While Montana himself has an impressive track record of angel investing, including backing Pinterest and Dropbox, Liquid 2 has also had some notable success with seed investing. The firm has backed Gitlab, Anduril, Jasper and Rippling.Soma Capital, which was founded in 2015 by Aneel Ranadive, primarily backs SaaS, AI and business software companies, along with fintech startups at the seed stage.
The fund makes seed investments across a variety of sectors including enterprise, consumer, healthcare, fintech, climate, and Web3. BoxGroup will on average back around 40 companies per year, with investments ranging from $250,000 to $1 million. Founded in 2006 by Alan Patricof, Dana Settle, and Ian Sigalow, Greycroft has made a bi-coastal name for itself, with early bets on startups like Bumble, HuffPost, Goop, The RealReal, and Venmo.
To date, ERA alumni companies have raised more than $1.7 billion in investor capital and collectively exceed $10 billion in market capitalization, the firm says. Notable investments include Glia, Bespoke Post, User Interviews, and Scentbird. Founded by former hedge fund investor Ramtin Naimi, Abstract Ventures is a seed-stage firm that invests across all sectors of technology, including healthcare, fintech, crypto, and enterprise.
Pioneer Fund focuses on those YC companies that are part of the startup accelerator's current batch, as well as second-time YC founders or those that grab the attention of YC alumni. Examples include ecommerce startup Shogun and clinical trial healthtech startup Curebase. Tucked amid tech company behemoths Amazon and Microsoft in the Seattle area is Madrona, a venture capital firm founded in 1995. It was also around that time that Madrona's cofounder, Tom Alberg, invested in Amazon.
Since its inception, it's backed companies like crypto startup Worldcoin and newsletter platform Substack. But the firm has a particular interest in helping world-class scientists become entrepreneurs, and backing startups in sectors like climate, health, and connectivity. Based in Chicago, M25 focuses on funding the best and brightest startups headquartered in the Midwest.
With investments in companies like Allbirds, Casper and Warby Parker, the firm has built a hefty portfolio that's now 405 companies and counting — and has written 109 seed checks since 2018. It typically focuses on companies in the consumer and enterprise spaces. And while not a seed specialist firm, Lerer Hippeau does have a dedicated seed fund – it's currently investing out of its eighth such fund, which closed in 2022.