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Shield AI is on a quest to save lives by keeping American first responders out of danger and allowing information to be gathered remotely by autonomous pilots. When we first led their seed round, this mission wasn’t well understood by the investment community. Selling into government, especially the Department of Defense and military, at best wasn’t appreciated and at worst was avoided. The drone/UAV market was thought of narrowly as either package delivery or prosumer hobbyist. And the idea that a company doing all these things could be based out of San Diego was met with “let us know when you move to Silicon Valley.”

We were fortunate to have different reactions to Shield’s mission and vision. And since that time have participated in every funding round the company has raised, including meaningfully in this $90 million Series E.

The only thing more impressive than what they’ve done since we first met the team is what they have on their roadmap. If that notion intrigues you, they’re hiring.

Let the data flow! Securely, cleanly, and with stability of course. Finch exists to marry these two statements together by offering the ability to access customers’ census, payroll, and benefits data across 140+ HRIS and payroll systems. It just makes sense.

They’ve raised a new $15 million Series A in order to grow, grow, grow. In their own words, “we’ve been excited about building a future in which the employment sector is both connected and programmable.”

If you’re a developer just head over to Finch right now and try it out. And if the problems they’re solving sound interesting to you, well, of course they’re hiring too.

The pandemic and the rise of remote work have made benefits mission critical to both employees and employers. It’s more clear than ever that modern, frictionless benefits are key to attracting, retaining and maintaining the health of talent in a tight labor market. Noyo has been working to build the infrastructure needed to remove friction from the delivery of employee benefits. It just announced its $45 million Series B financing, which included participation from industry leaders, Workday Ventures and Gusto. With the fresh capital, Noyo will continue to lead the benefits industry transition to faster and less error prone health benefits delivery. We’re thrilled to invest in the company yet again and to support a team that is growing in San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham and elsewhere. Visit their openings here to join them on their mission to eliminate the friction and expense of benefits.

Branch.gg founder Dayton Mills is online native. What we mean by that is from the very beginning of our relationship it was clear how important online spaces and relationships are to his life. So it makes perfect sense that he’s building a fun and social gaming space rooted in web3 principles and technology.

And now he has even more support to do so, having recently announced a $12.5 million seed round. With this funding they’ll be growing their team, so if interested, maybe you should join them.

When Graphite launched its code review tool last fall the waitlist signups exceeded internal goals by 500%. Well, market demand attracts investor demand and we’re happy to share news of Graphite’s $20 million Series A round, in which we eagerly continued our participation.

In their own words:

Since Git was first released in 2007, code review, source control, and developer tooling have come a long way. The technologies, workflows, and tools pioneered by the largest tech-forward companies provide a glimpse of what code review can be: an efficient, engaging platform that supports engineers at every step of the development cycle—from the moment a task is assigned until the pull request has been merged to the trunk branch. We believe that by building a modern code review experience for fast-moving eng teams, we can help them ship faster and create amazing products.

If you’re obsessed with high quality software and building tools that engineers love, Graphite is hiring.

And if you’re not on the waitlist yet to try out Graphite for yourself, sign up now!

Employment incentives. Growth rebates. Tax credits. Our government tries to make billions of dollars available to America’s manufacturing businesses, but much goes unclaimed and misunderstood. Meaning lost capital to reinvest, growth and hire.

Fortunately a startup can solve this problem! Subcity.

WHO: Alex, Gil, and Chris united around a common goal: to help American businesses take full advantage of the government incentives put in place to help them grow. We met Subcity’s CEO Alex via mutual friends, some of whom had invested in his previous startup, Next Big Sound, which had exited to Pandora in 2015.

WHAT: We love capitalism! Unfortunately late stage capitalism has also become increasingly complex and regulated, often creating circumstances where businesses outside of the Fortune 500 struggle to understand the financial incentives put in place by federal, state and local governments to help them succeed. Subcity is facilitating access to tax incentives, government grants and other benefits that these businesses are owed. Starting with manufacturers.

