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Pilot tests? We were intrigued but our reply was clear - come back with data from the pilots. And they did. A few months later Dustin Devan and Jesse Pedersen sent over what they’d learned from the early pilots. And they also shared the resume of the first engineer they were going to hire. Progress on customer development and team. Nice. The more we learned about the company and the market, the more excited we got. They were solving a large, urgent and valuable problem with their first product: managing the subcontractor bidding process on commercial construction projects, which often put into play tens to hundreds of millions of dollars of work. And they had a vision for what could be done atop this network SaaS product, very much in line with how we think about vertical SaaS. Finally, they were disrupting with love, not contempt. Having worked in industry and stepped away from a promising career path, Dustin wanted to build something that would improve and elevate the work, not just automate it. He respected his customers, didn’t just dismiss them as “old industries.” We find this belief and value system, especially in founders who haven’t yet become jaded by “too much” experience in industry, to be very compelling. And so along with our friends at Freestyle Capital, we co-led BuildingConnected’s seed round in early 2014.

It’s been a true pleasure to work with Dustin, Jesse and team as they’ve quietly built a company that is redefining how commercial construction works. And we’re happy to finally share that fueling the company is not just our initial seed funding, but also a Series A financing led by Crosslink Capital. BuildingConnected is already powering over $10 billion of project bidding each month. And they’re just getting started.

Now in 2015, UpCounsel is a thriving marketplace community where businesses can connect with rated and reviewed independent lawyers nationwide to have their legal needs met. What started out in one state is now increasingly nationwide. And to fuel that expansion we’re thrilled to participate in UpCounsel’s $10 million Series A financing led by Menlo Ventures, a firm with a strong focus on marketplace businesses. We’re looking forward to many more years of partnership with UpCounsel, and now Menlo, as UpCounsel continues to rethink the legal services market.

WHO: Bond Street was founded by David Haber, CEO, and Peyton Sherwood, CTO. We’d known David through his work at Spark Capital and were impressed by his nuanced understanding of the lending market and how to disrupt it from within. Peyton previously led engineering at Venmo and was a VP at D.E. Shaw, giving him equally unique insight into the financial services industry. When we heard about the small business customer-centric approach that Bond Street was taking and how well it matched our Bottom Up Economy focus, it didn’t take long for us to commit to partnering with David and Peyton.

WHAT: Bond Street provides small businesses with simple, transparent and fair access to capital that can be used to fuel the growth of those businesses. Loans can range from $50,000 to $500,000, with one to three year terms and interest rates starting at 6%. Applications are filed digitally, lending decisions are made quickly and capital is available in just a few days.

HOW: Bond Street has built a technology platform that streamlines the loan application and automatically collects and monitors the data needed to efficiently and accurately make an underwriting decision. But the company’s technology is second to the promise being made to small businesses - simple access to fast, affordable financing to grow their businesses.

WHY: At Homebrew, we believe that technology has become so inexpensive, flexible and accessible that groups and industries that haven’t historically benefited from it, can finally reap its rewards. Bond Street exemplifies this belief perfectly. David and Peyton are using technology to execute their vision of reinventing financial services for small businesses. We are honored to be working with such a stellar team in partnership with the company’s newest supporters, Spark Capital and Jefferies.

Q combines people, process and technology to deliver the operating system for physical office space. Via an iPad installed in your office, Q centralizes stellar office cleaning and other smart services to help office operations run smoothly. Hundreds of offices in New York, Chicago, and as of today, San Francisco, are using Q to clean and manage their offices efficiently and cost effectively.

We couldn’t be more excited about the business and the company that Dan, Saman and the Q team are building. And we’re happy to finally be both investors and customers with Q’s launch in San Francisco! Join us and have your office Managed by Q by signing up here.

