Conscience VC

We’re early-stage company builders. We’ve founded 10+ companies and invested early in startups now worth over $50B. We’ve been in your shoes, we have the scars from being founders ourselves, and we know it takes incredible effort and determination to transform an idea into a category-defining company. We roll up our sleeves and provide hands-on support to our founders, which leads to big results. Our track record speaks for itself: in just 9 years, we have seeded 7 companies currently valued over $1B and 3 public companies. Pre-seed We lead pre-seed rounds. Our pre-seed companies participate in PearX, an early-stage bootcamp for founders with high potential ideas. We help founders build the right product, find the right market, and lay the foundations for a scalable venture company. We have been leading pre-seed rounds for the last 10 years and we believe a small-cohort, 14-week program is the most efficient way to start building a company. We customize PearX for every company and adjust it to their needs. For this reason, we are very selective with our pre-seed investments (less than 1% acceptance rate, 15 companies per cohort). How we help at pre-seed Pear partners with you at every step of your journey. Pick the right market: Picking the right market is critical. We help you size your market and thoroughly understand it. You will avoid markets that are too small and prepare to take on markets that have foiled many others. Understand your customer: The best companies are built on deep and differentiated customer insight. Our companies go through a rigorous customer development process to discover promising customer personas and needs. Once you internalize your customer’s problems as if they were your own, you can start solving them. Define your product: Based on your customer insights, we help you iterate on the minimum viable product that tests your market. Ship fast, learn quickly, and gradually discover where to double-down. Iterate iterate iterate: We’re not afraid to make multiple iterations and pivot until we get things right. You can count on us to be honest with you whether the data supports your thesis or we should adjust the product. Prove your product-market-fit: We help you define and hit the milestones needed to raise more capital. Not all traction is equally valuable, though. First, we focus on making sure your customers love your product; only then do we work on finding more customers. Build your team: Your team is your biggest asset. We are here to help you identify gaps, set up a polished recruiting process or conduct interviews – all to ensure you’re bringing on the best. Fundraise: We take an all hands on deck approach to make sure you can raise capital. We help you define your story, put together your deck, and pitch the right investor. We run a demo day twice a year that is attended by over one thousand investors. Use our network: Whether it is a customer, a partner, an investor or another founder, we help you get the introductions to the people that matter most for your business. How PearX works Phase 1: Idea development - WEEKS 1-4 Customer development Strategic market positioning Big company story development Defining key team needs Defining key KPIs for the program Phase 2: Execution - WEEKS 5-10 Build initial MVP Get early customer traction and data Go-to-market experimentation and development Iterate until you get it right Phase 3: Demo Day prep - WEEKS 11-14 Demo day/fundraising preparation Develop the pitch and iterate on the Demo Day deck Create fundraising strategy Phase 4: Demo Day and fundraising - DEMO DAY Pitch to 1,000 investors Help you vet term sheets, negotiate the best terms, and close your seed round Seed We lead and co-lead seed stage investments. Then we roll up our sleeves to get you to Series A. We help founders in four key areas: product-market fit, go-to-market, recruiting, and fundraising. How we help our seed founders Make your first hires: The best use of your capital is to hire the best team. We help in a unique way – our exceptional in-house recruiters partners with you, at no cost, to close your first engineering and technical hires. Before Pear, that team recruited thousands of engineers at Instacart, Uber, and Meta. Grow exponentially: Each company has a unique go-to-market strategy and seed is when you design your scalable growth engine. We iterate with you to test organic growth, paid growth, channel partnerships, sales org development and other models to hone on the right model for you. Sell effectively: We run a “Sales Bootcamp” to improve your sales skills, share how to run a sales organization, and help you iterate on your sales pitch and messaging. We also work our extensive networks to provide customer introductions. Retain your customers: Success is not only about acquiring customers. Retaining and expanding existing customers is ultimately even more important to your company’s success. We work with you to optimize the value of each customer over time. Achieve operational excellence: Great companies out-execute. While vision and innovation are critical, running your company like a machine is how you win. We help you define operating plans, run effective board meetings, clarify the KPIs needed for your next round, and focus on culture and personal development. Raise your Series A: We help you set your Series A fundraising strategy from day one. When the time to start fundraising comes, we run a “pitch deck clinic“ to build your story, gather your evidence, review your deck, design it, and master public speaking. Then, we work with you to get the right VC introductions, and, finally, we coach you through the negotiations. Our rigorous process produces results with over 70% of our seed companies raising series A’s from tier-1 institutions. Access to PearX programming: As a Pear portfolio company, you have the option to join the PearX program. This is a great way to come up to speed quickly on the ins and outs of starting and running a company. Invitation to Demo Day: We run investor demo days twice a year. As a Pear portfolio company, you are invited to present at our Demo Day. You can join our PearX fundraising bootcamp three weeks prior to Demo Day and we’ll work with you to get you ready to present to hundreds of top-tier investors. What are typical check sizes? We write early checks that range from $250K to $5M. No idea is too early to bring to us. We meet mission-driven founders where they’re at, and we’re willing to back entrepreneurs who are eager to solve big problems in large markets, even prior to finding the perfect solution. PRE-SEED: $250K -$2M SEED: $1M – $5M FOLLOW-ON: Up to $10M Our focus areas. We invest in the following market sectors. Consumer: Technology including social, marketplaces, subscription, e-commerce, creator economy, and more. SaaS: Purposeful tools that help businesses of all sizes work faster and smarter. Enterprise: Infrastructure powering the next generation of developers and builders. Web3: Infrastructure for the next generation of the internet and the ownership economy. Healthcare: Software and tech-enabled services innovating on care delivery. Deep Tech: Companies focused on space, robotics, semiconductors, and more. FinTech: Solutions for payments, infrastructure, data analytics and privacy, and more. BioTech: Platforms across therapeutics, diagnostics, and life science tools and services. Climate Tech: Technologies that have the ability to create more sustainable systems around energy, transportation, carbon removal, food systems, buildings, and more.

