New York 19:27:39

San Francisco 16:27:39

Approach

A broader spectrum of ideas, people, and startups...

For too long, venture capital sought a narrow demographic, focusing on founders with similar life experiences, and limiting the set of problems the industry addressed.

INITIALIZED SET THE STANDARD IN SEED.

We built a different kind of team, uniquely equipped to help founders and their ideas become great.

How We Help

We teach founders how to take their businesses from 0 to 1, and beyond. Our team is specifically designed to guide you and help develop your skills in every facet of your business, but most crucially what you need at seed: building your company and team, refining your story, and reaching product market fit.

1
We invest early

We're hyper-focused on seed, investing before your success strikes other investors as inevitable. We host collaborative conversations, test for obsession and intellectual honesty, and make it clear we mirror their mentality.

2
We help you reach product-market fit

We aim to be an early ally and peer and never be overly prescriptive. We promote "learning by doing" and provide you with tools and guidance to grow with your business. We advise on everything from product design and technical decisions to growth tactics and recruiting.

3
We prepare you for fundraising

We’ve helped hundreds of companies raise their next round and built a team and processes to guide you through your Series A fundraise. We'll outline the metrics necessary to raise your next round, help design your operating model and deck, practice your pitch, and introduce you to the best growth-stage investors.

Resources We Provide

Approach Resources
Office hours

We meet regularly with our portfolio companies to discuss recruiting and culture, roadmapping, prioritization, product, design, brand, engineering, marketing, PR, growth, and sales.

Community

We welcome founders to the Honeybadger Den, a proprietary portal and community for our portfolio to interact with one another and the Initialized team. We also connect founders through a myriad of programs and events.

Content & PR

We provide resources and content on the topics most relevant to our founders, publishing to our blog, YouTube channel, and the Honeybadger Den. Our PR and content leads work directly with founders to support company launches, product announcements, and thought leadership.

Events

We host foundational basecamps, virtual workshops, founder and industry happy hours, focused dinners, and other community events throughout the year, giving founders the opportunity to interact with one another, the Initialized team, industry experts, and later stage VCs.

Recruiting

We don't just send you candidates, we teach you how to recruit. With experts in HR, talent, and culture, we help you build your org chart, define your culture, and find the best candidates to scale your business. Our operational expertise in product, engineering, and design helps you tailor your search to find and recruit the best available talent. Join our Talent Den here.

Go to Market

We have experts across the team who will help you build each piece of your go to market strategy: identifying target customers, messaging and positioning, web design, product and sales strategy, and more.

Questions We Ask

Product
  • Is this 10x better, faster, and/or cheaper?
  • Is there a demo or early version?
  • Is this well-built?
  • What's it solving?
Market
  • Is this market large enough?
  • Who's it for?
  • What’s the business model?
  • What does this compete with?
Team
  • Are these founders builders?
  • Are they experts in the space?
  • Would we want to work for them?
  • Would we want to work with them for 10+ years?

The Details

Approach Details
Fresh Ideas from great people

If you have an idea that is not reflected in our current portfolio, or don’t have a background in the field of your startup idea, don’t be dissuaded from pitching us.

The best founders fit themselves into a market. Kyle Vogt hadn’t worked in autonomous vehicles for a decade when he created Cruise. Brian Armstrong worked in fraud prevention at Airbnb before starting Coinbase.

We imagine the best possible future version of any startup we’re evaluating.

Nuts & Bolts

We invest before product market fit. Therefore, it’s never too early to start a conversation. Email is the best way to reach us.

After a meeting between the founder(s) and partners, we discuss and vote as a team. We move through our process quickly as possible. Whenever we pass on an investment, we always explain why.