We are firm believers that people choose companies; companies don’t choose people. Helping the founders we support understand the issues above is critical to their team building. But we wanted to be able to extend our support to anyone we know, helping him or her find the right opportunity, whether within the Homebrew portfolio or outside of it. How could we best utilize Homebrew’s time, resources and relationships to create value for the entrepreneurs we know and work with in the context of Talent? We recently came to an answer - find someone best-in-class to lead those efforts. And after a long and thorough search, we finally have. It’s with extreme pleasure that we announce the addition of Beth Scheer, Head of Talent, to the Homebrew team.

Beth joins us after a dozen years and hugely successful tenures at Salesforce and Google. She has led and done recruiting for every function within those companies, including Engineering, Sales and Leadership. And she has done so with the recognition that the candidate is as much her customer as is her employer. It’s that attitude, along with her world-class aptitude, that convinced us that Beth is the absolute perfect fit for Homebrew. At Homebrew, Beth will be working closely with our companies to help them establish their talent processes and to fill key positions. She’ll also be working with us to build critical infrastructure for managing our relationships and knowledge so that we can be helpful to anyone who seeks our counsel. Finally, she’ll be working to make information and best practices about the talent process more broadly available to all entrepreneurs inside and outside of the Homebrew family of companies.

We couldn’t be more excited to have Beth join our team. Beth is passionate about recruiting, mentoring, and sharing best practices. Don’t be shy about contacting her at beth@homebrew.co. Beth, welcome to Homebrew!

WHO: We’ve known Honor CEO Seth Sternberg for a quite while, beginning when his prior startup, Meebo, was a fast growing company. Despite a successful acquisition by Google, Seth and team never lost their entrepreneurial fire. So when he got part of the Meebo team back together and combined them with some great talent from Google, we knew we wanted to back Honor.

WHAT: 90% of seniors want to ‘age in place’ - remain in their homes with familiar surroundings. To do this successfully at scale is going to require more technology and a different incentive structure than what incumbents have been employing.

HOW: As Honor details in its blog post, the company is building technology that helps caregivers, seniors and their families all communicate in a meaningful manner. Honor is focused on context, coordination, trust and simplicity. Honor’s dedication to getting a solution out in the field quickly is exemplified by its pilot in California’s Contra Costa County beginning this April.

WHY: At Homebrew we focus on founders solving large, urgent and valuable problems who also have the attitude and aptitude to solve the problem fully. Seth has told us that this is the company he wants to build and run for the rest of his life. Honor sits at the intersection of value and merit - it’s going to be a huge business and one we’re all proud to be associated with.

As an experienced founder with a healthy nine digit exit already notched, Seth had the opportunity to jump straight to an A round. When the first funding is of this size, our model only works if we’re still able to invest enough where a successful outcome can be meaningful for our fund. Seth was welcoming and we’re so very excited to join him, Andreessen Horowitz and a stellar group of angel investors in partnering with Honor.

WHO: When the CEO of Diapers.com, one of the most successful ecommerce businesses of the past decade calls and says that you have to meet two of the stars on his management team, you clear your calendar. And Galyn Bernard and Christina Carbonell didn’t disappoint. As executives at Quidsi, the parent company of Diapers.com, Galyn and Christina built massive brands that delighted parents. But they’re also modern moms just trying to get things done. With Primary, they’re building a brand that they, and other parents, can love ─ with beautiful products, a clear focus on authenticity, a simple buying experience and extraordinary value. And they’re doing it in a way that rethinks the entire kids clothing experience from scratch.

WHAT: Beautiful, simple, everyday clothing that lets kids shine. That’s the core of Primary. But Primary goes beyond elevated basics at an extraordinary value by also providing a simple buying experience that is designed with the lives of busy parents in mind. Oh yeah, and every item is less than $25.

HOW: Ecommerce has moved far past mall store brands with inventory listed online. Brands are being built today that are delivering huge value to consumers by stripping out traditional marketing and distribution costs, by designing and manufacturing their own products and by providing consumers with the excellent value, great service, and brand integrity they want and need. But it’s something that hasn’t been done in kids’ apparel, until now. Primary is building the children’s clothing brand that all parents will love.

