Susa Ventures V: $175M for Seed-Stage Founders

By Chad Byers, General Partner and Co-founder at Susa Ventures

Dear founders,

We’re excited to announce Susa Ventures V – a $175M fund to help you launch and scale your company. Since 2013, we’ve dedicated ourselves to pre-seed and seed-stage company building.

Every company starts at day one, but only a few become category-defining businesses. The winners find momentum early and compound it for decades. Our job is to help you build momentum early – by providing capital, customers and talent.

Susa founders are on average more successful and own more of their companies than industry peers. Susa companies become unicorns ~10x more often than the average venture-funded startup. 10% of Susa I and II companies have become unicorns – compared to a 1%* industry average. Susa-backed companies raise Series A rounds at ~2x higher valuations than industry average*, resulting in lower founder dilution. Susa founders tend to own more of their companies at exit.

How we work:

• We invest $500k-$5m at the pre-seed and seed-stage.

• We invest pre-idea all the way through early product-market-fit.

• We build independent conviction – we don't care who else is in the round.

• We’re very selective – each partner invests in just 2-3 companies per year.

• We're sector-agnostic, focused primarily on software, and believe AI is underhyped.

• We’re founder-first – in 12 years, we’ve never voted a founder out of their business.

In short, we’re a purpose-built seed specialist.

We’re living in the most exciting technology shift in human history. Artificial intelligence has the potential to change the way humans live in a more profound way than anything we’ve seen before. We’re energized by optimism and motivated by the determination to help build a future we’re excited about. We’ve outlined areas of investment interest here.

Choosing Susa means your success drives impact beyond your company. We manage capital from US-based institutions, including non-profit foundations, education endowments and leading healthcare providers.

If you’re an early-stage builder, please reach out.

Chad

*Based on Pitchbook data