Introducing f7 Ventures Fund 1: $50M to help build the next decade defining companies

Introducing f7 Ventures Fund 1: $50M to help build the next decade defining companies through capital and hands-on operational help

Many of us have hallmark moments in our careers. When you playback those moments, they feel like slo-mo. One of those moments for Joanna was driving cross-country upon graduating Harvard in 2006 and having to tell her mom she was going to take an hourly job at a company no one had heard of called Facebook over investment banking or other tech giants. For me, that was accepting the offer to join Facebook in 2010 with a 4 month old and a 100 mile round trip commute each day. When I accepted the job, I thought to myself, “What have I done?”  But I also knew I wouldn’t be happy sitting on the sidelines when I had a chance to help build one of our lifetime’s defining companies. 

There were more of those moments at Facebook and in our collective 30 year+ operating careers at both FAANG companies and early stage start-ups — realizing we had to pivot to mobile quickly and dramatically or become obsolete, winding up businesses and shutting them down in a matter of months, pivoting our GTM strategy & talent to get to $1B in revenue in less than two years, moving halfway across the world to build a new team and region, signing pivotal global partnerships, building multiple operations teams from 0-1, making tough people and team calls along the way and trying to keep people from burning out when we didn’t have the teams or tools to sustain rapid growth. 

We’ve made big decisions and mistakes throughout our operating careers. We’ve had successes and failures at product roadmapping, go to market, operating, hiring & firing over the years. And all of that has prepared us for this next hallmark moment in our careers — f7.

Joanna and I co-founded f7, an early stage venture firm, on the premise that seasoned operators make the best investors. Company building at the earliest stages lays the foundation for long term success and scale. And mistakes early on can result in lost time, money and technical debt. Furthermore, starting a company can be a scary proposition. With that, we came together with our first institutional fund to invest both capital and hands on support to help founders solve tough problems and build the next generation of lifetime defining companies. 

A few years ago when Joanna, myself and our other founding partners came together to invest our own capital as f7, we looked around and didn’t see many check writers that looked like us. We found a new breed of founder reaching out to us - founders who valued operationally derived intuition, our desire to help solve tough problems and our willingness to roll up our sleeves and help with anything from the strategic to the tactical. 

As we think about our value add to founders now and in the future, we know there’s plenty of high level advice available and we don’t need to add to the noise. We focus on helping founders with anything from refining financials, crafting a sales compensation plan, customer introductions, making GTM trade-offs and hard people and org decisions. We take the time to build a trusted partnership and we pride ourselves on being one of the first calls when the hard stuff inevitably happens. 

“f7 has been by far the most hands-on, helpful fund we've ever met. They've helped us so much in so many different aspects of our journey such as spotting key problems that aren't immediately obvious to us and guiding us in the right direction, connecting us to high level talent when we really need it, and above all - just always being there to support us with extreme warmth and kindness.” - Mai Akiyoshi, Co-founder and CEO of Curious 

With that, Joanna and I are pleased today to announce our first institutional fund for f7 and one of the largest first funds by female operators. We’re thinking long term. We want the next generation of founders to look at f7 as the best possible partners available to empower their growth and success. And this first $50M pre-seed and seed stage fund that brings together capital and deep operating expertise is the first step. Along with our capital, we provide the expertise and support of our Operator Council, 18 C-level executives and investors ready to roll up their sleeves and provide functional support to f7 founders and our Operator Network, 22 vetted consultants across 14 functions that can help founders with project based work and move further faster. 

“f7 was one of our first investors and has been the most hands-on partner to help us achieve key milestones including our recent Series A. As former operators and execs, they bring deep expertise in scaling companies and have been my go-to call for operational questions. They have an incredible network that has resulted in multiple customer intros and connections to talent. It’s a rare combination and I feel lucky to have them as close partners on the WorkWhile journey.” - Jarah Euston, Co-founder and CEO of WorkWhile 

We’ve already invested in 20 companies from f7 Ventures Fund I. We believe deeply in creating an equal starting line for founders and as a result, 70% of our deal flow and investments includes a female or underrepresented founder. In our operating careers, we have always sought out different perspectives, backgrounds and ideas to drive best in class results. Our approach to investing does the same. Likewise, we have a respected and diverse set of LPs, both individuals and institutions, that believe in our investment approach and firm vision including: Sheryl Sandberg & Tom Bernthal, Paris Hilton, Andrew Bosworth, Justin Kan, SoftBank, J.P. Morgan, Insight Partners, Anthemis Group, Espresso Capital, Verdis Investment Management and more. 

As we reflect on the hallmark moments in our career, we are thankful for the many that have led up to this one and that give us the experiences and tools to help founders supercharge their ideas and companies. We feel grateful to be on this journey to build the next-gen VC firm in f7 and help the founders we support to build the defining companies of this decade and beyond. 

Kelly & Joanna -- f7 Co-Founders & General Partners