33N Ventures

Our strategic alignment with AWS and cloud expertise provides unrivaled growth opportunities to early-stage businesses Our experienced management team has an intricate understanding of the challenges early-stage companies face at each stage of their journey. Our core value proposition is centered around a strategic alignment with AWS, complimented by our own in-house technical and commercial cloud expertise. This powerful combination provides unrivaled growth opportunities to early-stage businesses, transforming visions into reality. Our value proposition has been designed to offer value-added, programmatic services, encompassing the following areas: Technical: Access to a deep bench of cloud specialists who can be instantly deployed to help in areas such as information security, compliance, workload migration, cost and infrastructure optimisation, plus much more. Commercial: Enterprise go-to-market expertise and access to a carefully curated community of global Enterprise decision-makers. We go beyond surface-level Enterprise introductions to provide tangible growth opportunities through bespoke Innovation workshops. AWS Expertise: Underpinning the above is our in-depth knowledge of AWS teams, services, products, and programs, which foster the connections required for seamless growth.

Vertex Ventures is a venture capital firm who makes high-conviction Seed/Series A investments in SaaS and infrastructure software startups. We invest in only a few new companies each year, allowing us to concentrate our time and capital on a small portfolio. Our initial check sizes range from $500K to $10M, and we continue to support companies as they scale. Who we back: Having been founders and operators ourselves, we are inspired by practitioners - entrepreneurs with deep technical or market experience across software infrastructure, SaaS, data, developer tools, security, and fintech. How we help: We have the experience, resources, focus, and network for the early-stage journey. Even though one or two of us might be your closest confidantes, the benefit of our partnership is that we help you build your company and improve your odds of success -- be it in the form of potential hires, customers, or business partners. Why Vertex Ventures? Personalized Talent Programs The success of any company depends exclusively on having the right people. We help bring in great talent - from your first Account Executive to a Chief Revenue Officer - and we help implement strategies to retain great talent by building a healthy and inclusive culture. Our industry-wide best practices are tailored based on a founder's individual needs and a company's ethos, thus establishing a strong foundation as you grow. Support beyond capital through our platform Vertex Ventures is an upstart venture capital team in a world filled with staid, stalwart funds. Phone calls, dinners, webinars, you name it. We give you the support, network, and resources so you can focus on building your company, your idea, and your team. From hiring your first account executive to helping win customers, we’re partners along your entire journey. No BS transparency Our founders appreciate our no BS approach to coaching and counseling. Whether we’re two days into our partnership or two years, we’ll tell you what we think. We tell you why we’re excited, where there’s risk, where there’s potential, and where we need to pivot. Ultimately, we’re not telling you what to do. It’s up to you to take the driver's seat, make those decisions, and grow from a technologist to a visionary leader.

We differentiate ourselves by leveraging domain expertise in product/tech to identify winners before signals become clear. Our founders have both deep investment and operating experiences in our target sectors. We are highly experienced in cross-border activities and have track records of helping our portfolio companies, including financing, recruiting and going to markets particularly in Asia. Above All, We are Product and Founder FocusedWe look for unique technology that solves critical problems in markets with huge potential and high barriers to entry. We value focused founders with the relevant skills and experiences to scale their businesses. As immigrants ourselves, we root for the underdogs and are experienced in helping founders of all backgrounds to overcome the challenges they may face. Founder and Product-driven Investment: We leverage our domain expertise in enterprise cloud (especially data infrastructure and cybersecurity) to identify potential winners early on and boldly invest in exceptional products backed by cutting-edge technology and led by exceptional founders. Invest in Emerging Category Leaders as Early as Possible: We strive to stay ahead of the curve by specializing in early-stage investing (Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B). We also invest in select growth-stage companies through our separate Opportunity Fund. It is very fulfilling for us to identify and support visionary pioneers from the get-go. Back Immigrant Founders: Coming from humble backgrounds ourselves, we aim to become the Go-To fund for immigrant founders in our target domains. Our experience in cross-border businesses and extensive Asian American network position us excellently to help portfolio companies with financing, recruiting, and expanding to global markets, particularly in Asia. Roll Up Our Sleeves to Add Value: We are highly selective investors, but once you are chosen, we wholeheartedly bring our best advice and resources to the table. We understand that founders and management teams are the most critical determinants of future success, so we prioritize adding value through: Introductions to corporate partnerships, customers, and additional investors Go-to-market strategy and business development Recruiting top technical and management talent Our Value SystemMoral Compass: We back missionary and ethical founders who always do the right thing, and we aspire to require at least the same standard upon ourselves. Team Centric and Win-win Approach: Teamwork, trust and transparency are deeply rooted in our culture. We are not just financial investors, but loyal long-term partners to our founders. It is only when our founders are successful, that we can succeed. Intellectual Honesty: This is the cornerstone of our culture. We strive to be authentic to ourselves and others, and seek founders who share the same value system and subdue egos to truth-seeking as our North Star. “Think Big” but are grounded by focusing and executing: We seek ambitious founders who solve critical problems in massive markets. Broad visions are only fruitful while going hand in hand with strong execution skills.