HOW: Cofounder Gil’s previous business had been focused on executing Subcity’s mission on a local scale. He saw how powerful these incentives were for small businesses and was incredibly successful negotiating $150m+ in payments for his clients. But he also knew that this was a tiny fraction of the pool that companies across the country were eligible to receive. Clearly, software could more easily automate the matching process of companies to their prospective claims. And that’s where Chris’s experience from building scaled systems at little places like YouTube and Apple comes in.

WHY: A belief that American companies, with the capital and cash flow government intended to provide, can add jobs, grow new business lines and increase competitiveness, here and globally.

We led Subcity’s $3m seed round, and very much enjoy working with this mission-driven team. If the intersection of fintech + small business interests you, the company is hiring for remote positions across the US.

Often the job of enterprise software isn’t to replace human workers but instead to help them be their best selves. Loris does this for customer support agents and other frontline employees using realtime conversational AI assistance. Increased productivity, confidence and efficacy are the results. Impressive enough to earn them a $12m Series A.

If you want to work for a team that uses advanced technology to help humans, not replace them, Loris is hiring.

data.world anticipated a world awash in disparate, unstructured data - both within and across companies. But seeing the future problem is just part of a great startup -- you need to build the solution too! Today the company announced a $50 million Series C to continue doing just that - building the leading enterprise data catalog for customers to manage and understand the data sources within their companies.

data.world has been just as thoughtful in its company-building, setting itself up as a Public Benefit Corporation to make sure it can be a good steward of the trust customers put in the team and business. If this combination of mission and values interests you, they’re hiring.

Having worked at Google, we know the huge investment it takes to build ‘ground truth’ for mapping. Up to date, comprehensive, high quality geodata has all sorts of beneficial use cases. Today, it’s largely locked within the walls of a few companies with their own business models for metering access, but via the blockchain economy, there’s a new approach.

Hivemapper is using dashcams and its own crypto token to create a decentralized and cost-effective approach to the next generation of map building. Its progress and vision are impressive enough to raise an $18 million Series A round, which the company announced today. Homebrew is a longtime supporting investor of the Hivemapper team and if you want to join (the org chart), they’re hiring.

Route optimization for ocean shipping is an especially complex problem, involving a variety of dynamic factors including weather, ship size & weight, port economics and more. Even incremental improvements can save millions of dollars in fuel costs and reduce the associated carbon footprint of a fleet.

Nautilus Labs has been working tirelessly to bring the most modern and sophisticated route planning tools to the industry. And it recently announced a $34 million Series B on the back of industry demand for its product.

90% of the world’s goods pass through ocean freight at some point in their existence. If working in a global industry like this, using software to improve efficiency and fight climate change, excites you, Nautilus is hiring.

We’re fortunate to have known Hidden Door CEO and cofounder Hilary Mason for many years. And we generally believe when excellent people tell you they’re working on something new, you should follow them into the future. And so Homebrew is proudly a supporting investor in Hidden Door, a new gameplay engine and experience being built by Hilary, her cofounder Matt, and a stellar team.

They recently shared a bit more about what Hidden Door is working on via this Venture Beat article. If a generative social space that feels like Roblox meets RPGs, but with all the power of interactive storytelling, sounds cool to you, then you might want to join them.

Homebrew began almost a decade ago as the answer to a very specific question, “How can we spend the rest of our careers together, working closely with a small number of founders during the earliest stages of their startups’ development to help increase the probability they create a result they are proud of?” The years (and funds!) passed quickly, delivering the privilege of supporting amazing entrepreneurs, many of whom are well on their way to building this generation’s most compelling, most inspirational and most valuable companies. We get up every day excited to work on behalf of these teams and to try to make a difference for them.

But venture capital is a weird business when it comes to timescales. You’re simultaneously helping startups solve the challenges of that day, that week, that quarter, while also being asked to make decisions about your own investment strategy that will play out over a fund’s lifecycle of 10+ years! When we sat down together in 2021 to plan for Homebrew’s future, the most obvious choice was raising a larger fund with even more capital to invest since that’s the way the industry has moved. But we never started Homebrew to be capital accumulators and have never optimized for assets under management as a business model.

