Our Mission: to Build the Most Aligned Fund for Founders at the Seed Stage.

Despite having backed 20+ billion-dollar startups, we intentionally keep our fund sizes below $100M to stay aligned with our founders. Massive funds need massive exits to move the needle, which incentivizes a "billions or bust" mentality—big VCs insist on $1B+ exits, even if it means many incredible startups burn out trying.

Our hope is that every startup we back will become a public company, but our model doesn’t require it. As seed investors, we dilute alongside our founders over time, so we have the same incentives to minimize dilution while maximizing value. We sit on the same side of the table round after round, and we can be enthusiastic supporters of exits of all sizes.

You're not a lottery ticket. We don't invest to buy ourselves optionality for a later round. We invest in your company because we think you're going to build something important.

We know how hard it is to operate. To hire and fire people, to pivot products, to make huge decisions with limited information and even fewer resources—to feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. We’ve all lived through the emotional roller coaster of leading businesses from day one, so we have huge respect and empathy for our founding teams.

We love building stuff and moving quickly. We don’t sit in an ivory tower analyzing spreadsheets. As seed investors, we're conviction-driven and avoid protracted decision-making and unnecessary diligence.

At the seed stage, startup valuations skyrocket around hot themes, but “hype value” is different from real value. Without the right foundation underneath, raising millions by spinning the right narrative at the right time is like taking steroids—you’ll get very strong very quickly, and it’ll fade just as fast. We prefer companies that build muscle the hard way.

The best startups are built in service of solving a specific problem for a specific customer, ideally by a founder with impeccable founder/market fit. Hot platforms and novel technologies come and go, but the market for intrinsic value is evergreen.

If you can’t turn $1 into $10, it’s unlikely that you can make $1M become $10M. Capital is fuel for ideas that work; every dollar spent unwisely is a dollar of dilution. Burn responsibly.

Exit value is a vanity metric. It’s possible for a founder to make more selling a company for $100M than for $1B. Big VCs need billion-dollar exits for their model to work, but preserving more ownership and earning a “humble” hundred-million-dollar sale might be better for you.

Founders spot what’s next better than we do. VC “themes” rarely predict the next big thing.

We’ve backed everything from AI to zoological DNA testing, cat food to CRMs, because we back bold ideas and the founders who bring them to life.

Starting a company is tough. And lonely.

We've been there.

That's why we go to such great lengths to make sure founders and CEOs in our portfolio can interact and learn from each other, both online and offline. We chose the name “Collective” purposefully and work very hard to maintain a community of hundreds of startups and thousands of exceptional founders to accelerate success. Our hope is to bring anything you need a keystroke away.