Our global sphere of knowledge drives our investment thesis across all industries. We serve on the boards on some of the most innovative technology companies in the world. We see global trends as they are emerging. We combine this knowledge with data, lots of data, to know where the world is heading during the next seven-to-ten-years. We partner with the extraordinary We’ve developed a world class reputation for identifying, investing, and serving extraordinary entrepreneurs. We don’t meddle in their business. When asked, we deliver critical thinking that leads to scale and hypergrowth. We go beyond the investment We drive strategic growth, shorten the time to reach global scale, facilitate introductions, but we don’t stop there. We stick with it until the ink is dried. We drive revenue, recruit, and introduce future investors. As we look out at the next 10 years, we couldn't be more excited as the global world becomes smaller and more tightly connected. Read more to see where we think the industry is heading! We drive real value to our portfolio Through our Revenue Bearing Relationships, we have driven $400M in revenue to more than 40% of our portfolio companies. Technology buyers around the world trust our cohesive vision of the future. They come to us to identify emerging solutions that can give their businesses a competitive advantage.

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) enables people to make powerful connections--whether in business, education, philanthropy, or creativity. Cisco hardware, software, and service offerings are used to create the Internet solutions that make networks possible--providing easy access to information anywhere, at any time. Cisco was founded in 1984 by a small group of computer scientists from Stanford University. Since the company's inception, Cisco engineers have been leaders in the development of Internet Protocol (IP)-based networking technologies. Today, with more than 71,000 employees worldwide, this tradition of innovation continues with industry-leading products and solutions in the company's core development areas of routing and switching, as well as in advanced technologies such as home networking, IP telephony, optical networking, security, storage area networking, and wireless technology. In addition to its products, Cisco provides a broad range of service offerings, including technical support and advanced services. Cisco sells its products and services, both directly through its own sales force as well as through its channel partners, to large enterprises, commercial businesses, service providers, and consumers.

Sierra Ventures invests in the future of The Enterprise. We invest early – primarily Seed and Series A – and look for proven product market fit, disruption in the market, and strong IP. We tend to lead investment rounds and reserve capital for follow on rounds to support our entrepreneurs as they grow. We believe that partnership is paramount. We work closely with all of the entrepreneurs we invest in, guiding them with expertise and capital to help their companies grow and deliver on their promise. We understand that great companies don’t get built overnight, and we don’t mind rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty. In fact, we enjoy it. Sierra’s Investment FocusDATA/AI The volume of data has exploded, and with the emergence of the cloud, new tools are being developed with many data infrastructure software platforms focusing specifically on artificial intelligence (AI) & machine learning (ML). We’re excited about companies that make it easier to ingest, access, and analyze data. Sub-sectors within Data/AI include AI/ML and Big Data. VERTICAL SAAS Many industries that rely on excel or pen and paper have been forced to dramatically increase the pace of technology adoption. Vertical SaaS represents the shift to specialization where software is business-specific and is designed for a specific domain. Sub-sectors within Vertical SaaS include FinTech, EnterpriseApps, and Security. INFRASTRUCTURE Next-Gen Infrastructure will be the core connecting fabric for all future technology capabilities. Wide-scale improvement is needed in order to enable applications to run consistently in almost any location across the globe. Organizations have expedited infrastructure modernization strategies which continues to drive growth in the sector. Sub-sectors within Infrastructure include Cloud and IoT. Next-Gen TechnologiesDIGITAL HEALTH Adoption of Health software has been faster than ever before due to the pandemic tailwind and technology trends that put the consumer in charge. New tools are being developed to reach patients creating opportunities with Pharma, Providers, and Payers. We anticipate a dramatic shift towards more value based care (payer / provider) and digitization and decentralization (pharma). WEB3 Web3 promises to make the internet as accessible, open sourced, secure, and decentralized as possible with the goal of benefiting the people engaging, not central organizations. We are looking at the full Web3 ecosystem including Decentralized Applications (DApps), Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Cryptocurrencies, and more. A sub-sector we focus on within Web3 includes Blockchain. INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION Digitally non-native industries like Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Logistics are seeking ways to find cost parity and production reliability while adhering to increasing demand across the globe. Humans alone will not be able to keep pace with these market trends and automation will be a key driver in movements like Industry 4.0. Sub-sectors within Industrial Automation include Robotics and Devices. CONSUMER The ubiquity of smartphones has enabled consumers to access goods and services with relative ease and companies are tuning into customer needs and engaging with their increasingly loyal customer base, leading to viral adoption patterns. Additionally, Consumer social platforms have allowed individuals to express themselves and make money doing it, giving more power to the “Creator Economy”. We are interested in Creator Economy and mission driven D2C Applications & Marketplaces. ECOMMERCE A fast growing eCommerce market has been bolstered by the pandemic and every part of the value chain is seeing disruption. The eCommerce software market is driven by market trends like headless eCommerce and ReCommerce. B2B eCommerce has exploded globally and we think the US market will catch up in the coming years. A sub-sector we focus on within eCommerce is Marketplaces. EDTECH Digital and tech-enabled learning has been accelerated in the classroom and the boardroom by the pandemic and social trends such as “the great resignation”. Trends like VR/AR and the Metaverse becoming mainstream combined with the price of enablement devices like smartphones, tablets, and computers decreasing to make technology more accessible than ever have created a market that is ripe for EdTech to flourish.