WHY: Galyn and Christina are both parents and New York-based entrepreneurs. They very personally saw the need for a kids brand with a strong, authentic relationship with parents. And they had the desire to build a company together that’s a reflection of what they want in a brand that parents like them could love. Gorgeous, high quality basics at affordable prices available via a clear, simple commerce experience with fast, reliable shipping. Seemingly simple, but incredibly powerful.

If you’re a parent, Primary is going to be your new best friend. Visit Primary and use Insider Code “SATYA” or “HUNTER” for free shipping, with no minimums, for an entire year.

High five! Now back to work. That was the sequence of events at HQ when we closed Homebrew Fund II earlier today.

Two years ago we spent 100 days raising Homebrew I, a $35 million seed fund. Since that time, we’ve partnered with 17 teams solving large, urgent and valuable problems in support of the Bottom Up Economy. Teams with both the attitude and aptitude to go the distance. Teams with long roadmaps in their heads but a near-term focus on doing one thing really well. With Homebrew II, a $50 million seed fund, we’ll continue to work with teams like these to help them build the companies they envision.

When we kicked off fundraising for Homebrew II, we had certain beliefs about how we wanted to approach the development of Homebrew and how that feeds into the fundraising process:

• Fundraising is about choosing the right long-term partners: Our primary question about any potential LP was always “would they be a great partner for us, and us for them?” For Fund II we have a wonderful base of institutional LPs representing university endowments, charitable foundations and funds of funds. We know that at the end of the day we’ll be evaluated on the returns we deliver to them. But to a person, we feel that they’re in our corner, supporting us and our strategy and rooting for us to succeed.

• Strategy first, capital second: We want to invest in hyper-growth companies, not be a hyper-growth fund. Homebrew is committed to being the partner of choice for early stage founders. We want to focus 100% of our attention on the first few years of company building. In this funding environment, for both companies and VCs, there’s a temptation to maximize how much capital you raise. We raised less than we could have, but as much as we wanted, given our strategy and approach. Homebrew II is a $50 million fund. It’s slightly larger than our first fund because we intend to deploy entry capital over a 30-36 month period, whereas we invested the initial fund in 24 months. Our sweet spot is, and will remain, playing a leadership role in first institutional financing rounds. That usually looks like a $500k-$1m check as part of a $1m-$3m fundraising. In addition to raising Homebrew II, we’ve also raised a $35 million fund called Moonshine. Moonshine allows us to extend our support, where appropriate, for Homebrew fund investments in future financings, primarily B rounds and beyond.

• Having money to invest doesn’t make us relevant: Talented entrepreneurs have more options than ever for funding. We never assume that just having money to invest makes us relevant or valuable to the founders we seek to back. Capital is necessary, but it’s insufficient. The ways in which we engage the teams who have chosen to partner with us, in combination with our own product roadmap, are what help us be relevant. With Fund II, we’ll continue to focus on Credibility in the marketplace, Community building amongst our partner companies and Counsel post investment.

• Best VCs are true partnerships, not just collections of partners: We don’t think of Homebrew as Satya’s investments + Hunter’s investments. It’s with 100% unanimity that we make investments, work with companies and stand behind every company we invest in. Our partnership translates directly to how we’ve structured our firm - equal economics, shared vision and definition of success, no bullshit. We’d proudly sign our names to any word written or action taken by each other and the fund.

• We have a lot of work to do: Our first two years have gone very well, but it’s laughably premature to clink any glasses. Seed stage venture capital investing is a long road - we do it because you love working with founders at this early stage. Our goal is to not just be successful (as measured by financial returns) but also impactful (as measured by our broader contributions to the community, not just where we have interests). Our fund name is a nod back to the Homebrew Computer Club of the 1970s. A time when the beginnings of the PC revolution found momentum in a group of enthusiasts and hobbyists. Today, with so much focus on innovation and disruption, we tend to only look ahead. But looking back to acknowledge and appreciate that we all stand on the shoulders of giants is just as important in the technology industry. We don’t want to walk away from Homebrew just having made money. We hope to build something lasting that we and our founders can all say we were proud to have been an important part of.

