I am thrilled to announce Category Ventures, an early stage venture firm conceived to provide unparalleled strategic and technical support to founders building enterprise software startups. I am also excited to announce Category Fund I, a $160 million pre-seed and seed fund dedicated to investing in the most ambitious founders. Our mission is to support and partner with founders building category defining companies in infrastructure, developer tools, applications, and artificial intelligence.

Category was created with the belief that enterprise founders can be better served by their venture investors. We aspire to build a firm that has strong technical expertise, extensive operating and go-to-market experience, and deep founder empathy. My vision for Category is to be an invaluable partner to founders, capable of providing architectural and technical direction, go-to-market and community building support, as well as market and strategic guidance. We want founders to view Category as their extended team. Although building at the earliest stages is a daunting endeavor, our expertise and support will provide companies in the Category portfolio competitive advantages in their respective markets.

The pre-seed and seed market is highly competitive, noisy, and fragmented, taking founders on a time-consuming and burdensome journey navigating the ecosystem. Early stage venture funds often lack the fund size to lead seed rounds while larger multi-stage firms are not well positioned or incentivized to support founders at the inception or pre-product market fit stages. Category was conceived to fill this gap and create a stronger firm for the early stage journey of founders with a focus on:

1. Enterprise software (infrastructure, developer tools, applications, and AI)

2. Deep technical expertise

3. Broad flexibility to lead pre-seed and seed rounds (investments of $1.5 - $5 million)

Over the past 20 years, I spent half of my professional career as an operator and the other half as a VC at two great firms. I was privileged to work in leadership roles at amazing companies and learn from incredible founders (Salesforce, Box, HP, and Lifelock). My investing career started at Salesforce where I had the opportunity to invest in many truly exceptional companies (Hubspot, Mulesoft, Box, Anaplan, Zapier, Gusto, among many others). And as a VC and angel investor, I had the privilege to back and support many extraordinary founders (Gitlab, Remote, Rive, Zeromatter, Replicated, Sendbird, among others).

During my career as an investor, I have seen the spectrum of the human spirit — greatness, failure, hardship, happiness, heartbreak, and tears of joy. The founder journey is lonely, hard, and unpredictable. I would like Category to be the best partner to founders, a firm built on a strong foundation of core values — authenticity, kindness, teamwork, and intensity. I am eager to build the Category team and partner with amazing founders creating their own category.

I cannot wait to get started! I would like to thank all of my friends who believed in me and encouraged me to take this leap, the LPs that put their trust and confidence in me, the amazing founders that supported me over the years, and my family who understood that launching Category would bring me gratification and joy.

Read more about my journey and the launch of Category Ventures here.