Welcome to SUM Ventures. Since our launch in September 2022, we've seen rapid growth, establishing partnerships with 50+ Limited and Strategic Partners including notable names like Douglas Elliman, Siemens, Distillery, UpTech, Grafted Growth, and Quantiva, as well as leaders from Pasadena Angels, Band of Angels, Tech Coast Angels, NuFund, and Park City Angels.
Since our launch, our focus on investing in trailblazing PropTech, FinTech, AI, and Impact startups has led us to allocate $10M to 28 select companies, contributing to a robust 41% Gross IRR on portfolio holdings (see schedule of investments).
At SUM Ventures, we've adopted a unique investment approach. Our journey with startups begins by investing $25-$100k into high-potential, pre-seed opportunities. Over time, we increase our investment to $500k seed investments, thus offering a steady support structure for these burgeoning enterprises. This approach allows us to foster the growth of promising startups from an early stage, often enabling us to secure favorable investment terms due to the value we add with our involvement.
Our achievements are driven by a unique mix of expansive networks, strategic locations, solid performance, and rich experience. Our team, even before SUM Ventures' inception, demonstrated a remarkable 4-year track record, with a 6x MOIC and a 233% IRR. In 2020 Startup Mavericks was recognized as the most Outstanding early-stage investor in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Venture Association. With deep expertise in AI, FinTech, and Real Estate, members of our team have collectively achieved exits totaling a remarkable valuation of over $18B.
Our proactive approach to working with angel groups, accelerators, universities, and partner funds allows us to scrutinize over 300 deals every month and facilitate co-investments and follow-on investments for our LPs. Our $10M seed fund, strategically designed for co-investment with larger funds, optimizes returns and diversifies risk. With team members based in key cities such as LA, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, and New York, we have the capacity to leverage a wide array of opportunities nationwide.
At SUM Ventures, we don't just invest in startups, we invest in game-changing ideas led by founders with grit and deep domain expertise. If you're ready to back a team focused on IRR over AUM, we are ready to welcome you to our team. Please delve deeper into our story through our website www.sum.vc, deck (pasword SUM), and linked videos, where our founders and partners share their insights and experiences working with SUM. You're welcome to join us at our monthly meetings to understand how we begin to screen opportunities and build relationships. We invite you to join us in writing the next chapter of innovation.
–Garrett Gilbertson, Founding Partner
At Sum Ventures, we're on a mission to invest in exceptional founders—trailblazers defined by their unwavering determination, profound domain expertise, and an intrinsic ability to inspire and lead. These visionaries are fueled by their desire to build a better future and passionately commit themselves to its realization. We support founders through our network early on and take pride in building strong, enduring relationships with them. Such connections yield priceless insights, laying the foundation for superior investment decisions. We keep a close watch on these leaders, sometimes for several months, gauging their KPIs and leadership dynamics before committing financially.
Our robust founder support infrastructure is bolstered by an extensive alliance of angel investors, with industry leaders from that community as our limited partners and advisors. Collaborations with universities like Pepperdine, USC, Caltech, and UCLA, along with corporate partners and investors such as Siemens, Douglas Elliman, Distillery, and Quantiva, enhance both our sourcing and due diligence capabilities. Founders prioritize contacting us, be the news uplifting or challenging, highlighting our steadfast support from their inception. Our core team boasts top-tier expertise in product development, growth strategy, and AI integration. We champion the importance of a robust AI blueprint, the urgency of rapid scalability, and the crafting of user-centric products. While we focus predominantly on trailblazers in Fintech, Proptech, Cleantech, and AI, a portion of our fund supports standout founders across diverse sectors, reflecting our unwavering confidence in their team, vision, and market potential.
Our comprehensive understanding of our founders and their endeavors enables us to seize investment opportunities ahead of inflection points. Investments typically start with a 50-100k pre-seed backing, culminating in $500k-$1M, our preferred seed funding threshold. While our approach is demanding, it's validated by our historical IRR consistently exceeding 200%. Instead of emphasizing AUM, we value IRR as our key performance metric. Aspiring to be globally recognized as the premier seed fund, we credit our unparalleled access to top-tier deals and insights to the unwavering support we provide founders.
If this message resonates with you, we invite you to join the SUM Ventures network. Attend our monthly pitch session, arriving with a spirit of supporting founders. And always remember: It's far easier to find reasons not to invest than to recognize and nurture the potential within a founder. At SUM Ventures we believe helping founders is the best form of diligence.
