Folklore

As a venture house, our mission is to clear the path for founders who build companies that matter. Our hybrid setup, comprising PSV Foundry, PSV Lab, and two unique venture funds, PSV Tech and PSV Hafnium, sets us free from adhering to a singular method. Rather we rethink existing ways and models to maximise our impact beyond any individual firm or investment. Together, we can punch above our weight.

The Venture Guides provide an ecosystem of support for founders and CEOs. We believe in leveraging our experience and relationships in the infrastructure software domain and beyond to help you build your business. “I do not know anyone with the Venture Guides team’s combined smarts, work ethic, experience, and history of success. It is exciting to work with the Venture Guides team. When you do, good things are going to happen.” - Jack Sweeney, 7-time CEO, COO, Turbonomic, and Venture Guides Advisor

We help founders turn bold ideas into high-growth startups with capital, mentorship, and strategic guidance. We invest in early-stage founders, regardless of background, providing them with the resources to scale faster and smarter Startups that receive structured mentorship have a 3x higher success rate - we ensure founders get access to top-tier advisors, domain experts, and industry veterans. 90% of startups fail due to funding constraints - we help bridge this gap by preparing founders for investment and connecting them with the right capital. Entrepreneurship is often lonely, so we provide a strong community that celebrates wins and losses together. Why 23V is more than just a Venture Capital ? Alongside providing funding, guidance and mentorship we set ourselves apart by the followings: Personal Branding: Your story is your biggest asset. We help founders shape their identity, build trust, and attract opportunities that open doors. In a world where attention matters, we ensure your name and work stand out, making you the face of your vision. Community/Journey: Entrepreneurship is tough, but you don’t have to do it alone. We’ve built a space that values struggles as much as success. A place where founders share, learn, and grow together - because real change happens when people push forward as a collective. We Act as a Co-Founder: We’re not just advisors or mentors - we work alongside you. From refining ideas to tackling roadblocks, we put in the work, helping you execute, adapt, and grow. Your vision is ours too, and we’ll build it with you. Structured Approach: Dreams need direction. We don’t just tell you to figure it out - we shape the roadmap together, breaking big goals into clear, actionable steps. No more uncertainty - just a plan built for execution. Focus: Distractions are everywhere, and losing sight of your vision is easy. We ensure you stay aligned with what truly matters, helping you cut through the noise and move forward with precision and clarity. Distribution: Ideas alone aren’t enough, they need to move. We make that happen through our alumni network, the right mentors, proven companies, and founder-to-founder conversations. Community isn’t just support, it’s your launchpad. The right connections. At the right time. Where it counts from the exclusive people.

Positive Sum helps founders build their companies and tell their stories. We devote time to meeting the most talented entrepreneurs and investors in the world, and we strategically deploy our network on behalf of our portfolio companies. What we look for in companies The creation of new businesses, especially those fueled by technology, can lead to Positive Sum outcomes: where companies, customers, and investors all win together. Our team searches for such companies, with the following criteria guiding our way. Life’s Work: We look for founders doing their “life’s work.” We always ask how the founding team came upon the problem they are solving and assess the alignment between that problem and their own path in life. We find that these founders tend to be driven and obsessive, they tend to build domain knowledge quickly, and they tend to be disagreeable, with their own clear point of view for how things ought to be. We love these qualities. Ultimately, we find that founders doing their “life’s work” become magnets for talent and have the perseverance necessary to survive and thrive in difficult periods. Synchronized Team: Speed is an unbelievable advantage for young companies. Teams that communicate well ship products faster. We look for smart and efficient team communication, chemistry, and the right mix of business and technical talent. Market Signal: We can evaluate teams directly, but markets help us evaluate products. We look for clear signals from customers that a given idea or product is valuable. We deeply respect a market signal even if we don’t yet understand what is behind it, but then seek to understand the customer’s motivation in a deep way. A Compounding Customer: The question “will customers use this product often, and will the product get better and more valuable as they do?” is at the center of our investigation. Products that get embedded in their user’s lives or workflows tend to be more defensible. Compounding has to start somewhere, and our experience suggests that companies focused on “one thing” early on maximize the odds they can do more things in the future, because the customer grows to love them for the original solution. Profit Persistence: We want to invest in companies that can earn enormous profits over time. The odds of this happening go up when 1) a business demonstrates (or we can foresee) positive unit economics, 2) the business model can scale with demand and 3) the product gets harder for others to copy as it grows. We look for all three components. Timing, Alignment, and Impact: We focus intently on why now is the right time to build this company. New technologies, changes in regulation, cultural shifts, and other enabling factors create opportunities for unnatural growth in a business. We always look for alignment between a company and the world at large. We also want great alignment between our two teams. We hope to have decades-long relationships with the companies we support, so the fit between Positive Sum and the founding team is paramount. We make fewer investments than many comparable funds so that we can be closer with portfolio companies and spend more time with each of them.

In the start-up ecosystem, talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. Our mission is to correct that imbalance and level the playing field for founders in unusual places. We get involved: Whether it’s recruiting top talent, finding new investors or introducing potential customers, we directly assist founders with their most important priorities. We provide a platform: When you face a problem, it is the best to get the advice of someone who has been there. Over the years, we were fortunate to have met several of these people who managed to overcome serious hurdles We invest from experience: Our team are proven founders and operators in their own right, who bring that experience to the companies we back. We share the success: By distributing part of the overall fund profit, we ensure that when one of our companies succeeds, all of them benefit.

Everything here is led by Founders, for Founders. We believe capital is a commodity, experience and inner purpose are not. We want to help our Founders succeed in building extraordinary companies. We’re an experienced team of operators who have started dozens of companies by shaping people's lives. We are on our journey to create a better society by creating impactful companies.