Presence Capital

Primal is an early stage investor targeting seed and pre-seed investments. Our current portfolio consists of 50+ investments in web3 & blockchain applications focused on consumer and enterprise adoption. Our investment verticals include Decentralized Data & Cloud Storage, Security and Identity, AR/VR and AI applications, Metaverse and Gaming.

As a group, we bring varied, relevant and sometimes unexpected experience to our roles. Our team has dabbled in founding companies, management consulting, operations, film production, ski instruction, language instruction, ceramic making, sommelier services, and more! We are building the pre-eminent global community for high potential, early-stage digital content startups, where we focus on facilitating relevant connections that can support their growth. There are over 300 early-stage startups in our community, and 100 industry executives and mentors in our support network, across 40 countries. Every quarter, we proactively make 50 introductions to subject matter experts, potential partners and customers for our founder members. We also provide a platform for peer to peer knowledge sharing and host educational and networking events for members.

Anthos is a generalist venture capital firm with over $3B of assets under management. Venture capital is what fuels new and innovative businesses, and – since our founding in 2007 – we’ve had the privilege of investing in and working with the founders of Guayaki, Gopuff, Olaplex, Trunk Club, ApplyBoard, VRChat, and dozens of other category-leading start-ups to build their businesses. We purposely maintain a low profile, in keeping with our general ethos of humility and heads-down work ethic. The background of our diverse team possesses a good balance across finance – Goldman Sachs, Luxor, Ares, Summit – and consumer tech – Google, Facebook, Instagram, Snap, Apple, Venmo, and more.

We invest in surprising new consumer behaviors and trends powered by frontier technologies. We’re usually among the first institutional investors. We’ve backed more than 150 companies; some that you may have heard of include Giphy, Anchor, Gimlet Media, Product Hunt, Medium, Kickstarter, and Tumblr. We invest at pre-seed and seed stage and our typical check size ranges from $100,000 to $500,000. We go deep into new categories through Betaworks Camp, our structured pre-seed investment program. Areas we’ve focused on include augmented reality, computer vision, voice interfaces, conversational software, and live+interactive. As our name suggests, we like betas – we rarely invest pre-product. If you have something great, we’d love to speak with you.

When we founded Emergence, we backed a few carefully-chosen CEOs who shared our belief that enterprise software would move to the cloud. Our prediction paid off: today, the companies they spearheaded - including Salesforce, Veeva, Box, Yammer, Bill.com, and Zoom - have grown to change the way the world works. We don’t make bets. We make commitments. When Zoom founder Eric Yuan came to us, he wanted a partner with long-term vision. Today, he thinks of us more as a family than a firm. That’s the kind of committed relationship we strive for in every investment we make. We strive to be your most important partner. We require unanimous enthusiasm of our group before we invest in any company. Rather than operate individually, we rely on the power of our combined experience and insight. Because we’re all in as a firm behind you, you can count on us to be there in the long run. Some go wide. We go deep. We focus to drive conviction. Since we only make 5-7 investments a year, it’s vital that we pick wisely. Rather than cast a wide net across industries, we’ve strategically selected to focus our expertise sharply on our niche: early-stage enterprise SaaS; that is, cloud business software. We don’t just seek out visionaries. We seek out values. When we first started out, we weren’t much more than a curiosity among larger firms. We didn’t need to be the biggest; it mattered more to us that we got the best results while maintaining integrity, humility, and fairness. We require these values of everything we do, and of anyone we partner with. We all win big in the long run. "Emergence is one of the only firms I’ve worked with that is 100% focused on the long game." Kyle Porter, Founder and CEO of SalesLoft. Take it from our portfolio CEOs: we strive to be your most important partner throughout the entire lifecycle of your company, not just when it's smooth sailing. We assume nothing. We analyze everything. We don’t believe in guesswork. Through independent thinking, thoughtful experimentation and constant evolution, we’ve developed a proven system of predictive research that allows us to identify pivotal future trends and choose winners to invest in accordingly. Stand apart from the rest. Learn from the go-to-market experts. One of the toughest challenges startups face is going from promise to proof: of sustainably getting their great idea out to customers. One of our key strengths is real-world go-to-market expertise: an experienced, strategic, hands-on approach that separate successful, scalable companies from the rest. Over $450 Billion in Market Cap

