We invest in founders from seed to pre-series A rounds. This critical period in a startup's development is filled with potential, challenges, and opportunities for growth. We believe that a strong founder-VC partnership during these early years can have a significant impact on a company's success.

We prioritize founder exceptionalism over every other investment criteria, so we’re not domain-specific. We feel most comfortable working alongside founders in many fields. We listen hard and learn fast.

We aim to do 6-10 deals per year.

We typically invest up to USD 500K. We also reserve capital to make follow-on investments in our portfolio companies at later stages.

We typically lead. And when we do, we roll up our sleeves and get the job done. But if there’s another VC that’s a better strategic fit, we’re more than happy to collaborate. We try to always prioritize what’s best for the founder and the company.

Initial Meeting: 30-45 min meeting with a member of the Openner investment team. Here we learn more about you and what you’re building and also introduce you to our fund. We can either walk through a deck or have a more free flowing conversation.

Deep Dive Meeting(s): 45-60 min sessions with different members of our team to dig deeper into further technical and business aspects and help founders get a better understanding of our fund. We’ll outline topics of discussion in advance to give you an idea of what we aim to discuss.

Diligence: We’ll dig deeper into the technology, data, and conduct reference calls with customers, peers, and prior investors. This phase will likely also involve further research and calls with the Openner investment team that follow-on from topics discussed in prior meetings.

Final Decision: We’ll have a final meeting with the investment committee. If we decide to invest, we kick off the process of preparing a term sheet for you. We’ll use this opportunity to fill in any gaps and we’ll communicate frequently throughout the process. Whether we invest or not, we’ll always try to send you in the right direction if we can.