Introducing Category Ventures

Today we’re announcing Category Ventures, an early stage venture firm conceived to provide unparalleled strategic and technical support to founders building enterprise software startups. Along with this announcement, we’re sharing news of Category Fund I, a $160 million investment vehicle focused on pre-seed and seed stage companies.

Our firm was built around three core principles: strong technical expertise, extensive operating and go-to-market experience, and deep founder empathy. We target founders building across infrastructure, developer tools, applications, and artificial intelligence.

The pre-seed and seed market is highly competitive, noisy, and fragmented. Traditional early-stage funds lack sufficient capital for seed rounds, while larger firms neglect pre-product-fit companies. Category was built to fill this gap—with the focus to deploy $1.5 to $5 million per investment.

My background spans twenty years across operations and investing, including roles at Salesforce, Box, HP, and Lifelock. I’ve had the privilege of backing companies like HubSpot, MuleSoft, GitLab, Gusto, Anaplan, Adaptive Insights, Zapier, and many others.

Building a company from scratch is one of the hardest things anyone can do. We’ve built Category around values we believe matter most in this journey: authenticity, kindness, teamwork, and intensity. We’re fired up to partner with the next generation of ambitious founders.