Sound Ventures

As a "first money in" investor, we support founders in gaining their first momentum. ROCKET FUEL We invest in DACH-based technology-driven B2B startups in pre-seed and early seed rounds. BIZDEV BOOST We catalyze your market entry with our network of more than 100 executives from Scale-ups, mid-sized and large enterprises. FAST-TRACK FUNDRAISING We streamline the communication with other Angel and VC investors for your current and future funding rounds. FAMILY ACCESS We multiply your social capital with access to our community of experienced founders, industry professionals and domain experts.

Beta Boom is led by two general partners, Kimmy and Sergio Paluch. Yes, they share a last name because they are married and have been partners in life and business for over twenty years. They are both passionate about making the world a better place through technological innovation and giving overlooked founders a fair shot at fulfilling their visions. Kimmy and Sergio have two boys, Rafael and Adrian, who were Beta Boomers from the beginning, hanging out with founders in Beta Boom’s office over the summer of 2018. Rafael wants to work for Beta Boom one day and Adrian wants to be a professional footballer (soccer player). We'll work alongside you from day one. A lot of VCs say that they’ll be there for you, but few are as involved as us and most give generic startup advice. Depending on what you need, we support you on getting things done across product development, sales, marketing, and fundraising. We meet you where you are. Not literally, but figuratively. We work with you and your team to figure out where our support can be most impactful. If your team is strong on engineering and marketing, but need help with sales, that’s what we’ll help with. If your team is great at sales but needs help with engineering and marketing, that’s what we’ll focus on. If all you need is fundraising support, that’s all we’ll do. Focus on the "how" not "what." We don’t like telling founders what to do or spouting useless startup advice. You know your business and customers better than we ever will, and you should make decisions for your company. Plus, you don’t need dark overlords. What we try to help with is the “how.” How do you set up your CRM for fundraising? How do you test marketing channels? How do you generate sales leads? How do you reach out to investors or get introductions? Collaboration sessions rather than lectures. We do collaboration sessions to work through challenges or get stuff done. We don’t lecture you. For example, in a collaboration session we might work on your positioning, review usability testing plans, improve your investor tracker, edit your cold sales emails, etc. When we say we work alongside you, we mean it. Vetted experts at your fingertips. Beta Boom has an extended network of vetted experts that we’ve worked with or our portfolio companies have worked with and loved. We do this so you don’t have to waste time searching for effective support, and can get things done while you build your permanent team. Here are examples of the kinds of experts that you’ll have access to, among others: Growth marketers that can help with setting up and running Google, Instagram, and Facebook ads; Lead generation experts that can get you qualified sales leads via email campaigns; Sales coaches that can help you set up your CRM and walk you through sales conversations; A near-shore engineering firm that specializes in APIs and securely handling large data sets.

Mana Ventures invests in early stage technology companies and consumer brands. We invest early. We are your friends and family round. From day one, we’re in this together. We’ll help you hone your vision, build a great team, develop the right product, raise your next rounds, and celebrate the wins. Reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you.

VCMint is the after-hours studio of repeat founders who bootstrapped, scaled, and sold - then kept some powder dry for the next generation. We back builders with capital that doesn't watch the clock, plus hard-won playbooks in ops, GTM, and culture. We stay out of the driver's seat, protect your cap table, and celebrate the grind. Our focused approach to early-stage investing, built on years of bootstrapped entrepreneurship. Early-stage tech with compelling unit economics from Day 0. Founders building durable moats - not valuation pops. Clear path to capital efficiency and sustainable growth. Ticket size: $100K–$200K; geography-agnostic with India–US tilt. We co-invest, never lead signals, and stay on call for the tough stuff.

