Seed-stage startups targeted on business-to-business have one other supply of capital to go after. Monta Vista Capital secured $48 million in capital commitments for its third fund — its largest to date — to help B2B startups.
The Silicon Valley agency was based by Venktesh Shukla, who began investing on the angel stage as a part of entrepreneurship group TiE Silicon Valley, additionally serving as a former president. He is the present chair of TiE Global.
Venktesh Shukla, Monta Vista Capital, enterprise capital
Shukla and his group of companions, together with Roger Krakoff, normal companion, have experience within the areas of AI, cloud, safety and knowledge. They take a crew strategy to investing and sometimes achieve this on the pre-revenue stage. Monta Vista targets startups in infrastructure, vertical SaaS and digital transformation of industries, like mining and textiles.
“We have these deep, deep domain experts that we rely on for diligence and for the judgment call before we make the investment,” Shukla informed TechCrunch. “And, unlike most of the seed funds, which typically have a one-person operation fund of this size, we believe that investing is a team sport. We collectively make a decision so we have the agility of a small fund, but all the resources of a very big fund.”
Also setting Monta Vista aside is that the agency doesn’t elevate capital from institutional buyers, however fairly leverages a big community of 65 particular person buyers. Shukla calls the community the agency’s “secret superpower,” and that this community offers the agency its deal movement, diligence and portfolio firm help. Monta Vista has now raised $72.8 million throughout the three funds.
Though the third fund is $48 million, securing a few of that capital is considerably unique. Monta Vista made solely 12 investments from its second fund and plans to put money into 15 firms with the third fund. That mentioned, the agency will put in round $1 million to $2 million into every firm, Shukla mentioned. This 12 months, Monta Vista is on observe to put money into about 5 firms.
Previous investments embrace advertising tech firm Captiv8, customs clearance firm KlearNow and Eridan, a cellular infrastructure firm.
Monta Vista additionally had some successes from its earlier funds, together with API safety firm Cequence Security, which raised a Series C in 2021, and Tekion, an automotive retail platform that introduced a $250 million Series D, additionally in 2021. Another is Nyansa, an organization doing mobility efficiency administration of enterprise wi-fi networks, was acquired by VMWare in 2020.
“It’s been a fun experience,” Shukla mentioned. “Even with all the doom-and-gloom going on, the innovation train does not stop. Whether it’s good times or bad times, the good entrepreneurs have very compelling ideas, and that’s our goal — to find those compelling ideas.”
