I’m thrilled to formally launch Twelve Below I, a new $50M seed-stage venture fund investing in promising (mostly) New York City-based founders that are leading the city’s strongest categories: fintech, healthcare, and consumer. Twelve Below represents the next chapter of my longstanding commitment to seed-stage founders in New York City.
In prior roles at Lerer Hippeau and later at Collaborative Fund, I’ve been deeply rooted in a venture capital landscape that has experienced a fundamental change. I think most would agree that the ecosystem here is flourishing: never before have we had as many IPOs, exits, growth rounds, and new funds being raised. Ten years ago, an IPO here was almost non-existent, GroupMe’s $85M exit to Skype was a defining milestone, and most deals had a cap table full of a handful of small, collaborative venture funds.
Today, I believe that venture capital in New York is now experiencing its own version of Ben Thompson’s “Internet Rainforest,” where an “ecosystem” offers near-perfect levels of resources to enable two different environments to thrive: the canopy, where a few large trees crowd out everything else, and the forest floor, where small, nimble, and hearty plants flourish. I believe the NYC venture landscape is no different in that it provides an opportunity for both: a handful of large $1B+ funds will form the canopy while nimble and specialized funds will thrive on the forest floor.
Twelve Below strives to cultivate that forest floor as the most prescient and reliable venture fund for seed-stage founders in New York City. And we’ll lead the way with conviction and trust. NYC needs more small, focused and “forest floor” seed funds with a complementary approach to investing: we are looking to lead or participate in $1M to $5M pre-seed and seed rounds with a $500K to $2M check. But not until we can earn a founder’s trust. Earning the trust of founding teams enables us to be an active partner that helps companies take flight.
There will continue to be changes in the New York startup landscape as the pandemic continues to reshape much of our society. But our thesis relies on an unyielding belief that New York tech, led by its tech rainforest of diverse and growing companies, will prosper. Companies like Doubleclick, MongoDB, DataDog, Etsy, UIPath, Warby Parker, Digital Ocean, and Squarespace, coupled with aggressive expansion from Facebook and Google, laid the foundation. Others like Opentrons, Hungryroot, Augury Systems, Bowery Farming, Teamshares, and Leaflink are poised to follow in their footsteps, and Twelve Below will be here for what the next wave of startups in fintech, health care, and consumer will bring to the city that never sleeps.
Our mission is to be the earliest investor in a company, an idea, and a founder. And that objective is what the name represents: Twelve Below is the position of the sun at “nautical dawn” (twelve degrees below the Earth’s horizon). This is the moment when the horizon first becomes visible, but the stars are still out so artificial lighting is still required for activity. In other words, it’s about being there when an idea is born and squinting to try and see the future before anyone else can. We aspire to be that “first light” that leads the way.
Last, but certainly not least, some gratitude: thank you to all of the founders I’ve been lucky enough to back who have shown me the way, thank you to my former partners and colleagues who helped shape me into the investor that I am today, and, finally, thank you to all of the Twelve Below investors who put their faith in me.
I am thrilled that the closing of Fund I will enable me to continue doing the work I love.
Taylor