NYVP end of 2021 update; our most active year yet!
We made 16 new investments and 5 follow on investments this year — below is only what is publicly announced.
*NYVP we invest $25-$50k at pre/seed at <$10M valuations (priced/SAFE/note) to start. We’re opportunistic but stay away from bio/healthcare/insurance and only 70% are based in NY, regardless of our name :)
2021 was definitely a busy year:
- I moved to Long Island
- Had a baby
- Hosted 30 virtual Active Investor Upstreams, interviewed 20 VCs and introduced 700+ investors digitally
- Snuck in an amazing in-person dinner with 20+ investors
- Sent out 68 newsletters to my Active Investor list of 400 (800+ in slack)
- Met with ~700 founders (lots of Zooms)
- We invested in Saas, CPG, consumer, social, creator, food/restaurant, Ai/ML/MV, education, death, carbon-neutral, work (used to be future of work), cyber, health/wellness, customer success and had three pivots into crypto
- Where did our investments come from? 5 warm intros via VC/angel/operator, 4 through portfolio founders, 4 proactive via Techstars (3) and ondeck, 2 cold emails, 1 previous founder we backed
We would also love to invest in more climate/sustainability/carbon reduction startups as well. Let's finally co-invest together in 2022!
- I stepped up my meme game which now has 1M+ views combined
- Kidas raises $2M to protect kids online from cyberbullying while playing games / in the metaverse — we found them through the Techstars Comcast Accelerator
- Upstream raises $2.75M Seed — we invested in their previous pre-seed too
- Upstream Launches their Collective- a DAO as a Service which we’re very excited about as web3/metaverse keeps growing
- Lance (banking for freelancers) raises $2.8M — we found them through Techstars Barclay
- Thrive Fantasy (sports prop bets) $3M Series A — we previously invested in the seed too
- Kreatures of Habit launched their protein oatmeal and raises $2.2M
- Uizard (design no code) $15M Series A from Insight Partners — we invested in their pre-seed and seed previously (Thanks LDV)
- Fi (Smart dog collar) raised $30M Series B — we invested in their seed round
- StrongDM (database management) Series B from Tiger, GV and Sequoia — we invested in the pre-seed, seed and Series A previously
- Secfi raises $700M to buy pre-IPO shares
- Superlocal goes $LOCAL — think foursquare but with crypto incentives
- Popchew creates food brands for creators, partners with SZN (4.6M Youtube subscribers)
— order them here www.wingszn.com
- Brian launched his Science Literacy Foundation, a nonprofit 501(c)3 social-impact organization whose mission is to investigate, create, and fund scalable initiatives and programs, providing new paths to Science Literacy.
Does your company need Friday.app? Digital HQ for growing companies
Meet Turing Labs — The Y-Combinator Backed Startup Building “Palantir For The CPG Industry”
Some other cool companies you can look into as well :)
accelpay.io cast.app withcharacter.com funneliq.com gethank.com thehedgehogcompany.com marqii.com jumpspeak.com neutrl.com hyperwrite.ai ulo.world
What NFTs am I into?
I minted knightsofdegen.io — 8,888 Knights building a sports betting and entertainment Kingdom in the metaverse.
Bought 1 byopills that got me a key, apostle, vape, land and soon a craft
Minted 1 illuminatinft.com — These 8128 generative TOKENS, crafted in chaos, fire, and MAGIK, will be delivered only to the DEVOUT at an undisclosed time