The part of Homebrew we’ve always been clearest about is our operating model: we’re steadfast service providers for exceptional founders and companies. We anticipated that raising too large a fund would introduce conditions that actually work against our goals and values, as opposed to supporting them. If we took stewardship of hundreds of millions more of our LPs’ capital for Homebrew’s fourth fund, we believed we could be successful, but we weren’t 100% sure we could be happy. So we went back to the founding question we asked when starting Homebrew and tried to get clarity on what strategy would best enable us to do the purest, highest impact work for founders. All of that led us down a path that made us equally giddy and nervous. Which meant it was *definitely* the right thing to do.

Instead of staying the course and raising an even larger, traditional venture fund, we’re zigging while the market zags: Homebrew IV(ever) is an evergreen investment vehicle composed, for now, of only our own capital. Going forward, when we commit to a company it gets our sweat, our reputation, and literally, our dollars, behind it.

While the decision to try going evergreen with our own capital was internally-motivated, we believe it’s also well-suited to the evolution in startup financing models. When we launched Homebrew, there was a gap in the venture capital market: not many funds were combining a strict concentration on seed with a focused strategy (portfolio, experience, gravitas) as a lead in those rounds, digging in for the next several years in support of the founders. We packaged capital and counsel together in a manner that was mutually beneficial. And it worked out quite well.

Now fast-forward to 2022. We remain convinced that founders still value capital and counsel. But it’s also true that increasingly, capital and counsel are available, and often demanded, independently of each other. Counsel is sought independent of the size of the check written by an investor, and the best cap tables are diverse collections of operators, strategic capital and institutional dollars. Whereas historically capital was the cost of having the “right” or “authority” to provide counsel, in today’s startup world, it’s clear that the two are often unconnected. Heck, some firms have been built on the notion of a check and no other interaction with the checkwriter!

But that’s not the relationship with founders that Homebrew promises. From our earliest days, we’ve only supported companies where we can put sweat and reputation to work, alongside capital. Of course it’s always in service of, and at the behest of, the founders, and it’s part of what we think differentiates Homebrew.

Our legacy strategy focused almost exclusively on doing this in the context of being the seed ‘investor of record,’ which meant we were working with a small number of founders, beginning at a very specific stage, and then only if the way they wanted to fund their company fit our single product SKU. This was absolutely a sensible and successful strategy for Homebrew I-III, and might continue to be such if we wanted to build Homebrew into a larger institution that scales beyond the two of us. But we don’t.

Instead, now we’re effectively adding new product SKUs, beginning our relationships with founders, still as early as possible, but also more customizable to a company’s stage and needs in a mutually beneficial way. Not limited by check size, ownership targets, fundraising stage, or really anything else. Just a mutual desire to work together to increase the probability, velocity or scale of success of your startup. Whether it’s the first check you raise paired with our ability to then coalesce a seed round around our participation, or the last allocation in a later round that’s closing (or has already closed!), we just want to wire the money and get working on your behalf.

With this new evergreen vehicle in place, we embark on the next phase of Homebrew. So much of Homebrew’s first decade was about asking others to take a bet on us, especially the amazing collection of institutions who committed to us as Limited Partners. They’re all truly our partners, and we’re not only in business because of them, we’re better investors for having worked with them. We know that we’ll be collaborating with that group for many years to come and we thank all of them for their ongoing support into our second decade working closely with brilliant founders building world-changing companies.

Forever,

Hunter and Satya

While we appreciate all Homebrew founders in different but equal ways, sometimes a founder’s vision idea simply makes your jaw drop. When we met Living Carbon’s CEO Maddie Hall and heard her theory of decarbonization by making ‘better trees’ we had no choice but to come along for her journey.

The company recently released a first public look at its research and accomplishments. Alongside this science was the news of $15 million raised to date, which Homebrew is fortunate to have contributed to early on.

Living Carbon is continuing to grow trees - and its team - so if this mission interests you, the company is hiring.

