Mercury is an early-stage venture capital platform that seeks out transformative software startups, led by exceptional founders, in communities across America.
To date, Mercury has created over $9 billion of value with an operationally-focused venture investment strategy helping startups achieve rapid, sustainable growth.
Mercury partners with first-time entrepreneurs who require support and guidance, as well as seasoned founders seeking to leverage the assets and talent of our growth partner network.
Vision
Mercury strives to be a leading venture capital platform, driving exceptional outcomes for founders and investors, while materially improving historically overlooked entrepreneurial communities.
Why Middle America?
From its roots as the first venture capital firm to consider Middle America as a region unto itself, Mercury has always looked to back the underrepresented entrepreneur. In the mid- 2000’s, the supply-demand imbalance of capital in these ‘fly-over’ states defined underrepresented as all entrepreneurs in the middle of the country. Over time, as Middle American cities such as Boulder, Chicago, and Austin have risen in prominence, the definition of underrepresented has taken on new meaning. Most of the regions have used the same coastal playbook to build their innovation ecosystems. This playbook helps many founders – but also leaves many more behind.
A few years ago, Mercury was purposeful in diversifying its deal sourcing network so that it could ensure it was seeing the best startup opportunities coming from every community. We believe the best founders and market opportunities may be those that are less obvious to many of us. The digitization of customer journeys will affect all walks of life, with many billion-dollar ‘niche’ market opportunities exposed and exploited by entrepreneurs who have lived those journeys.
Mercury will continue to seek out the underrepresented, whether by region, demographic, customer journey, or market opportunity. This work manifests itself not only in our investments, but in our ecosystem building and community involvement to raise all tides in this new world order.