Alpaca VC is a seed-stage venture capital firm based in New York. We believe that layering technology over daily life transforms how the real world works. So we invest in the people, products and processes that power commerce in the physical world. Together with founders, we kickstart real change with outsized impact. Led by a diverse team of company builders, operators, and analytical thinkers, Alpaca has developed a repeatable playbook to help its entrepreneurs most efficiently progress from Seed to Series A. As previous founders, we understand the ups and downs of the startup journey. The strength to break down walls and put out fires, day after day. The heart to take care of your own. The capacity to prioritize what really matters and get the big stuff done. If you are an entrepreneur creating an interesting company and would like to contact us, feel free to reach out at hey@alpaca.vc. We lead Seeds, the most formative period in a company's life cycleEarly Stage: We invest in early stage rounds across the US and Canada. $500k–$2M: Our check size can range anywhere from $500K to $2M. Founder-Market Fit: We back founders who were put on this planet to run the businesses they’re building. 35 Days: We’re the transparent VCs we wish we had. That’s why it takes us 35 days on average to close a deal. We invest in sectors that we know best.Proptech + Contech: As owners and operators ourselves, we have a frontline view to inefficiencies and opportunities. We’re interested in parking tech, branded living/working, Smart Buildings/Homes, sustainable building materials and new forms of home ownership. Commerce Enablement: Supply chains are the engine driving economic prosperity abroad. These complex, and often mismanaged systems, are ripe for disruption. We're interested in emerging solutions that have excellent potential to change that. We’re interested in Payment and Processing Softwares, Marketplaces, and tools that power global e-commerce supply chains. Web3: In the emerging Web3 space, new technologies are creating shifts in almost every aspect of life, from art and gaming to organizational structures and ownership. Consumer: Shifts in consumer preferences have created white spaces across product, experience, logistics, and more. We’re captivated by Personalization, Wellness, and Luxury goods made to be more accessible. Future of Work: The way we work is rapidly changing, from where we work to how we navigate daily business in a global world. We're interested in solutions for hybrid and remote work, live/work spaces and new technologies that drive what's next. FinTech: As the FinTech sector continues to mature, there are a number of trends characterizing the industry. These emerging technologies, matched with a population eager to invest and adapt, has continued to play an important role in shaping the future. Creator Economy: Creators are fueling new communities, tools and forms of communication with their own distinctive economies. We go beyond the capital with our OneHerd PlatformFundraising: Our team connects founders with the right players in the field. We’ve helped dozens of companies raise their Series A. OKRs: We believe structure feeds success. That’s why we take the time to outline company milestones that set founders up for a fundraiser. Experts: From Growth to Product, our experts come with a range of different skillsets that help our companies scale from 0 to 1.

We’re helping to create world-class businesses, drive transformation and accelerate change. As the corporate venture capital arm of BAT, we combine the distribution of a global corporation – from financial resources to international networks – with the innovation of a start-up. Who we helpAmbitious, passionate and talented entrepreneurs Innovative ESG solutions with the power to drive change Advanced sciences and technologies with the potential to impact society How we helpGlobal reach: Global distribution and marketing with the financial backing of BAT in more than 80 countries with over 11 million points of sale. Industry support: Portfolio support from industry experts together with legal expertise and regulatory insights. Growth-hacking: Accelerated growth programmes via our bespoke and powerful Labs for specialist categories.

