Coming out of our shell at Counterpart Ventures
Over the past year, we have made a number of investments and been quietly working away to launch a sustainable venture franchise which will grow carefully, deliberately and purposefully.
While we have several exciting portfolio announcements to share in the near future, we thought it was time to graduate from an artisanal photo of a lightbulb as our website placeholder to share more about ourselves: http://counterpart.vc.
It only seems like yesterday when we replaced the makeshift napkin signage on our door. We’re excited to come out of our shell and although we haven’t been on holiday this video pretty much sums up our level of excitement. Clearly we don’t take ourselves too seriously and are fans of 90’s sitcoms.
But today we get back to doing what we do best: investing in entrepreneurs.
In this saturated venture market, we see a proliferation of microfunds and concentration of megafunds. We believe these two extremes have created an opportunity for a more nimble fund model:
- This market gap allows us to be opportunistic in our approach, not beholden to the standard VC playbook.
- This empowers us to propose healthy capital infusion, price and lead rounds at non-traditional times and above all focus on authentic alignment with founders.
- We embrace a flexible lifecycle fund mentality, equipping us with the ability to invest in founders at an optimal time and in an expeditious fashion.
Entrepreneurs now also expect more than just access to capital from their VC partner. So we thought carefully about Counterpart’s value-add and how we can move the needle for our founders.
First, we are obsessed with brokering meaningful customer introductions to our portfolio companies. Revenue translates to tangible investor value creation. It is a simple equation, but we are maniacal about connecting these dots.
Second, Counterpart is uniquely positioned to facilitate connections between startups and corporates. Given our prior corporate investment experience, we boast the most active and engaged network of CVCs among any traditional VC firm. While many funds advise founders to tread carefully with corporates, we flip the stereotype on its head and bridge this gap. We are a rare firm that can unleash the value of large corporates and transform them into customers or strategic partnerships. We formalized this network and call it the Counter Club. The group gathers via invite-only events hosted by Counterpart, with the intention of providing a private environment for open and candid conversations between likeminded corporate investors.
Third, we pride ourselves on providing patient and sticky capital. We aren’t interested in shiny objects, we are authentic in our responses and empathetic to the long, lonely journey of company building. In fact, we believe investors show their true colors during challenging times. Have a quick read of our values to learn what is important to us.
Collectively our Partners bring over two decades of VC investment experience to the fund, we have both the portfolio battle scars and large liquid unicorn exits to prove it. Our experience has led us to prioritize Counterpart’s investments in the areas of B2B SaaS, mobility and marketplace technologies. It is within these areas in which we can be both effective investors and tremendously valuable to founders. Our geographic investment focus is primarily in the Bay Area, but our eyes are also open wide around the US and internationally given our deep cross border experience.
We are so grateful to share these details with you and to enter this next phase of our journey. For more information we welcome you to visit our new website to learn more about the team and our culture: http://counterpart.vc
Thanks for reading,
Counterpart Ventures
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