Ripple Ventures: On Fellow Fund’s First Anniversary, Reflections, and How We Evaluate Companies

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rippleventures

7 min readOct 27, 2023

Title Image: On Fellow Fund’s 1st Anniversary, Reflections, and How we Evaluate Companies

Overview: Strap in for a year-in-review of the RippleX Fellow Fund, where we reflect on our success to date, how we evaluate companies, and our long-term vision for this initiative.

Founders, reach out to our team through this form: https://airtable.com/app7YM1KIxjnuyEAD/shrG0Gd8qTTb0Uko9

About Ripple Ventures & the Fellow Fund

Ripple Ventures is an early-stage VC fund based in Toronto but we invest all across North America. We invest at the pre-seed and seed stages into companies within verticals of B2B SaaS, enterprise software, AI, and developer tooling.

A year ago, as an extension of the RippleX fellowship program and platform initiatives, we proudly introduced the Fellow Fund. Through this fund, we enthusiastically provide investments ranging from $25K to $75K to student-led and first-time founders who are passionately building in our areas of interest at Ripple Ventures.

Since the thrilling official launch, we have had the incredible opportunity to meet with hundreds of companies that align with our investment thesis. We were ecstatic to receive an overwhelming response from builders and young founders across North America, and we had the privilege of meeting visionary individuals who shared with us world-changing ideas that pushed the boundaries of creativity and innovation.

Fellow Fund Portfolio

This year, we invested in three companies: Artemis (Sep 2022), WaiveTheWait (Dec 2022), and Asepha (June 2023). More details on each below:

Image featuring the 3 fellow fund companies we’ve invest in to-date.

Artemis: Founded by Josh Gray (CEO) and William Shi (CTO), the company aims to create the fastest and most intelligent analytics experiences with data from across different sources. This allows their users to eliminate data slio across teams and work with data faster. Upon our investment via the Fellow Fund, Artemis has gone on to complete the FounderFuel program and working with distinguished investors across the ecosystem. Read more about our investment here.

WaivetheWait: Founded by Shreyansh Anand (CEO) and Tabassum Pasha (COO), WTW produces software plugins that empower clinics to optimize and automate patient communication to save doctors and clinic staff precious time. Their software allows patients to check-in to a virtual waiting room via an app, giving clinics visibility into who has arrived and their wait status. The team has gone on to raise more capital from angels and programs. Read more about our investment here.

Asepha: Founded by Eunice Wu (CEO)and Can Uncu (CTO), the duo is determined to revolutionize the way clinicians can reference literature and guidelines by using retrieval-augmented generation to provide succinct answers. Upon our investment, the team has since undergone the Techstars Toronto Accelerator, and working with other distinguished investors across the ecosystem. Read more about our investment here.

Benefits of the Fellow Fund

Guiding Principles

We are the first call founders make when things go right, and especially when things go wrong. Our team genuinely cares about solving problems for founders and is committed to working for them every day.

We take this responsibility seriously and prioritize the well-being of founders just as we would our closest friends. By doing so, we can offer unwavering support through all the ups and downs of company building, serving as a compassionate and constructive coach in their corner.

Operational Support

We offer personalized support in various areas to help companies succeed. From go-to-market strategies, and recruitment, to public relations, we have extensive experience working with companies at every stage, from inception to scale. We provide playbooks, strategies, and real-time coaching to help you navigate sales, marketing, pricing, and partnerships, ultimately helping you find product-market fit.

Moreover, we also have a platform of programming, venture partners, and advisors that come from top-tier tech firms and they provide their expertise and trusted network to support our portfolio companies.

Lastly, we have over 50+ tech perks that we offer to our portfolio companies — from cloud credits to productivity apps, we partner with leading tech service providers to secure exclusive deals and discounts for our companies, ensuring that they have access to the best tools and services available in the market.

