Pioneer Fund

We're excited to have Tim Suzman, Managing Partner at Pioneer Fund, speak at The AI & Blockchain Investment Conference, September 5th, 2024. For agenda or registration inquiries email: renato@carmocompanies.com Register Today! https://lnkd.in/eZMWkVs3

Huge congratulations to AstroForge from the Pioneer Fund portfolio on their $40m Series A. It sounds like an insane idea, but founder Matthew Gialich is serious and pragmatic and they've made rapid technical progress. Later this year they're launching their second mission, to deep space. Here's an excerpt from their blog showing an example of their rate of progress over a 3 month period when they decided they must build their next vehicle in-house.

We are excited to welcome Brent LaRue, OLY to Pioneer Fund as a Venture Partner! Brent's journey from competing in the 2012 London Olympics to founding Y Combinator-backed startups like iollo and Circle Medical showcases his ability to succeed in high-performance environments. His experiences will be invaluable to us at Pioneer Fund.

A few months ago I predicted the Series A/B markets were starting to warm up - so far the prediction seems to be aging well! We have a bit of an inside view at Pioneer Fund as the most active seed investor. Here's what we've seen before the Series A downturn, during the downturn, and now: Before the downturn: - Startups that hit $1m in annualized revenue with good growth were usually able to raise a pretty quick Series A. Valuations ranged from $60m to $80m, occasionally higher. During the downturn: - The Series A market was slow, distracting, and up-hill. - Startups were encountering bad/slow VC behavior and unfavorable terms. - Most founders instead preferred not to bother with a Series A in these conditions. - Instead, they kept growing, potentially raised a small seed+ round, and reduced their reliance on VCs. - This was a healthy response to the situation, and those companies are coming out of the downturn looking really strong. What we're seeing now: - Some of the companies that "deferred" their Series A/B are raising now. They often have well over $1m in annual revenue, strong unit economics, strong growth, and good runways. - Some more recent startups that are just hitting their $1m annual revenue milestone (with fast growth) are having more success with their raise. - The rounds aren't AS easy as before the downturn. Founders who just hit those milestones are "competing" against founders who are further along after deferring their raise and growing way past the typical milestones. Not all VCs are "back in the game". - The raises don't come together quite as easily -- they still take considerable time and effort from the founders. But the market is there, and the rounds are happening. - We're seeing valuations around $60M - $75M again, occasionally higher for some AI companies. Overall, my advice to founders is somewhere in between: if you really want to raise a Series A and are doing well enough, you probably can right now. But if you want to keep pushing past $1m in revenue rather than dealing with a potentially-distracting fundraise, that's still a reasonable option.

Agree with Paul Graham! This is what we’ve been noticing too at Pioneer Fund. I was in YC 13 years ago and know many founders from even earlier batches. These recent batches have felt like the “old days”. Technical hackers and founders building like crazy. Old and new industries wide open. Sometimes young founders with “no business being in this space” realizing they can flip everything on its head. Kudos to Garry Tan and the Y Combinator team for helping motivate and capture that lightning in a bottle.

Exciting Leadership Updates! 🎉 I'm thrilled to announce some important changes to our leadership team at Pioneer Fund. Tim Suzman: Promoted to Managing General Partner Tim has been an invaluable asset to our team as a GP and will be joining me as Managing GP. Tim first joined Pioneer Fund as a Venture Partner in W18, quickly became a Senior Venture Partner by S18, and by the fall of 2018 joined Pioneer full-time. In many ways, Tim has been my co-founder and has been a critical component in scaling our unique model. We wouldn't be where we are today without Tim.   Michael Dilworth: Promoted to General Partner & CFO Mike joined the fund in 2022 and took on a significant amount of fund administration, LP reporting, and other crucial aspects of managing the fund off my plate. With over 500 investments and more than 700 investors across our funds, our reporting obligations on tax, audit, and valuations are substantial. Since joining, Mike has played an increasingly important role in fundraising and our follow-on decisions. His promotion to GP, while retaining his CFO responsibilities, acknowledges his broader contributions to Pioneer.   Eric Norman: Promoted to General Partner Eric first joined Pioneer Fund as a VP in 2021, became a Visiting SVP in W22, and an SVP in S22. He then became a Visiting GP in the fall of 2022. Eric has made significant contributions as a Visiting GP, particularly with investment decisions, portfolio modeling, and accelerating our use of AI. We are excited to have him join us full-time as a GP.   Please join me in congratulating Tim, Mike, and Eric on their well-deserved promotions. With over 1,500 YC alumni involved as Venture Partners or portfolio founders, their leadership and expertise will be invaluable as the Pioneer Fund community continues to grow.

Massive news with Pioneer Fund portfolio company Vanta raising $150m from Sequoia Capital at a $2.45B valuation.

Terra’s founder Kyriakos Eleftheriou is so disciplined you can visually see it in their revenue graph. He's ex-Special Forces and was in the Y Combinator W21 batch. Across 500 Pioneer Fund portfolio companies, their investor updates are invariably one of the first in my inbox at the beginning of each month. Always with full detail about metrics, product updates, upcoming product plans, customer feedback, etc, etc, etc. There’s an entire table of contents. And a revenue graph. The revenue has grown every month for 32 months in a row. Terra is NOT an easy startup to build -- there is so much integration and infrastructure work and so many types of customers. There is no inherent reason the revenue graph should be smooth. It could only be a result of relentless discipline and execution.

HUGE congratulations to Pioneer Fund company Freshpaint for raising $30M in their Series B after growing ***TENFOLD*** over the past year! Freshpaint is a data privacy platform for healthcare companies. We invested in their seed round coming out of YC, and again at the Series A in the brutal fundraising environment during the macro downturn, and AGAIN as part of this round. The founders Steven🚀 F. and Michael Malis are tough and focused and resilient and growing and brilliant. The round was led by Threshold Ventures and SignalFire. Would be a 🚀 place to work...

Congratulations to Pioneer Fund company Exa on their $17M Series A led by Lightspeed and NVIDIA. They are building the search engine *for* AIs. In the future, most search will actually be done by AI rather than by humans. We invested in their seed round (back when they were called Metaphor) and then again when we saw their rapid technical progress towards this new vision.