Bloomberg Beta

Zen koan: If you announce something that you’ve already announced years before, is it even an announcement? Yes, Bloomberg Beta has a new fund to invest – our fifth. --- A lot’s changed in the last three years. It’s our first new fund in a world after generative AI. Vibe coding is everywhere. Engineers keep getting faster thanks to that AI. And AI startups hit revenue records all the time. And, mostly, while others are zigging, we are zagging. Or, really, staying right where we’ve always been: focused so we can back founders as early as possible. We were early ourselves – the first VC to declare a focus on the future of work and the first to say we wanted to invest in AI (in 2014!) – and so we know what it’s like for founders who show up at the party before everyone else gets there. We still… > Want to serve extraordinary founders who define the future of work. > Put #foundersfirst. > Invest as early as day zero, and as late as our up-to-$1M-or-so first checks allow (i.e., pre-seed and seed). > Define the "future of work" to extend beyond productivity tools, to how work can serve everyone. > Commit to making the startup world welcome to people of all backgrounds. > Invest from a $75M fund. Our three equal partners: Karin Klein (who continues to run the "Acela corridor"), James Cham, and me. Modeled on Bloomberg, we still aspire to be the most transparent investors. And we're here whether the market goes up or down. None of that has changed. Same as 2022, same as 2019, same as 2016, same as 2013. What’s different is…well…we’ve got more evidence we’re right where we like to be, in the business of customer service to founders. Some updated numbers since our first fund 12 years ago: > 93 founders we’ve backed have become millionaires —  and 24 of those have made $10M or more > Founders we’ve backed have gone on to raise $10B+ > 10 startups we’ve backed are worth more than $1B (Flexport, Replit, MasterClass to name a few!) > Startups we back outperform — worth $24M more at next round We’ve backed extraordinary founders like Replit’s Amjad Masad and Haya Odeh and Flexport’s Ryan Petersen, where we were the first VC to say yes to both companies, along with companies like Air Space Intelligence, Campus, Capsule, Lambda, LaunchDarkly, MasterClass, Netlify, Shield AI, Weights & Biases (just acquired by CoreWeave), and more. We were first to focus on the future of work, and on AI, and so we know what being there early feels like. And our friend Helen pointed out that we love being the first to give founders our faith. https://lnkd.in/dmZuEsnY Hear what founders we've backed have to say about us: https://lnkd.in/dE_82RXQ  If you know a founder who’s a great fit for us, please share this! "Yes, we're actively investing." And we’re forever grateful to Mike Bloomberg, a founder backing us so we can back more founders. Cycles continue!