Investments

Organizations

Since 1999, Redpoint Ventures has partnered with visionary founders to create new markets or redefine existing ones. We invest in startups across three phases: SEED, EARLY, GROWTH.

Jason Warner

Redpoint Ventures

primitives

Footprint Analytics

DraftKings

Mysten Labs

XMTP

Offchain Labs

Dune Analytics

Alchemy

Arbitrum

BitGo

Cultural Leadership Fund, Partnering with cultural leaders to advance more African Americans into technology.

In the early days of the technology industry, there was no thought about consumers, because consumers were not our customers. The first computer was sold to the United States government and in general we sold technology to technologists trying to build solutions to difficult problems. Tom Watson, the founder of IBM, famously said in 1943 that the worldwide market for computers was 5. While that seems impossible in retrospect, at the time computers were exceptionally expensive, hard to use, and difficult to sell. Logically, this meant that the industry built technology for people in priority order of how much money they had — first to governments, then to big business, then to small business and almost never to consumers. One could see this in popular culture as James Bond had all kinds of cool technology gadgets that consumers could only dream about.

This changed slightly with the advent of the PC, but the consumer market was still relatively small compared to the government and business markets. Once the Internet and then the smartphone hit the scene, the economics reversed themselves: technology became cheap, easy to use, and often free to distribute. As a result, new technologies now go to markets in priority of their size — first to consumers then to small businesses then to big businesses and finally to governments. And now James Bond just uses a smartphone.

As a result, consumer behavior — in other words, culture — has become central to successfully building, marketing, and selling new technologies.

In the meanwhile, one group of people has been responsible for more cultural influence than any other and perhaps all other groups combined. African Americans invented all modern forms of music from jazz to blues to rock and roll to hip hop. In the United States, most fashion, dance, and language innovation has come from this relatively small community. This is especially significant, because worldwide no culture influenced consumer behavior more than U.S. culture.

So, when we started the firm in 2009, it made logical sense to us that as software eats the world and technology’s primary target audience becomes consumers we would focus on this unique talent pool. In the early days, this meant hiring African Americans in the firm and backing the best African American entrepreneurs.

Still, we felt that we were leaving opportunity on the table in two important dimensions. First, we had not systematically partnered with the established cultural leaders and second, we were not increasing the number of African Americans entering the technology business. We created the Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund to address both issues.

The basic goals of the CLF are twofold:

- Connect the greatest cultural leaders in the world to the best new technology companies.
- Enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry.

To accomplish this, we created a new fund with Limited Partners who are exclusively cultural leaders including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Shonda Rhimes, Will and Jada Smith, Quincy Jones, Kevin Durant, Chance the Rapper, Nasir Jones, Will Packer, Charles Phillips, Edith Cooper, John Thompson, Robin Washington, Richelieu Dennis, Shellye Archambeau, and more. The fund was raised by our partner Chris Lyons. He will invest it in companies in the Andreessen Horowitz portfolio who are interested in partnering with the cultural leaders who invested in the fund. All of the fees and carry associated with the fund will be donated to non-profit organizations that enable African Americans to enter the technology industry. Together, we hope to unite cultural and technology leaders to facilitate a better future for everyone.

Cultural Leadership Fund

At Startmate, we invest in extraordinary founders who are changing the way we work, live and play, and we’re powered by the most successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in Australia.

Startmate’s world-class community of mentors and alumni are scaling businesses from the first dollar to the next billion, and we share that knowledge through our 12-week accelerator program, 1:1 bespoke coaching and in-person events.

Startmate encourages ambitious founders to hit their next milestone and offers invaluable resources, advice and support along the way. Since 2010, we’ve been welcoming exceptional founders into a community for life as they create groundbreaking businesses of tomorrow.

Startmate

In 2014, I launched Serena Ventures with the mission of giving opportunities to founders across an array of industries. Serena Ventures invests in companies that embrace diverse leadership, individual empowerment, creativity and opportunity.

Serena Ventures focuses  on early stage companies, and giving them the opportunity to be heard. As we grow, we hope to mentor young founders and take burgeoning entrepreneurs to the next level. Serena Ventures extends relationships, encourages collaboration among portfolio companies, and expands partnership opportunities across my vast network. Similar to many of the companies we have invested in, we are just getting started and are hoping to make a difference.

Serena Ventures

7RIDGE is a private market asset manager that invests in financial services and associated transformative technologies.

7RIDGE

SciFi VC invests in early stage companies whose defensibility is derived from hard technical feats, network effects, and complex highly regulated industries.

In 2011, Max Levchin started HVF as a container entity for all sorts of data-related projects: ideation, incubation, investing, other things starting with letter 'i'. In the last 5 years HVF has been a highly rewarding exercise in both thinking and doing. We incubated and seeded Glow and Affirm, and invested in over 50 startups.

We also began to distinguish HVF Labs, which recruits teams and incubates our own ideas, from HVF Investments, focused solely on helping external teams solve truly important problems in innovative ways. Both teams have grown over time, resulting in the need to create more distinct identities.

Today, HVF Investments have a new name — SciFi VC. SciFi stands for Science Finance, because as financiers, we focus a lot of our attention on really hard (valuable!) problems where solutions require intense curiosity, intellectual depth, and often science. 

Furthermore, it's an acknowledgement of our collective roots in fintech investing. We are excited to continue helping and learning with the industry’s most outstanding innovators, such as existing investments Artivest, True Accord, OpenDoor, Ellevest, Blend Labs, Gusto, and numerous others.

And finally, for me personally, it’s a nod to what we’ve always seen as the mission of venture capital — to take risks in the service of transforming science-fiction into reality.

SciFi VC

840 Venture Partners is a US-based venture capital fund focused on FinTech and Future of Work. Leveraging our 13+ years of venture experience in these verticals, we invest in seed and pre-Series A companies engaged in disruptive innovation.

840 Venture Partners

Founded in 2006, MoreVC invests in seed and early-stage Israeli technology start-ups, partnering with entrepreneurs who are building companies that matter.

Our professional and personal ties go back for over two decades. We have been at this for a long time, both as individuals and, more importantly, as a team.

MoreVC

Toy Ventures is an operator led early stage product fund.

We are the product and data people on your cap table.

We created Doordash's original android app, multi-billion dollar investment funds and developed some of the most important ads products at Facebook.

Toy Ventures

XDL Capital Group, XDL is a Ontario-based private equity investor that invests in technology companies.

Since 1996 we have supported entrepreneurs building technology related companies in new and growing business sectors. XDL is primarily a private equity investor. They invest their own monies, uniting their interests with each investee. They provide focused attention on their investments, sharing experience, networks and knowledge to help the entrepreneurs grow and prosper.

Redpoint Ventures

Seed. Early. Growth.