“Hello World”

We’re thrilled to formally introduce Sinai Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund with presence throughout the U.S. and Israel. Our team has been active in these startup ecosystems since 2016, working hard to identify, invest in, and support exceptional technology founders around the world. To date, we have spent the majority of our time on portfolio support, sourcing, and deal diligence, while attending industry trade shows and investor events where our actions and interactions can speak for themselves. In addition to these efforts, we want to offer this memo as a resource for founders, co-investors, and others in the community to better understand who we are and how we operate.

What is Sinai Ventures?

• We are a uniquely global and distributed venture capital fund. Much like the entrepreneurs we back, Sinai believes the adoption of technology presents a global opportunity to change lives for the better. To that end, we are mission-driven to discover teams building impactful companies across the world. With presence in the Bay Area, NYC, LA, Boston, and Tel Aviv, we are on the ground in the world’s most active innovation hubs. We pride ourselves on quickly and judiciously building conviction on an investment, ensuring efficient use of entrepreneurs’ time. To that end, our global and distributed approach allows us to work across time zones and go wherever we need to be to conduct our due diligence. Post-investment, we provide our portfolio companies with introductions to strategic partners around the world, insight on global competition, as well as a comfortable place to stay or work when founders are in the Bay Area.
• We invest in software and internet founders at all stages. We established Sinai with a flexible mandate to invest in founders building software and internet companies across various categories and stages of maturity. When we meet a uniquely qualified team of entrepreneurs building a product to resolve a critical pain point experienced by a large market with an unmet demand, we want to help scale that vision, regardless of industry or stage. Our approach provides capital access to a more diverse set of entrepreneurs, which we believe is a benefit to all stakeholders and contributes to outsized returns. As part of this philosophy, we work collaboratively with founders and co-investors to arrive at an optimal investment structure and ownership. We typically write checks of $100k to $750k at early stages and $1m to $5m at later stages, with the unique ability to call on additional capital from our limited partner in larger funding rounds.
• We are backed by one of the seminal founders of enterprise technology. Sinai was spun out of Eagle Advisors, a multibillion dollar family office that manages the assets of a co-founder of the German software conglomerate SAP. We leverage this relationship and SAP’s deep domain expertise to better inform our investment strategy with insights on technology adoption across industries as well as to make relevant customer and partnership introductions.

How do we operate?

• We identify and support the next generation of entrepreneurs. As part of the digitally-native, millennial generation ourselves, we recognize that unprecedented access to mobile connectivity and information has transformed the consumption habits of hundreds of millions of people. This younger demographic is quickly amassing purchasing power and influence over technology procurement in the places we live, work, commute, and shop. As a result, we see an immediate opportunity to disrupt incumbent purveyors of goods and services across industries by building technology-enabled, strong value proposition products that meet the preferences of this new demographic. To that end, we seek out and support teams who have a vision for creating the next generation of companies with lasting value.
• We are a friend to the entrepreneur and we aim to pleasantly surprise. We know first-hand that the early days of a startup are characterized by overcoming evolving competition, nay-sayers, and sleepless nights, and we enjoy championing teams through their battles just as much as we relish winning our own. While we are proud to have been called some of our founders’ “most helpful investors,” we also recognize there is a time and a place for investor input. We stay out of the way when founders want to charge ahead and are supportive when they want help. We won’t promise a laundry list of ways in which we can “add value,” but we will always aim to pleasantly surprise in value-additive ways. Because our incentives strongly align with the founders in which we invest, we act aggressively on their behalves and have helped with marketing/PR, product and sales strategy, follow-on fundraising, and recruiting.
• We evaluate ourselves based on the introduction metric. As is the nature of venture capital, we are not able to invest in every entrepreneur we meet; in fact, our track record shows we invest in fewer than 2% of all deals we see. That being said, we try to optimize every interaction with a founder — regardless of the investment outcome — to the benefit of both sides of the table. We commit to acting in good faith and evaluate ourselves on this basis by a measure we call the introduction metric: of the entrepreneurs we meet, how many go on to introduce us to their peers? Introductions between founders and investors are endorsements of good character, and we strive to meet the highest standards of conduct and professionalism as we grow as a fund.

Why Sinai?

• For founders. Founders have an increasingly robust choice of capital sources from which to raise funding. We consider most sources of capital to be a commodity differentiated primarily by the terms attached. But we also recognize that few things in life are accomplished alone and a founder-conscious partner can make a difference throughout the company-building journey. Given who we are and how we operate, we hope to stand out as the most founder-friendly partner to you.
• For investors. We work well with all types of investors and we do not have sharp elbows. We go deep on diligence and build research-driven conviction on our investments. We appreciate those who take a similar approach and enjoy sharing their findings to build funding syndicates that work well for the company and its founders. A list of our portfolio companies and the folks with which we’ve had the privilege to co-invest can be found here.

If you are a founder who resonates with our vision and mission, an investor who wants to work together, or part of the community interested in learning more about our portfolio or us, then we encourage you to reach out to info@sinaivc.com.

Sincerely,

The Sinai Team