Rockaway Ventures

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.

Bold. Brave. Brilliant. Brazen. The founders we back are all this, and more. They are unreasonable, they are crazy ambitious, obsessed with solving hard, gnarly problems. Problems whose solutions transform lives and impact society. And, it takes a revolutionary founder, and a transformational company to solve these problems, and effect change. We back these transformational companies, and their revolutionary founders early, and remain lifelong partners. How does Blume evaluate early stage startups? In our framework, we look at three criteria to evaluate startups – size of market or opportunity, team quality and finally, investability or probability of the next round of capital. Our approximate weightage for Opportunity : Team : Investability is 40 : 40 : 20. Let us double click on these three criteria. Market size or opportunity: Pick too small a market and even the best team can’t build a large scalable business. The best founders know how to reshape a market opportunity and build solutions to fit the largest of the market opportunities. That said, one has to begin with the aggregate opportunity being very large. For example, are Ola and Uber a ride hailing app or a large scale urban transportation business? The market size expands 5-10x when the latter is applied. At Blume, we try to find a portfolio balance between founders who can chase a large market opportunity domestically or build a tech-led differentiated product for global markets (which increase Founding teams: These are the most important variables for us or even most VCs at our stage. In every decision, once the other two factors are seen as a go, the clincher element in a yes/no decision boils down to the founding team – their expertise in solving for this space, as well as the integrity, mission, passion and persistence that one can gauge at this early stage of business. Investability or probability of next rounds of capital: The reality of how the later stage funding market is shaped to take risky bets in the ecosystem is important to consider while funding, especially in young and concentrated ecosystems like India, and that’s why we attribute 20% weightage to this element in India. We force ourselves to evaluate how much capital may be required to build to exitable scale and how challenging it is to raise that capital. As the funding ecosystem matures, we may shrink weightage of this in the future. Great founders overcome all of this but if we can select such that we have better odds at the starting point, why not? The above framework helps us shortlist but finally, it is a (increasingly improving) trained gut call that ends up building out the portfolio. What is Blume's investment criteria? Blume prefers ventures that have achieved some degree of customer validation, where the product is already launched in market and we are getting customer signups and feedback. We do make exceptions on the above for seasoned operators and second-time founders, but typically with first-time founders, we do not do idea stage or pre-MVP investments. If you are a B2B startup or an ecommerce / consumer transaction play, an annualised revenue rate (or revenues) of $375k (₹3cr) and above is a good milestone to reach out to us. If you are a marketplace startup, then reach out to us when you are nearing or have crossed a monthly GMV of ₹50 lacs a month. If you are a consumer app that isn't monetising yet, then ping us when you near or cross MAUs of 25k / DAUs of 5k. The above are broad guidelines, and not hard rules. We do make exceptions. If in doubt, reach out! How much does Blume invest? We are a seed / pre-Series A fund. While we are fairly flexible on the investment quantum, typically we have seen our investments range across from $1.5 to $3m (₹12 to 24 crs). We do optimise however for a stake of anywhere from 12 to 20%. These stake requirements reflect the depth and extent of support we provide to the startup – from fundraising and hiring to business development etc. We also anticipate the rounds of dilution that every successful startup will undergo, and the desired holding that we need to hold at the point of exit. Does Blume invest in international startups? We invest in startups that are Indian at heart or origin, but are willing to conquer the world market if needed to build scale. About a third of our portfolio is of this nature – taking Indian engineering skills to build products for global markets. Unfortunately, We DO NOT invest in startups that are international and have NO strong Indian connection / founders. We are also strong believers that to invest as a ‘generalist tech VC’ as we are, we need to be more and more focussed on a particular geography. We need to see as much of the available annual pipeline to know that we’ve truly picked 10 great founders / startups to invest in. We have no such advantage when we are looking outside the country; which is why we stay away from the temptation of looking at pipeline from international markets. What kind of sectors does Blume invest in? With our new Fund, our fourth since inception, we are looking to invest about 60-65% of the new fund in domestic-heavy sectors such as healthcare, financial services, commerce and brands, jobs and education, and digital media and gaming. The other 35-40% of the fund will focus on SaaS, and DeepTech (including CleanTech, manufacturing, blockchain) companies, typically in B2B, that can innovate and engineer with local talent pools, and yet scale globally. Does Blume have a preference between B2B and B2C? We like both. India is a consumer market that is poised to explode, as people move to the digital economy to spend an increasingly larger share of their wallet’s purchasing power. That makes it attractive to build a strong consumer proposition in India. And thus our B2C portfolio. We are also now very good at taking our science and engineering skills in software and other areas, and building commercial applications at scale, often for the global market. These constitute the majority of B2B ideas in our portfolio and we like this space a lot. Where do I send my pitch? How do I reach out to Blume? We get anywhere between 4,000 to 5,000 ideas pitched to us annually, across the team, across all formats. This includes referrals, cold mails, DMs on social channels etc. We have given up counting :) We invest in about 10-12 of these per year. As Blume has grown, we've looked at the empirical data and discovered that the vast majority of our investments were referrals from our contacts in the ecosystem. You can count the exceptions to this rule with one hand in every cycle, and still have a few fingers to spare! These referrals come from our own founders we have backed, other founders who know that we will do right by their angel investments and our extensive set of friends, investors and well wishers in the ecosystem. The exceptions, while not impossible, are indeed rare. Ceteris paribus (all things considered), you are better off reaching us through a trusted common friend. In a highly networked startup ecosystem, it is not that hard to reach us through the strongest possible mutual connection. But if that is not possible, do reach out to us cold. Your email will certainly be read, even if it is not always responded to. We have ensured that our internal systems catch every pitch - cold or warm or hot. When writing in cold, a considered and researched mail (much like a quality college application) is the only way to attempt such a reach out. Please check out the team page, find the best person in the Investment team who has invested in and / or covers the sector you're building in. Do check out their social profiles (LinkedIn, Twitter) to access their contact info. Our email ids are not hard to guess as well! Preferably write to one person at a time, in the firm. The above are good principles for you irrespective of which firm you approach / pitch to. Nothing works better than a warm, referred introduction - it always gets the rightful attention. Please note that we have done away with a pitch form, or a common email id. From our experience, we found that the volume of inbound traffic was indeed high, but not always relevant, and thus almost impossible to assign a resource to just monitor these inbound gates.

