchain.
Archon Technologies
Archon Technologies is a San Francisco startup (Y Combinator W25) that helps software companies sell to the U.S. government by automating FedRAMP, the federal compliance regime cloud vendors must clear before agencies can buy them. Its free-to-integrate SDK ships security controls compliant out of the box and, with AI-assisted documentation, aims to cut the certification timeline from roughly 16 months to 6 and save vendors about $1M. Founded by former U.S. State Department technologists George Parks and Sam Jung.
Attack Capital
Attack Capital is a New York based, Y Combinator alumni founded AI venture studio and seed-stage fund. It builds vertical AI companies from scratch on a 30-day build cycle - spinning out products like OpenMic (AI phone agents), PowerDialer, and HealOS - while also giving accredited investors direct, diversified access to vetted YC startups. Founded by Thiel Fellow Kaushik Tiwari and Saumik Tiwari, it pairs a company factory with a fund.
Scale Yourself
Scale Yourself is a coaching and content platform for venture-backed startup founders, built by Amy Buechler - a licensed psychotherapist who spent nearly five years as Y Combinator's first in-house founder coach. It combines one-on-one coaching, a vetted network of ex-founder coaches, and a free framework library called The User Manual for Founder Psychology to help founders scale their psychology, relationships, and leadership alongside their companies.
ODF (On Deck Founders)
ODF (On Deck Founders) is a San Francisco-based founder fellowship that helps aspiring entrepreneurs go from idea to conviction. Its signature offering is an intense one-week in-person experience in SF where 80-100 pre-vetted builders meet potential co-founders, pressure-test ideas, and commit to starting a company - followed by lifelong access to an alumni community, mentorship, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in startup perks. Unlike a traditional accelerator, ODF takes no equity. More than 1,000 startups have launched through On Deck, collectively raising over $2 billion from investors including Sequoia, a16z, Khosla and Founders Fund.