We founded HOF in 2016 to connect the most relentlessly ambitious founders to the capital and resources that they need to succeed, thereby accelerating the march towards a society of technologically-enabled abundance. Progress towards this goal cannot be achieved by backing “safe” ventures - for example, companies using already-proven technology and applying a formulaic business model. It can only be done by backing the visionary founders who build nascent platforms and take on fundamental technology or business model risk. The Next Steps Towards Abundance We believe that technologies that advance the march to abundance can come from unexpected domains, so we approach each new opportunity with an open mind. At the same time, we are constantly refining our theses about the most critical next steps in this march. Below are some of the technologies that we believe will see meaningful advancements over the next decade. Freedom from repetitive work through AI and automation Utopia cannot be achieved if people are bogged down by rote work for the majority of their waking lives, and yet, repetitive unfulfilling tasks are crucial to the function of many of the most productive companies. Thankfully, AI now has the potential to eliminate large swaths of this work. For example, new technologies such as large language models can now complete various cognitive tasks at similar proficiency to a human. If AI capabilities continue to accelerate at a rate faster than Moore’s Law, then billions of person-hours of repetitive work will be automated each year, and in some cases, AI will be capable of completing tasks that were previously intractable to even the most skilled humans. A multi-trillion dollar opportunity lies in both the infrastructure that powers this AI, as well as in the applications that deliver it. Freedom to transact and financial security Access to financial services, such as banking, credit, and insurance, are a key underpinning of an abundant society. Given some of our team members’ roots in developing economies, we are sensitive to the fact that this access is not yet a reality for much of the global population. Even those who do have access to such services are often subject to low quality user experiences, archaic processes, and exorbitant fees, making it difficult for them to transact or build meaningful wealth. Thankfully, in the last decade, proliferation of mobile phones has expanded access to core financial needs for many. Furthermore, we are optimistic that applications built on decentralized networks will ultimately serve as an important medium to extend financial services to those who have been barred from legacy institutions. Freedom from genetic disease and biological limitations Perhaps one of the most unfair realities of life is that some people are born with unfavorable genetics that expose them to greater disease risk and overall poor health. For example, just a single base-pair point mutation in the hemoglobin-beta gene causes sickle cell anemia, resulting in a lifetime of discomfort and a significantly reduced life expectancy. However, in 2012, a landmark paper demonstrated that clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) could enable scientists to edit specific sequences of DNA in a faster, more precise, and more cost-effective manner, enhancing humankind’s ability to change the previously immutable coding of life. Genetic engineering technologies like CRISPR have the potential to eliminate genetic diseases like sickle cell for hundreds of millions of people, an important step forward in the march towards utopia. In the long-term, we believe that a deeper understanding of genetics and biology will enable mankind to surpass other previously insurmountable limitations, such as aging and infertility. Interconnection of humanity In utopia, people can freely connect, form relationships, and transact with peers from across the world. Those of us who live in vibrant cities often take for granted the benefit of our surroundings; we are surrounded by accomplished and intelligent people, as well as great workplaces, nature, and entertainment. However, much of the world’s population does not have this experience, as they are isolated or surrounded by relatively homogenous populations. Internet access through smartphones and desktop computers have helped close this gap to some extent, but our world is still a far cry from utopia. As they reach maturity, new mediums such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and, in the long term, brain-computer interfaces, will facilitate new forms of commerce, entertainment, and work. The clouded horizon Some naysayers push back against the idea that technology company founders can help bring us closer to abundance. Popular sentiment in the media and politics is that these founders do more harm than good for society, often citing examples of oversight or unethical behavior by certain founders and presenting them as the norm. However, we believe that such instances of social harm are rare and vastly outweighed by the good achieved by mission-driven and relentless founders. The fact that the advancement of technology has been of net benefit to society is supported by a variety of data, including declining global poverty rates and growing global human development indices. In the last 20 years, nascent technology companies have produced countless prosocial and beneficial advances. Game-changing technologies advanced by venture-backed companies include reusable rockets, widely-accessible genome sequencing, conversational AI, affordable electric vehicles, as well as faster and more convenient access to education, communication, and entertainment. Without the efforts of the founders who brought about these innovations, society would be at great risk of stagnating on its march to abundance. Unfortunately, founders today are often met with extreme skepticism, criticism, and opposition, so they must be more relentless than ever before. The founders we back Although we believe that the future will be built by founders from all backgrounds and walks of life, the truth is that the responsibility of being a CEO of a venture-backed company is not for everyone - in fact, our observations suggest that only a small fraction of the population has the traits necessary to succeed in such a position. Given the high expectations of growth for venture-backed companies, exceptional leadership ability, work ethic, and clarity under pressure are table stakes for successful founders. Moreover, since outcomes for venture-backed businesses follow a power law distribution, the most accomplished founders tend not only to be hypercompetent but also possess an incredibly rare technical skill or personal characteristic that enables their success. For example, founders with the outlier trait of having a voracious appetite for computer programming from a young age were at a fundamental competitive advantage during the past several decades (e.g., Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates). Such an outlier trait can rarely be cultivated opportunistically - by the time the value of a specific trait becomes obvious, an oversaturation of competitors possessing that same trait usually emerges. This is why the best founders will include an overrepresented proportion of individuals who possess esoteric interests or neurodivergent tendencies in addition to exceptional communication ability and competence. This turns out to be a rare & zenlike combination of traits, hence why we are so excited to partner on the infrequent occasions when we come across individuals who possess it. Conclusion While headline news may grow increasingly pessimistic and certain groups may grow hostile towards technology, the march to abundance will continue thanks to the efforts of relentless entrepreneurs and the small army of employees, customers, and investors who take a chance to partner with them. Regardless of the distracting vicissitudes of market cycles, we remain dedicated to providing those entrepreneurs with not only capital but meaningful support and game-changing connections to help advance their missions.