2048 Ventures is a thesis-driven earliest stage venture capital firm. We are founders, experienced operators, nerds and dreamers obsessed with the future. We've backed over 200 startups and have the experience and conviction to lead your pre-seed. We get you and your vision before others We are systems thinkers, engineers, and product junkies. We think about the future non-stop and are ready to understand and back you before anyone else. When we decide to invest, we write you a check and then help you close the rest of the round. If you are a mission-driven team, with strong founder market-fit and a vision for what the future should look like, then we would love to meet you. We love serial founders, but we are also very excited about being the first to believe in underdogs, immigrants, and diverse founders who are going on their first founder journey. We are not your typical pre-seed firm We are a thesis-driven investor and invest in next generation platforms - APIs, data, infrastructure, marketplaces, and specific types of vertical SaaS. We invest across verticals, but spend most of our time thinking about: biotechnology, digital health, AI/ML, Robotics, AR/VR, Blockchain, Security, Energy, Mobility, Logistics, Fintech, Marketplaces, Productivity, Culture, and Communities. We don't care where you are based and we are happy to lead your pre-seed anywhere in North America. We've invested across 20+ cities including NYC, LA, Boston, Toronto, Austin, Denver, Seattle, Montreal, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. Who we are We are a team of experienced operators and dreamers who are passionate about working with founders at the earliest stage. Collectively, we have invested in over 200 early stage startups. We are proud to have an NPS score of 100 from our founders.

Rockaway Capital, the investment group founded by Jakub Havrlant, operates primarily in the areas of e-commerce, e-travel, media, blockchain and venture capital, as well as a few other fields. It is not always easy to label what we do. While we primarily focus on Internet businesses, our interpretation of the term “internet business” is far beyond its traditional meaning – what we simply do is we build strong companies with the use of the digital technologies, irrespective of the sector and industry. Like “what we do”, the way in which we work cannot be clearly defined. We incorporate the best practices from the world of both strategic and financial investors and we honor opportunistic approach. We are not limited by the size of investments, as we invest amounts ranging from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of euros. We do not set fixed investment periods, so cooperation may persist for only a few years or for much longer. National and regional boundaries are meaningless to us. Most importantly, though, we are not afraid to roll up our sleeves. We actively participate in the management of the companies in our portfolio, thus becoming an integral part and driving force of their respective teams. We have achieved a number of milestones in the form of successful exits, turnarounds and/or establishing successful European platforms in their respective sectors.

FV is a venture capital syndicate that invests in early-stage technology startups charting the future in mobility, climate, proptech, and security - with a technical focus on software, robotics, and artificial intelligence. In the past decade, the most ambitious companies have generally affected change in our infrastructure, communities, societal behavior, or created a disruption in the market (or regulatory system). The syndicate members of FV have observed and worked on these trends first-hand. To maximize impact, FV generally invests at the pre-seed or seed stage of a company’s journey. As a founder-led firm, we understand the challenges entrepreneurs face, now and beyond. futureland ventures is comprised of entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, technology executives, government leaders, and alumni of top universities, such as the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The syndicate members have expertise in emerging technologies to advance smart cities, such as climate, transportation, robotics, resilience, artificial intelligence and more.

Krungsri Finnovate allocates venture capital for startups with the aim of becoming strategic investors and selects startups with a strategic connection to the bank's businesses. Investment Stage: From Series A onwards Income: Some revenue following the commencement of business operations Amount per Allocation: Minimum USD 1 million Technologies of interest: E-commerce Logistic, Fulfillment and Supply chain Digital E-wallet, Online and Offline Payment Blockchain Lending Robo and Wealth Advisor Insurtech Personal and Business Management Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning Cross Border Remittance Cybersecurity