Alums From Bessemer, A16z And Index Launch New Firm With $350M For Seed And Series A Startups

Chemistry, a brand new early-stage VC agency based by former Bessemer Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures buyers, announced its launch Wednesday with a debut fund of $350 million devoted to writing checks to early-stage startups.

The agency was launched by Mark Goldberg, Ethan Kurzweil and Kristina Shen, previously of Index, Bessemer and a16z, respectively. The brand new agency will search out lead investments on the seed and Sequence A levels.

The trio told Forbes that their pitch to startup founders is they provide “the expertise and observe information they’d anticipate from a bluechip VC agency, with the additional consideration that may be troublesome to constantly obtain from a bigger fund.”

Shen beforehand invested in Sprig, Decagon and Tennr, amongst others. Goldberg was an investor in startups together with Bridge and Plaid, and Kurzweil beforehand backed Twitch and PagerDuty, amongst others.

“One factor we have been sure of: this new agency would strip away the surplus and as a substitute focus maniacally on the true essence — going all in with our founders from the earliest levels,” Kurzweil wrote on social media platform X. “We every stated out loud what had been staring us within the face: enterprise capital isn’t meant to scale. Committing totally and wholeheartedly to every one in every of our investments will not be a recipe for fast progress, however it’s our north star and constructed into the very material of Chemistry.”

“All three of us will actively help every funding. We’re the portfolio companies workforce,” he wrote. “Nobody else sits between us and our founders. We attempt to carry excellence — one in every of our core agency values — to early-stage investing.”

Seed-stage funding has been comparatively strong through the present enterprise downturn, according to Crunchbase data. Whereas seed funding by means of the primary half of 2024 was flat 12 months over 12 months, it stays above 2020 ranges. On the similar time, elevating a Sequence A spherical has become more challenging for a lot of startups.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman