Sunicon Ventures

We believe in AGI for good, decentralized systems that are fair, personalized well-being for all, quiet electric transportation for the planet, and technologies that have yet to be imagined but are inevitable. To build the future requires brave new thinking and relentless dedication for what’s possible. We exist to help founders build the seemingly impossible and bring to market critical products, infrastructure, and technologies that will shape the world we live in. Experienced founders / operators investing in new founders We’ve worked in operating roles in small to large companies, and started several venture-backed startups that have exited in both success and failure. Founders face challenges every day – navigating the idea maze, building a team, shipping products to customers. We’ve experienced all of this first-hand, and it’s our mission to support dedicated founders on their journeys. Our Threefold ApproachWe invest in technology startups in their earliest rounds of financing, primarily pre-seed and seed We often help form and fund: we partner with entrepreneurs before they have created their companies and help form initial teams and sharpen ideas, before funding We engage closely with our founders and leverage our deep networks globally to help bring their visions to life

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.

After successfully scaling and exit our technology startups, we are urged to support technology entrepreneurs to help them reaching their ultimate dreams. We do financial investment and provide top-notch professional support for exponential international growth through our investment funds. Our aim is to combine the power and experience of traditional capital with the disruptive and talented technology ventures. Boğaziçi Ventures plays a key role to moderate the long-term relationship between both sides. Each of our fund has its own target focused technology vertical, investment strategy and dedicated management team. Investors can build bridges with technology companies through Boğaziçi Ventures while enjoying the benefit of high financial return of the tech industry. Boğaziçi Ventures aims at investing in tech-ventures which are willing to bring down the traditional industries and capable of developing evolutionary technologies, and engaging investors into these fields to make the ecosystem in our region grow sturdily and survive. We believe that Eastern Europe, Turkey and the MENA region are ideal geographies to develop the technology. Accordingly, we aspire the talents and capabilities in these regions to set good examples similar to our previous global success stories with proper financial and in-kind support, contribute to this geography and provide superior returns to our investors by enhancing these examples. By investing in disruptive future technologies such as blockchain, machine learning, artificial intelligence, internet of things in the fields from health to security, digital games etc.

Founded in 2020, Citta Capital is a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. We prefer to invest in early stage and early growth stage companies in AI/ML, big data, cloud, healthcare technology, IoT, marketplaces, SaaS and enterprise, blockchain, and robotics. Our seasoned investment team has a good mix of extensive startup experiences as entrepreneur and strong operating background as senior executive of global companies. We are committed to be your long-term partners to take on challenges and pursue game-changing ideas.

We are an early stage and seed round venture fund that invests in dynamic founders within Legal Tech, FinTech, DeFi, AI & ML, E-commerce, and Blockchain. We believe strongly in our ability to contribute to the success of both non-technical and highly technical founders. The future starts here. Let’s build it together.