Norrsken VC is one of Europe’s leading and largest impact focused early-stage VC funds. We were born out of Norrsken Foundation – a non-profit foundation founded in 2016 by Niklas Adalberth, co-founder of Klarna, with the belief that entrepreneurs building rapidly scalable businesses are our best bet to solving the hardest and biggest problems of our time. Norrsken VC operates independently, but shares the same values and mission with the Norrsken Foundation - we want to enable the next impact unicorn – a company that has a positive effect on one billion lives. When you become part of Norrsken VC - you join Europe’s largest ecosystem for impact tech entrepreneurs. We invest in highly motivated people whose innate drive is to create a positive impact. Partnering up with us means, amongst many things, that you’ll receive support from educated and experienced people, a wide-span network, along with a community of like-minded people. We’ve built unicorns and babycorns and invested in early-stage start-ups for decades. Now we spend our time helping up-and-coming visionaries reach our unified goals to build a more sustainable now.

We use our powerful network and expertise rooted in an entrepreneurial family heritage to lift new generations of sustainable businesses. We invest. We invest in mission-driven founders that identify the needs of their customers with innovative business models and disrupting product solutions in order to shape a better and sustainable future for the next generation. We support. We believe ‘capital’ should be more than just mere money. Thus, we will provide capital beyond money in form of access to personal networks, industrial knowledge and entrepreneurial spirit. This support will last from Seed to Series A – and beyond. Investment ThesisConsumption. Feeding the planet is the biggest societal and climate challenge in current times – solving this will be of pivotal importance for the upcoming decades. By inventing more efficient, healthy, and sustainable technology and product solutions, we invest into B2B and B2C consumption innovations that are better for the people and the planet. Wellbeing. Using state-of-the art scientific and technological advances, earth inhabitants’ lives are transformed towards more healthiness with respect to mental and physical conditions. Digital solutions are driving towards higher transparency, connectivity, and thus better performance creating superior living standards for the society. Productivity. Superior digital solutions along the value chain and innovative product experiences that disrupt analog businesses and ease complex processes with the aim to revolutionize existing segments or innovate new ones with the ability to adapt according to data will be key to safeguard the wealth and living on our planet. Offering access to a unique set of industry and venture networks.Expert Access: Thanks to a highly diversifed network of industry leading companies of our investor, we have access to a unique set of industry and venture networks that we leverage for investment decision making and actively offer our investee companies as value-add in addition to our financial contribuionts. We understand ourselves as an accessible, reliable, and collaborative team – we remain on the co-driver seat beyond stages. Powerful Network: In the past years we have built up a highly diversified and valuable network of trusted partners and co-investors. In addition to our direct investments, we are also invested into leading early-stage funds, with whom we have co-invested in the past and will also do in the future. These networks give us access to world-leading early-stage co-investors and know-how. Lasting Commitment: There is no ‘short-term’ in family. So being backed by one of the most renowned family businesses in Germany comes with lasting dedication. We are here to stay and will continue to invest in the foreseeable future thereby leveraging our experiences and expertise.

We’re drawn to the line where creative entrepreneurs and emerging technologies intersect with social, economic, and environmental trends. Why? Because we believe that today’s innovative companies will determine the quality of life for our kids and future generations. We're looking for mission-driven entrepreneurs who believe that purpose and profit go together naturally. What Matters To UsClimate Change: Monitoring, adapting to, and mitigating the effects of climate change to improve economic resiliency and the quality of life for future generations. Circular Economy: Improving resource efficiency, advancing materials, designing for recycling, reimagining “waste” as a resource, and regenerating natural systems to create abundance from perceived scarcity. Empowered People: Creating personalized, transparent, frictionless products and services that empower people and align with their values. Our thingWe prefer people over algorithms. We expect innovative companies to come from anywhere. We believe that technology should serve us and make life easier. We seek entrepreneurs, partners, and investors who unite purpose with profits. We see diversity as a source of resilience and insight. Your thingYou expect a partner you can trust. You appreciate hands-on experience balancing growth with governance. You believe a partnership is defined by listening and collaboration. You seek a partner who regards your time as your most valuable asset. We are optimists We are keenly aware of the challenges facing future generations, yet we remain confident in the creativity of startups, the application of emerging technologies, and the increasing dynamism of global markets. We are a group of entrepreneurs, corporate advisors, board members and investors who offer our partners access to a global network, decades of experience growing businesses, and a track record of successful investing. We discover: We find creative entrepreneurs applying digital and cloud-scale technologies to solve well-defined problems in the physical world. Our ideal investments are venture- and growth-stage companies that are driven by purpose and profit, while being committed to long-term environmental, social, and corporate governance values. We invest: We find alignment with entrepreneurs who seek a thought partner as they build their business and welcome strategic insights based on our collaboration with corporate LPs. We invest with our whole selves, offering the accumulation of our life experiences, business acumen, and deep understanding of technology to our partners. We regenerate: Our investments support companies forging a bold path to a regenerative economy - one in which the end condition is better than the original state. We back businesses that develop people and global capacity while respecting natural resources and restoring - not depleting - the environment. And as collaborative investors, we honor the trust our limited partners place in us by working to multiply their capital.