Everyone else's blind spot is our deal flow.
First checks into women-led companies, at the stage when an idea is the only thing on the table.
Every culture has a drink it gathers around.
In India, chai brings people to the table. Coffee in America, matcha in Japan, oolong in China, English breakfast in England. People make time for the cup because they want the hour together.
We named the firm after that. We sit with our founders through the good stretches and the bad ones. We invest early, often the first money in, and we stay with them for a long time.
Chai Ventures
About once a month we send a note on the companies we have backed and what is happening in pre-seed.
What we back,
and how we decide.
We write the first check into companies led by women, usually before there is a product or any revenue. At that stage we are backing the founder and the field.
We are usually the first institutional money on the cap table. Often the only money in before us came from friends and family.
80% of the companies we back are led by women. We love working in the fields where the fewest female founders get funded.
Our founders introduce us to founders they respect.
Our advisors send us founders they have worked with directly.
We trade deal flow with a small group of funds we trust, and often come in as a co-invest on a round someone else is leading.
We watch university spinouts closely. Nomic came out of McGill, Sixfold out of postdocs at Cambridge and the Crick, and Vena out of Waterloo.
A large part of the portfolio came out of accelerators, Y Combinator most of all, so we read every new batch. We judge pitch competitions for the same reason, including the first AWS Women Founders competition.
- 1The founder comes first
We spend time with the founder before we look at the business. We want to see how they handle the parts they have not figured out, and whether their story still holds up when we come back a week later and ask again.
- 2The whole story, from them
We do our own digging and talk to people around the company. If we find something important the founder did not tell us, we pass, whether they oversold it or just left it out.
- 3The people who backed them before
We call the investors who already put money in, and the customers when we can reach them. Someone who has been through a raise and a bad quarter with this founder knows things we will never see in a meeting.
- 4Our own memo
We write the company up ourselves, including the best argument against doing the deal. If we cannot argue ourselves out of it, we do not understand it well enough yet.
- 5The advisor bench
Our advisors weigh in before we commit. They have run companies through downturns we have only read about, and they are the ones who stay close to the founder after we invest.
- 6We all have to agree
Every deal needs all of us, so any one of us can stop one for any reason. When we get to yes, we tell the founder ourselves and give them a timeline.
By the time we commit, we know the company as well as anyone outside it.
The companies.
Majority women-led. Select any name for what they do and who built them.
This is a newer role in venture. Our advisors get in directly with founders when things get hard, the pivot nobody planned for or a hire that has to go right, so a company has someone who has been there to lean on long after the check clears.
Beyond the check.
Backing founders is only part of the work. Over the years we've given our own money to organizations doing work we care about. These are the causes and communities we stand behind.
A running list. If we've partnered with your organization and you're not here yet, tell us.
Come For Chai.
Pitch us.
Pre-seed or seed, women-led, and a little too early for everyone else. That is exactly our stage. Three fields and you are in our inbox.
Get the memo.
We are raising our next fund. If you back founders early and want the full thesis and track record, we will send the memo.
Request itFor accredited investors only.
Invite us.
We want to see more women in the room, so we are always glad to come speak, especially when most of the audience is women.
- Startup and venture events, especially ones built for women
- Investor gatherings
- Universities
Backing women-led companies