Despite Uncertain Times, Bullpen Raises New Fund

At a time when the technology industry is struggling and many venture funds are struggling to find their footing in a rapidly changing market, Bullpen Capital just raised a new fund, our largest fund to date. Bullpen VI is a $145 million fund that will enable our team to continue our mission to identify and partner with post-seed companies that are poised for both growth and long term fundamental success.

Across Bullpen’s first five funds we have established a history of finding pre-consensus companies that are undervalued for any number of reasons. In most of these cases, the industry zeitgeist failed to see the value these companies brought because the founders were out of network, had degrees from the wrong schools, were in a sector that was out of favor or were in the wrong geography. This has consequently led us to identify and partner with companies building toward non-obvious businesses and has allowed us to build a founder community that includes many individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. In our two most recent funds, well over half of Bullpen’s investments were with companies with a founder who was either female or a person of color.

This approach has proven to be a differentiated and distinctive way to identify category-leading companies. Bullpen now has $630M+ in AUM. Last year we had three companies go public — Braze (NASDAQ:$BRZE), WAG (NASDAQ:$PET) and Grove Collaborative (NYSE:$GROV), and our companies collectively raised an additional $2 Billion in follow-on capital in 2021.

Successfully selecting pre-consensus companies is not easy. A major component of Bullpen’s approach is our use of both financial and operating metrics to assess true value creation and to avoid vapor valuations. By assessing company performance with our adaptive, data-informed diligence framework, Bullpen is able to identify companies that are posed for breakout success.

We are grateful to have the support of a diverse group of limited partners, including endowments, foundations, hospital systems, family offices, and successful entrepreneurs. Their confidence in our team and investment strategy is a testament to the value we have created for our portfolio companies and investors over the past twelve years.

Finally, we look forward to meeting new founders and reconnecting with co-investors in the months to come to discuss new ideas, products and grow great companies.

Sincerely,

Eric Wiesen and the Bullpen team