A new VC fund is kind of like a startup, just one that writes checks instead of code. Raising a first fund is a like a seed round, often built on reputation and potential. Second funds are like A Rounds – momentum with some early data. By the B round, startups need to have proven product/market fit. Similarly, our next fund, several years down the road, will be driven by having backed great teams and delivered great returns - not vanity metrics, not retweets, not personal brands. We feel incredibly fortunate to be working with founders who want us to be part of their success, and with LPs who believe we’re able stewards of their capital. Homebrew II is closed. Now, back to work.

That’s where eero comes in. An integrated hardware and software solution designed to blanket your home in wonderful ubiquitous connectivity. And when something isn’t working, making it simple to diagnose and fix from your smartphone, not from your hands and knees looking for the router. If that wasn’t enough to make you click PREORDER, they’re building a ton of cool enhancements to today’s home network. Want to create a simple username and password for one time access to your wifi so that the babysitter can get online? Done. Want to serve as remote Sys Admin for your parents? No problem. Just install eero at their house and monitor it from 1000 miles away.

We’re excited to play a supporting role in eero’s financing and are equally thrilled that they’ve announced their preorder today. Get yours here and enjoy constant connectivity with ease.

What will happen to our two young pairs? Will they ever connect? That answer might have been “no” until Pillow came along, bringing a new layer of hospitality and property management to the short-term rental industry.

WHO: Sean Conway and Justin Miller are no strangers to scaling local marketplaces. They grew their previous startup, Notehall, to 54 campuses before being acquired by Chegg. While recharging their entrepreneurial energies with some international travel, the pair encountered a problem with their own apartments and identified an opportunity they knew they wanted to address: making short-term property rental painless for owners and comfortable for guests. And so was born Pillow.

WHAT: Pillow is a modern, short-term property hospitality company. It offers property owners guaranteed income while managing their listing and handling all the cleaning, amenities and basic on-the-ground services. For guests, Pillow ensures an experience that combines the benefits of staying at a home full of personality with a standard of quality that lets them rest easy.

HOW: Pillow now operates in San Francisco and Los Angeles, with plans to move into other cities this year. In these core markets, Pillow has brought many homes that were previously not being rented on to the short-term rental market by delivering simple software and an income guarantee for owners. These properties give platforms like Airbnb, VRBO and Homeaway exciting new listings for their customers. And when someone rents a Pillow-serviced property, they’re sure to have a clean, well-managed residence for their stay.

WHY: One theme core to Homebrew is our belief that the Bottom Up Economy creates new types of marketplaces, revenue streams and efficiencies. Pillow lives across all three - leveraging the growth of short-term rental marketplaces to create additional revenue streams for property owners and five star hospitality for guests.

We’re excited to have led Pillow’s seed round and to back the team creating the future of hospitality. If you’re a homeowner who wants to be powered by Pillow, check their site out here.

What Ifs will be an dynamic list of ideas, questions and technologies that we are curious about and specifically want to connect with entrepreneurs to discuss and learn. We’ll edit, add and remove items as appropriate and link to our longer blog posts when it makes sense.

If you’re a founder in one of these areas or someone with domain expertise, we hope you’ll reach out. Do we hope to find new investments this way? Sure, but we’re also happy to just learn and hopefully help.

Even is building a loan product to help provide income stability to the American hourly worker. At Homebrew we have a voracious appetite for smart teams using technology to deconstruct and evolve trillions of dollars of financial services value. And the transformation to a Bottom Up Economy will require new products for the expanding base of hourly workers. That’s why we are thrilled to play a supporting role in Even’s initial funding. If their work sounds exciting to you as well (and you want to be part of Oakland’s tech heartbeat), Even is hiring.

Today, the company announces its Series A financing, led by RRE Ventures. We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with Carly, Danielle and the entire Skimm team. We encourage you to sign up, stay informed and join the team! After all, would Oprah, Chelsea and SJP steer you wrong?!?