Calling Enterprise AI founders!
I am thrilled to have announced the launch of G2C Venture Partners last week with partners Vik Ghai and Amar Chokhawala.
G2C is an early stage venture fund focused on incubating and building companies with founders in Enterprise AI and more about the fund is available here
TBP Venture Fund 1 and G2C Venture Partners
I manage TBP Venture Fund 1, an early stage fund (vintage 2021) where Vik and Amar are limited partners. TBP invests with founders who have a product ready with initial design partners and customers who are past the Proof of Concept (POC) phase.
TBP invests in these early stage Enterprise AI companies and helps them navigate through their product-market-fit and subsequent financing rounds.
G2C enables us to partner with founders earlier as illustrated in the investment approach below:
Once founders have a clear vision of a rapidly emerging market need and are committed to build an Enterprise AI business to address that opportunity we engage in the product/solution incubation and refinement process.
G2C invests in founders at the business incubation stage
We work with various incubators, accelerators and angel investor groups and entrepreneurs who reach out to us directly on Linked In, email or at various industry events.
In our experience setting the right foundation from the startup’s earliest days – when the idea for a business morphs into a MVP – helps accelerate the journey to success
For these reasons we prefer to lead the first institutional round. Although, we welcome the opportunity collaborate with other high quality lead investors as well.
First time founders – First institutional round has gotten a lot harder
I had organized my startup’s first institutional round nearly 20 years ago and started investing in early stage companies over 10 years ago through Tie Angels.
Organizing the first institutional funding round has always been difficult and in today’s market it is taking even longer.
This problem is even more acute for founders who don’t have a proven track record of building a business, raising capital from institutional investors, and delivering great returns to these investors.
The early stage valuations have adjusted from the days of zero interest rates and that is also contributing to the lengthening cycle given founder expectations and investor requirements. The benchmarks for what it takes to get a subsequent Series A round organized have also moved.
Building partnerships require patience and persistence
Before leading the round, we want to first understand the founder’s vision of the market opportunity, problem definition and your proposed solution.
Beyond the pitch deck template we are looking to understand your view of the market opportunity and what your proposed solution means to enterprise business operators.
While our initial check size is $1 – $1.5M and we have committed co-investors who will round this up to $2M when we lead, we are not in the “Check-writing” business.
Our focus is to establish alignment of vision for the business and develop a deeper partnership with the founders.
Having done this successfully many times before and failed a few times, we have a view of what’s needed to win and what approaches may not fit us well.
When we are considering leading a round, this takes us a few cycles and some time to ensure we have alignment with the founders as potential future partners.
We are early stage company builders
We are former founders who now partner with founders and invest capital to help build great businesses.
We will help you refine the product specs to establish your minimum sellable product, introduce you to design partners who can help you refine the features and guide you as you set up your initial go-to-market stack. Once the repeatable sales cycle has been established, we will help you organize subsequent financing.
We will let you know the benchmarks for what constitutes A+ performance – sharing our experience with similar stage Enterprise SaaS/AI investments – and then help you beat that.
While we will serve on the board, provide investor governance and hold the company to a high standard, we see our role as service providers to the business.
As founders you own the business, the business operations and all the key decisions.
Next steps….
We are looking to meet with founders in Enterprise AI who are interested in evaluating if we would be a good fit.
If you are or know someone who is looking to raise early stage investment, feel free to book a 25 min intro call on calendly or send an email to founders@ g2cventures.com (without the spaces).