Being first-cheque investors, we understand the importance of being flexible, founder-first partners at the earliest of stages. We invest up to £750k initially and can shape or join your rounds of up to £2m, also reserving a portion of our fund to support you to Series A and beyond. ~£400k: Average initial cheques of £400k, invested only at the pre-seed stage (up to £750k). Up to 15%: Target ownership upon entry - we can lead, co-lead or follow in rounds of up to £2m. 4 step: Transparent and open investment process, ensuring you always know where you are in our process. OUR PROCESS You should always know exactly where you are in our process. The diagram below outlines the steps and process to reaching Investment Committee (IC) stage. Introduction: An initial meeting to discuss the opportunity and get to know you. We ask founders to send us material such as pitch decks beforehand Deeper Dive: Our Junior investment team tends to join this second phase to give visibility to members who may work on the investments. Partner Call: At this stage we bring in a Partner with relevant experience and will dive deeper into the business, team and market. Investment Committee: A 15 min presentation followed by 30mins Q&A in front of the full investment team. We make a decision same day. Our “criteria” for investing What do we look for when selecting an investment? Investments we want to make go beyond a checklist of “box ticking” on our non-negotiable requirements (e.g., that we trust the founders). We do as much as possible to mitigate our own biases when investing. For us, a startup / founding team needs the potential to be more than merely great, it needs a shot at the extraordinary. The good news is that to do that, we only look for at least one reason to believe, at earliest of stages, that it can be an outlier... Our reasons to believe a startup could be one of the greatest companies ever Need at least one of the below compared to other great startups at the same stage Founder(s) and teamEver do something singular? Record of unusual achievement Best-in-the-world domain experience or punch-way-above-your-weight-class first hires Depth of commitment to the problem ("would do this for a decade, and keep going even if funding never appeared"), especially in learning the domain Would you work for the team? Product and marketA wow of a product experience and/or extreme early growth and engagement numbers (for products adopted by individuals) Customers don't need to be sold, want to pay full-price immediately -> evangelists (for products adopted by companies) Exclusive path to customers -- distribution as a competitive advantage Timing -- that One Moment is clearly now Business and economicsSurprisingly profitable unit economics Deal termsNone. (Good deal terms are never a reason to invest in and of themselves.) Important indicators Can bias us for or against investing Founder(s) and teamCombination of human / inhuman, presence of cognitive distortions of founders Spends only when necessary, miserly with capital until the returns are clear Reaction to intense pressure or strong criticism? Differentiated value proposition for talent (e.g., only place to work on a problem, unique founder who is a reason to join the team) Diverse founding team If business shows early signs of success, can founders go the distance? Talking with founders gives us goosebumps Product and marketSomeone else already tried -- good sign! Clear initial target market, surprisingly narrow Clear single metric to focus on now (often engagement or satisfaction) Ignoring the business fashions of the moment Ability to create a #1 service in its market (e.g., network effects, customer lock-in) Could be most important product to its users We have a unique ability to help Clear sense, if applicable, of any direct competitors and why the company has superior offering for its market Business and economicsClear sense of why to raise capital (i.e., where to deploy) Clear sense of why to raise venture capital (we often discourage founders from taking venture at all) Deal termsFounders own enough of the company Fair ratio between risk and reward? Pro rata rights Information rights, especially to financials Other investors can help the company succeed In success, our eagerness to invest many multiples of our original investment Non-negotiable requirements Need all of the below Founder(s) and teamTrustworthy (e.g., will tell us when things are even a little broken) Can raise more money or get business to profitability Capable of building a diverse team and an inclusive culture Background check conducted, any issues discussed Have a UK presence or material Impact in the UK Product and market"Makes business work better," without being in financial services We have judgment to identify a winner in the relevant market (i.e., a fit with one of our stated investment areas) -- and enough confidence in our judgment that, when things go sideways (as they inevitably do in startups) we'll remain devoted investors Unlikely to compete directly with our other portfolio companies (and verified, if in doubt, by the founder(s) in question) Business and economicsPlausible to have sustainable unit economics in the future Deal termsStandard investor protections (i.e., liquidity preference at 1x - blocking right over investments that would get repaid before we do) Risk-return work for our fund size (Our check size between £200k - £600k typically equates to anything between 8-12%)

Frontier Ventures is a venture fund investing in early-stage technology companies with network effects in the United States and globally. Our investment team is based in the United States. The fund was founded by serial entrepreneur Dmitry Alimov, co-founder of IVI.TV, the largest video service for Russian-speaking consumers worldwide serving over 60 million users globally. Frontier Ventures partners with talented entrepreneurs to help them build global market-leading businesses. We stand out by helping our portfolio companies scale globally in Europe and Asia where our partners have access to strong networks of technology entrepreneurs, investors, and tech company executives. We open these powerful networks to the companies we invest in, which helps them scale across borders faster. We also help our portfolio companies raise follow-on financing by giving them access to more than 1,000 US and global VC, growth funds, and family offices where we have long-term business relationships. Our founding team has more than 30 years of collective experience in venture investing, having backed over 50 early-stage companies. Frontier Ventures is backed by family offices, technology entrepreneurs, and financial investors as limited partners. Most of our limited partners are current or former technology entrepreneurs. WHY ARE WE CALLED “FRONTIER VENTURES”? In the history of the exploration of North America, the term “Frontier” was used to determine the boundary between inhabited and unknown territory, where from the 18th to the 20th centuries, settlers developed new areas. Unlimited free land in this zone was available, and thus offered the psychological sense of unlimited opportunity. This, in turn, had many consequences such as optimism, future orientation, and shedding of restraints due to land scarcity. The development of new land to the West and the North of the United States became a catalyst for the settlement of the North American continent and its subsequent rapid economic development. By analogy, the name of our fund – Frontier Ventures – is intended to symbolize the limitless possibilities that are open to entrepreneurs and investors in the development of the software and Internet. Our team and our entrepreneur partners share the spirit of optimism and belief in success, combined with a rational willingness to take risks to achieve great goals, which at one time united the North American pioneers, during their advance towards the unknown.