Drivably recently announced its acquisition by public software company ACV, as car dealers increasingly leverage software not just for ‘brochure-ware’ websites, but for every part of the sales process. At Homebrew, we believe that software is enabling and empowering the world, including ‘traditional’ industries, at an increasing velocity. Congratulations to the Drivably team for anticipating this opportunity and joining ACV.

The manufacturing industry didn’t “need” computers to get started but they’ve embraced technology quickly over the past decades. One of the most recent opportunities for improvement is using applied computer vision for quality control, traceability and efficiency. Overview, founded by ex-Tesla engineers, had built these systems for their previous employer and now is bringing it to everyone else. Factory owners are embracing the new capabilities enthusiastically and that’s why Overview recently raised a $10m Series A to help grow its team and expand its customer base.

It’s always exciting to see a team predict the future and then go build it. Oh, and they’re hiring.

One of the most rewarding aspects of running a venture firm is seeing the community of founders you’ve backed support one another along the way. Often the motivation is just paying it forward or paying it back - they all know how difficult company building can be and want to share information or lessons learned. But sometimes these relationships deepen to the point of collaboration.

Today one such collaboration made itself public with the announcement by Bowery Farming that it has acquired Traptic, a startup focused on robotics-assisted harvesting of fruit and produce. As fortunate seed investors in both of these teams we know how valuable bringing Traptic’s IP into Bowery’s platform will be to the future of food. Bowery, already the leading vertical farming company, has incredible growth ahead, and this marks its expansion from leafy greens to a broader set of fruits and vegetables. We can’t wait for the day where the majority of items in our crispers are Bowery-grown!

If helping to build the future of farming where technology helps grow organic, high quality, low climate impact food, Bowery is hiring.

At Homebrew we’ve stayed a very small group by design, believing at the earliest stages of a company, continuity of relationship between the investor and founders is essential to preserve trust and context. But sometimes growing the team isn’t just about adding another set of hands, but a different set of experiences, interests and capabilities. And that’s what we had the chance to do in early 2019 when Kate Stern joined Homebrew. We mutually anticipated it would be a three year role, after which Kate could decide if she liked investing or wasn’t ready to leave the world of operating (she joined us from 5+ years at Uber). During this period we, and the Homebrew founders, have benefited tremendously from Kate’s work. So it felt appropriate as she gets ready to leave the firm to celebrate her and share her reflections with us.

Homebrew: Looking back at our “Welcome Kate” blog post three years ago, what were you thinking at the time. What was the process of joining us like from your end?

Kate Stern: First of all, it’s hard to believe that was three whole years ago - time has really flown! Thinking back…

Normal first day nerves! I’d been at Uber for almost five years and it was so comfortable - any new role would have felt like a big change for me, but moving into the venture world felt particularly intimidating. VC is a relatively opaque industry, and it was hard to know what to expect. I’m so grateful to have gotten the chance to really apprentice alongside the two of you! In those first few weeks, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, so I just shadowed you two in everything to try to figure out what I was supposed to be doing.

Once I gained a little more confidence, I was blown away by the pace of learning. There’s so much context required to really understand portfolio companies, and there’s no real way to learn it without diving in head first. This is even harder when it comes to evaluating new companies and learning what great investments look like. In one day, you’ll have to develop a strong opinion about a dozen different industries. In this job, I really learned how to learn… and learn quickly.

The hardest thing though was honing my own point of view on good companies. At the seed stage, no matter how much you know about an industry or a founder, you’re still taking a real bet. Developing my own convictions independent of how hot a deal was or even how excited you two were about a company was challenging, but also the most rewarding part of the job. It didn’t happen overnight, but it’s fun to compare where I am now versus where I was three years ago.

On top of all this, I was settling into San Francisco. I’d moved out for Homebrew after nearly ten years in New York, and the east coast / west coast culture shock is real!

Homebrew: Venture capital is no longer as opaque as it was 10 years ago, but a lot of what gets shared is pro-VC content marketing more than the real day-to-day reality. Once you started actually doing the work, how did reality compare to #VCTwitter?

