Essence VC Fund III
I’m beyond excited to announce that Essence VC has raised fund III (27m) with an awesome set of supporters, ranging from institutions (Cendana Capital as an anchor LP, Vintage Partners, Sapphire Venture, Level Ventures and Crossover VC), VC funds (NEA, Bessemer Venture Partners, Foundation Capital, Bain Capital, etc) and awesome CTOs / CEOs / VPs / Principal individuals across various infrastructure, engineering and data roles.
Wait.. Already fund 3?
Besides the pandemic letting all of us completely forgetting what has happened the last few years, I want to take this opportunity to also explain why I started Essence VC in the first place.
While I was fund raising for my first startup back in 2016, my cofounders and I drove up and down Sand Hill Road and totally enamored by all the legendary VC funds that exists and all the amazing value-add everyone claims they bring to the table.
What I realize after exiting my startup in 2018 and went through the ups and downs being a venture-backed founder, is that the type of people that really brought meaningful difference in my own journey, are people that:
1) understands the space that I operate deeply, and therefore provides meaningful value on a consistent basis
2) brings founder empathy and truthfulness to the conversations, aiming to build a meaningful connection
And upon reflection, it really dawned on me that the amount of folks on my cap table can do that is actually quite small.
Therefore, after exiting my startup, when I was presented the opportunities to angel invest into friend’s companies, I feel a special conviction and connection to the founders I backed, as often they are just like me back I was just started off fund raising.
Through the experience of angel investing, it also gave me a new purpose to pursue, which is to be the most impactful investor to infrastructure founders like myself, not just providing very specific feedback around building a infrastructure company, but also able to help being the most empathetic person during the tough times.
Looking back, I felt extremely lucky that I was able to operate in some of the greatest infra communities (Apache, CNCF) and companies (Cloud Foundry, Mesosphere, Cosmos, Lightning.ai), while also experienced the founder pains like having cofounder split-ups, major customers churning, running out of runway, etc.
And after hearing founders that I angel invested in, telling me that I have been one of the most valuable investors in every one of them, I decide to take a chance and see if I have what it takes to be a VC.
After raising fund 1 in 2019 and fund 2 in 2021, I have learned so much working with so many amazing investors in this ecosystem, and many of them become friends and LPs as well.
Through this journey, I’m very fortunate to back amazing founders and companies like Motherduck, Modal, Jasper.ai, Torq, Warp.dev and others.
Excited to continue to work along side with new set of infrastructure founders in this new fund, and continue to build a specific infrastructure fund that stands out to ecosystem.
