Yes, we know there’s something a little mysterious — or even frustrating — about the Eniac website: You can learn about our team and our investments, but you won’t see a list of who led which deal, or all the boards each partner sits on.
This isn’t an oversight, and we’re not doing it to be secretive. Instead, it’s a key piece of the Eniac strategy, one that our partners put in place when the firm was founded in 2010.
MoreWe’re thrilled to share that our portfolio company Rarify just raised a $10 million Series A, at a $100 million valuation, led by Pantera Capital. It’s only been a few months since we invested in the startup’s $2 million seed round, but we already feels like we made a smart bet.
With its Commerce API, Rarify makes it easy for any company to introduce NFTs to their platforms. It also offers API access to historical data on NFT assets across multiple blockchains, as well an NFT Embeds product to simplify NFT discovery and check-out.
MoreWelcome back to Ask a Seed VC, Eniac’s advice column on startup fundraising. Today’s question comes from a founder who we’re leaving anonymous:
We don’t have money anymore in our company, we are doing bridge funding and preparing for a pre-seed. We are creating a prototype and a community of 370 creators. Many VCs I have found are seed. Is it worth it to apply anyways or better concentrate only on angels?
MoreOur portfolio company Wallaroo just announced that it has raised $25 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Microsoft’s venture fund M12, and Eniac was thrilled to participate.
CEO Vid Jain founded Wallaroo in 2017, after nine years at Merrill Lynch, followed by a startup where he tried to build analytics applications for large banks — in both roles, he saw many of the challenges faced by teams deploying machine learning models to improve business outcomes.
More#PitchandRun has come a long way in the last few years — something I’ve been reflecting on after Ryan Deffenbaugh joined us for a recent run and wrote about it in Crain’s New York.
Why put pitching and running together? We started the group in 2019 as a way for founders and investors in New York’s tech community to speak freely, get to know each other, get feedback, and PITCH (!) outside of a four-walled conference room, all while getting exercise. We were partially inspired by Hot Ones on YouTube — we’re not quite as extreme, but we also believe that when a little sweat hits the brow and heart rates increase, so does the conversation.
MoreWe’re excited to share that Rifki Zable has joined Eniac Ventures as our new Vice President of Finance!
Eniac has been doing a lot of hiring over the past year, and bringing Rifki on-board is a crucial piece of becoming a bigger and better (but still scrappy!) firm. She brings two decades of finance experience to the role, including seven years as the VP Finance/CFO of RRE Ventures, followed by a stint as Director of Finance at Level Equity.
MoreWe’re excited to announce that Eniac Ventures has backed Wrangle. We led the startup’s recent $2 million pre-seed round alongside our friends at Bloomberg Beta, with funding also coming from Liquid 2 Ventures, Hustle Fund, and more than 20 angels.
This isn’t our first investment in “the future of work” — we’ve backed startups like FortressIQ (a company focused on robotic process automation, or RPA) and Eden Workplace (a marketplace for SaaS products helping to smooth the transition to hybrid labor).
MoreWe’re opening our (virtual) doors to any founder who wants to pitch Eniac Ventures.
Starting today, if you’re hoping to raise funding from Eniac, you can just fill out this online form, which asks for basic information like founder background, the problem you’re solving, and the amount you’re looking to raise. Assuming you’ve got your pitch deck ready, the submission process should only take about five minutes.
MoreToday, we are excited to announce our investment in Phytoform, with participation from our friends at Pale Blue Dot and Wireframe Ventures.
At Eniac, we are big believers in the future of sustainable agriculture withexisting bets that include Vence (regenerative agriculture for cattle) and Iron Ox (AI autonomous farming). As the climate crisis looms, we’ve looked closely at how computational genomics can be leveraged to reduce food waste and bring higher quality diverse produce to market. Our investment in Phytoform sits at the intersection of our work in sustainability and agriculture, along with our long-time interest in genomics. Phytoform is Eniac’s first bet in computational biology, and we look forward to more investments in the category.
MoreWe’ve had a busy year at Eniac Ventures.
Shortly after 2021 began, we announced Eniac V, our $125 million fifth fund. At the time, we said we would continue leading or co-leading seed deals of all sizes, writing checks in SaaS, developer, consumer, and deeptech startups. We also said we would be doubling our team size and doubling down on New York, while remaining open to great founders everywhere.
Since then, we’ve been busy turning those plans into a reality. As a firm, we remain balanced between thesis-driven and opportunistic investments — we have our own convictions about where to find the next big opportunity, but more than anything, with we’re looking for founders with compelling backgrounds and ideas.
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