KS: So much of what is shared about venture, especially on Twitter, is an endless string of wins. Of course I knew that wasn’t the whole picture, but there were definitely some things I needed to adjust to.

The best parts of venture capital are pretty well advertised, and I can say now that they really do live up to the hype. When it comes down to it, much of my time at Homebrew has been spent talking to incredibly smart founders tackling really hard problems and building their lives’ work. That passion and energy is so fun to be around - I’m thankful to all the founders who let us come along for the ride. Most of the tech world only gets to know founders once they’ve made it; seeing them when they just have an idea and how they make it come to life is as inspiring as it gets.

On the flip side, though, one of the hardest and least talked about aspects of venture capital is how many disappointments there are. We all spend more time talking about our wins than our losses, but the reality of early stage investing is that many of our portfolio companies don’t become runaway successes. It’s difficult to see teams I’ve built close relationships with not get that massive outcome they’d hoped for - it’s definitely one of the worst parts of the job.

The other thing that can be a bit of a surprise is that venture capital can be pretty lonely, especially compared to working at a startup or company. As an operator, you’re always working with a team, and most of your success is a function of your contribution to that team. At Uber, I had projects where I worked alongside the same group day in, day out, for months or longer. It’s very different in venture. Of course we’re all on the same team, and we discuss companies and learn from each other, but it’s certainly more individual work than on the operating side. It’s just the nature of the job. I was super grateful that our dynamic at Homebrew was so collaborative and supportive, but it doesn’t always look like that. And I was so happy to get involved with organizations like All Raise that specifically aim to build community and make venture feel a little less lonely.

Homebrew: You had both finance (Goldman) and operating (Uber) experience prior to joining Homebrew. For someone earlier in their career path and trying to decide whether to jump into venture right now versus getting some additional experience prior, would you recommend one path over the other?

KS: When I was first thinking about going into venture, I used to ask this question all the time, hoping there was some ‘magic path’ that would make it easy to break into venture capital. Of course, the secret is that there’s no one perfect route into a job in venture. I know great investors from all kinds of backgrounds, from finance to operating or even something totally different.

For me, my time at Uber was crucial to building the network and skills I needed for venture. Since we invest at the earliest stage of a startup’s life, the product sense I learned on the operating side has proven much more useful than being able to build out a detailed financial model. Of course, if I was a growth-stage venture investor, the reverse might be true.

For folks early in their careers considering their next step, I’ll pass along the best career advice I have ever received: don’t overthink your ten year plan - just go where you think you’ll learn and have fun. Early in my career, I might have thought this advice was silly. But looking back, the work I’m most proud of (and the work that’s advanced my career the most) has happened when I followed my interests and optimized for learning, not a long-term plan. We spend a huge percentage of our lives at work; spend your time doing something you like, and you’ll end up in a place you’re happy with.

Homebrew: You’re still a VC until 5pm Friday the 11th, so let’s make sure we’re using this opportunity to promote a portfolio company. Pick one and tell us why it’s the next decamegacorn!!!!

KS: This is a tough one - it’s so hard to pick just one story, and even harder to pick just one company! Some of the most rewarding work I’ve done in these past three years has been the time spent learning from our founders. Their passion for whatever they’re building is contagious, and it’s so fun to see the world through their eyes.

One standout among many is how much I’ve enjoyed spending time with the Noyo team. This may surprise you, but before Noyo, I hadn’t thought too much about what needed to happen on the back end when I enrolled in health insurance. When I first joined Homebrew, Shannon and Dennis really took the time to ensure that we all understood the scope and urgency of the problem they were solving - the status quo for benefits enrollment not only is slow and wastes significant resources, but also leads to costly and complicated errors where people aren’t actually enrolled. Building a universal API for benefits is a true game changer, and there’s nothing like it on the market. Only in venture can you meet people who see this sort of problem, recognize the massive positive impact from solving it, and then go do it! They’re one of many such stories in our portfolio, and I’m so excited to see them grow into a huge business.