Customer Introductions

Through our extensive portfolio company network, we have the privilege of connecting with various department heads, including the Head of Engineering and the Head of Customer Sales for product feedback and evaluation. This invaluable community allows us to leverage our connections and make meaningful introductions that can open doors to new and exciting opportunities. These conversations not only provide us with valuable feedback but also have the potential to lead to fruitful customer engagements and partnerships.

Fundraising

We offer strategic guidance to help you navigate the right timing for fundraising. We advise on the type of investors, round size, competitive dynamics, email templates, and more. Fundraising is an art, not a science, and we’re here to help you learn and execute the process.

Introductions: We’ve built a very strong and large network of top-tier investors across the world that we partner with on our rounds, as well as future rounds at later stages. Our job is to nurture relationships to make your job easier.

Materials: During the process, we help you figure out the right pitch, deck, and data room to present to investors. We know what they’re looking for, and can help you read in between the lines when they ask you for diligence items.

Legals: When you finally get term sheets and documents from other investors, we help you review them to make sure you’re covering all of your bases and protecting the company.

How We Evaluate Companies

Our Criteria

Balanced Team: Building a balanced team is crucial for success. It is recommended to have both a technical cofounder and a business cofounder who can complement each other’s skillsets well (and keep each other company of course). This ensures that all areas of the business are well-covered and increases the chances of a company’s success. We ideally prefer the team to be full-time working on this problem (besides school, of course).
Diverse Co-founder: In order to continue supporting underrepresented founders, we require teams to have at least one co-founder from an underrepresented background included in the cap table. This includes: Women and nonbinary individuals; Racialized, Black and/or people of colour (visible minorities); Persons who identify as LGBTQ2+; Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Métis, Inuit); Persons living with disabilities.
Strong Problem Validation: Deep problem space obsession and extensive customer validation are quintessential, especially at the earliest stages of building. It involves hundreds of conversations, gathering feedback and insights from potential users to ensure that the problem being solved is indeed a pressing one. Founders who are deeply passionate and empathetic can clearly demonstrate a problem-solution fit and explain why incumbent tools are underserving users' needs.
Market: Understanding the market demand for a specific product or service plays a significant role in assessing the growth potential and scalability of a startup. We evaluate the competitive landscape, identify ideal customer profiles (ICP), and determine the scalability and long-term vision of a startup. We try to answer questions such as: Why is this problem the biggest concern for your end customers and users today?; Why does this company have the best shot to succeed in the market now compared to the past? What has changed in the market (tech advancement, buyer sentiment change, new markets developing, etc.)?

Our Process

After learning more about what we look for in companies, the natural next question would be — how do I apply? We understand the importance of providing transparency to founders who interact with us, and we want to ensure that the application process is clear and accessible for all.

Image of the fellow fund’s evaluation process.

Initial Meeting: Our first interaction typically starts with an initial meeting with an analyst / associate on our team. This 30-min call is pretty casual and lighthearted, with a goal to gain an overview of the company’s inception and progress. We ask questions that would give us a high level understanding of how the company aligns the our above mentioned criteria, and we typically run through a pitch deck and demo as well (if applicable). In more technical cases, we may also circulate pitch materials with relevant industry professionals to consult their thoughts and feedback.
Partner Meeting: If our team wishes to proceed further in the investment process, companies will arrange a meeting with one or both of our general partners. This call primarily serves for our team to familiarize themselves with the founding team and to ask any clarifying questions.
Term Sheet: If all goes well, our team will issue a term sheet that outlines a proposed investment amount, valuation, and expectations. Our team will then hop on a call to discuss the term sheet and other materials in further detail, and companies have the freedom to ask questions and make suggestions as well.
Due Diligence: Our team dives deeper into data room review, where we conduct more customer reference calls and further in-depth analysis of the company and market landscape.
Investment: If all goes well — welcome to the Ripple ecosystem! Founders will be properly onboarded, and they will have a chance to meet all our other portfolio companies. Regular catch-ups and update cadences will also be set, and the rest is history.

Get in Touch

All this to say, we are extremely excited about the Fellow Fund, as we experienced the joy of working closely with young, ambitious founders who have proven time and time again that they are worth betting on.