We are Jeroen Bertrams, Dan Hightower & Sundeep Ahuja and we’re Partners @ the DVC Rolling Fund (formerly the Duro Ventures Rolling Fund).
Our thesis
We believe in companies that build highly scalable software products based on truly proprietary technology.
We feel that companies that focus on APIs, AI and Open Source will be the winners of tomorrow. We look for passionate founders that are solving a problem for which they have a strong personal solution-need. And we need to see strong signalling from other value-add investors in the round, ones that can keep supporting them
Investment criteria
Each quarter, we invest in 5 to 10 companies that fit our thesis. We try to focus on quality instead of quantity. Companies in which we invest preferably fit all our criteria:
- Proprietary software products
- Truly passionate founders
- In-revenue for at least six months
- Showing clear product-market fit
- Proven business models
- With promising initial KPIs
- 10x+ min upside potential
- Alongside top tier VCs and/or angels
- Rounds that are mostly done
- With sufficient runway for the company
How we get the best deals
In order to find these companies, we spend a lot of time on getting high quality dealflow. We source from:
- Portfolio founders. As a team, we’ve worked with 400+ founders and they bring us a wealth of high quality deals.
- Deep access to YC deals. Our team is one of the most active YC-investors since 2015 with more than 100 SPVs and fund investments into YC companies with strong Bookface (YC’s internal tool) ratings
- VC & LP referrals. We’ve built relationships with VCs, and with LPs like you, who value us on the cap table and loop us in.
Investments
This has helped us to invest in amazing companies, such as Turing, Substack, Recall.ai, Instabase, Settle, Albedo Space, Scenario, Osana Salud, Clicoh, Nuvocargo, Bland.ai, Depot, Rescale, Collective, Ashby, Taiv, WeWeb, ForeThought, Republic, AngelList and Nanonets. We’ve also invested in 100+ YC companies, enjoying one of the very best reputations among YC founders.
Fund management
The Fund is managed by Jeroen, Dan & Sundeep. We’re all former founders which helps us win allocations and truly provide value-add.
- Jeroen founded and coded four startups, including a financial marketplace for loans, mortgages and insurances, selling it to a top 5 bank. He started angel investing in 2012 and has written 11 books about investing and start-ups. Three of his startups got Techcrunched.
- Dan founded and exited Clariture Health (analytics for enterprise health systems). He joined the US Army Special Forces (Green Beret) and went on to co-found CompScience . He now works as Product Lead, AngelList for Startups and has a wealth of dealflow.
- Sundeep (CS @ Stanford) worked in finance @ JPMorgan, product @ eBay & MySpace, and helped launch Kiva.org. Went on to co-found and exit three more companies. He was one of the first ever users of the AngelList platform with 150+ SPVs done.
We offer reduced carry for larger fund investments. Reach out if you’d like to know more.
Jeroen, Dan & Sundeep