Homebrew: When you joined Homebrew you were upfront about wanting to use the experience to figure out whether venture was right for you at this point or whether the pull of operating - really building a company with a great team - was still strong for you. Now that the three years are done, tell the world what you decided! [drumroll sound effect]

KS: I’m heading back to building! I’ve loved my time on the investing side, but after a few years of working alongside founders in a more hands-off role, I’ve found myself wanting to get back in the weeds tackling tough problems alongside a team.

I’m excited to say that I’ll be joining Fuzzy as VP of Strategy and Operations to help Zubin, Eric, and the rest of the team build the go-to resource for pet parents. On a personal level, I’m excited to build the kind of product that I’ve always wanted as a dog parent (and if you know me, you know how much I love my dog!).

It’s also a business I’m really bullish on (now that I’ve been able to hone my investing POV!). Two trends I’ve been really interested in are the consumerization of health and wellness and the digitization of primary care. I think these trends apply to pet health too.

Fuzzy aims to be a go-to resource for pet parents that is engaging, accessible 24/7, and built on the advice of veterinarians. There are 183 million pets in the US and only 118,000 vets to serve them. Scaling quality care is good for pets, pet parents, and veterinarians. I think a huge business that capitalizes on these trends is inevitable, and I think Fuzzy is going to be that company.

Thanks for everything you brought to Homebrew, Kate!

You’ve surely heard the phrase ‘software is eating the world’ to describe the role of technology intertwining itself with every part of our lives. At Homebrew, we certainly believe this as well, although sometimes we’ll reframe it as ‘software enables the world’ (which is, yes, decidedly less catchy). And we love investing in startups that are enabling the enablers - that is, helping companies of all sizes to increase the quality and velocity of their software development. Crowdbotics is one such startup and it just recently announced itself and a $22 million Series A fundraise.

WHO: Anand Kulkarni started Crowdbotics in 2017 to build apps faster. Previously he founded Lead Genius to provide AI-accelerated prospecting for sales teams. Crowdbotics extends on his interest in combining software with human assistance.

WHAT: Crowdbotics dramatically lowers the barrier to app building for everyone from solo entrepreneurs to large corporations, even in heavily regulated industries like health care and government. They do this via a modularized framework where developers can use a React Native and Django library to generate Git-hosted code output that’s open to your customization. And if you don’t have developers available, Crowdbotics has a cloud labor force of app integrators to do the ‘last mile’ work for you.

HOW: Serious products need real code meaning that low-code solutions simply can’t create most of the software that people want to build. Their approach – letting teams build with real code, directly in Git, using a growing library of prebuilt parts and knowledge – enables creators to actually scale on the platform rather than outgrow it.

WHY: “Software enables the world” means that not just everyone becoming a customer of software companies but making it easier to create or customize your own software. Crowdbotics seeks to democratize the act of software development.

And they’re hiring in all roles (remote welcome)!

What happens when something that’s difficult to get right also becomes urgent? You look for expertise to assist. And the magic to a software-enabled world is the expertise can be delivered personalized, at scale and globally. Humu’s products help organizations build healthy and productive work habits and now that its business is hitting scale, the company is proud to announce a Series C fundraise of $60 million.

So with a mission that we all want to see come true, maybe it’s time for you to join them too, because they’re hiring

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As an investor, some of the most exciting first meetings are when a founding team opens your eyes to an opportunity hiding in plain sight and clearly expresses why they are the best team to address the opportunity. That was the feeling we had when we first met Jesse and Stephan, the founders of Lumi. Their insight was that packaging is the new storefront in an online commerce driven world, and that the existing packaging supply chain was too costly and inefficient to deals with the demands of modern commerce companies. And as we've said many times, it was evident even then that no one in the world loves boxes and tape more than Jesse and Stephan! It's why we're so pleased that Lumi is joining Narvar, a leader in the post-purchase experience. Together the companies will continue to make the entire post-purchase commerce experience one that delights customers. Congratulations to Jesse, Stephan and the Lumi team for continuing to pursue their original, massive vision.