Crater Ventures

We're a community of students backing outlier startups in Southern California.

With 20 partners spanning 12+ universities, we build relationships with SoCal's best founders and companies. As students, we connect with alumni and founders before they're founders. We run a syndicate, connecting SoCal's biggest dreamers with funding from our community of angels.

SoCal has a gap between founders and capital.

• SoCal universities produce top technical talent but its founders have little access to early-stage venture capital.
• Deal flow from regional universities is opaque for institutional investors - meaning most miss out on the region's outlier returns.

And we've bridged it once before.

At California Crescent Fund, we invested 20+ portfolio companies to bridge SoCal's best talent with the capital they need. We've worked with our LPs to back outlier companies and make our impact - now, we're spinning out and ready to do it again through a new Syndicate.

We're looking for founders who…

1. Have SoCal in their DNA: 1+ founding member being a SoCal student, dropout, or alum.
2. Hold an Unfair GTM Advantage: What makes you the right team to build and sell this product?
3. Build & Test Quickly: Focused on building product, launching fast, and iterating.
4. Chase a "Why Now?" Timing matters: how do you see the world around you right now?