Strong demand for new approach to venture investing drives oversubscribed fund despite challenging economic conditions

BOSTON: Venture Guides, a venture capital firm focused on active guiding and team-based investing in early-stage, infrastructure software companies, announced the closing of its second fund, totaling $262.5 million. This achievement comes during challenging economic times in venture capital fundraising, underscoring the firm's robust strategy, strong portfolio, and the confidence investors place in its differentiated approach.

Venture Guides Fund II’s single closing was oversubscribed in a swift eight-week timeframe. Fund II represents a 21% increase over its $216.5 million Fund I. The strong investor demand reflects support for the firm's deep domain experience and distinctive guiding that includes an in-house sales training academy. Venture Guides Fund II welcomed new institutions and large family offices in addition to participation from 100% of its past family offices. Once again, Venture Guides’ General Partners (GP) made a notable investment, contributing 11% of the total fund’s commitment, up from their contribution of 10% in Fund I. Venture Guides expects to begin investing its second fund in Q3 2025.

Since its inception in 2023, Venture Guides has built a team of 21 professionals and a promising portfolio of eleven core positions within the infrastructure software market. The firm's commitment to providing capital as well as active guiding accelerates the early growth and resiliency of its portfolio companies. Ten portfolio companies have elected to co-locate within Venture Guides’ offices at 100 Causeway Street to grow their U.S.-based teams, championing Boston as a destination for technology innovation, economic stability and venture capital funding.

“Boston is proud to be the home of Venture Guides, a venture capital firm focused on supporting emerging tech start-ups from around the world,” said Segun Idowu, Chief of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion for the City of Boston. “By helping these innovators organize and launch their go-to-market operations, Venture Guides boosts our local economy, creates high-quality jobs, and makes our city a top destination for technological advancement."

Venture Guides' differentiated approach is rooted in several key principles:

• Team-Based Investing: The firm employs a collaborative investment strategy, leveraging decades of leadership experience and a data framework to make comprehensive decisions and provide informed support to founders.
• Active Guiding: Venture Guides is committed to guiding founders through every stage of their journey, offering expertise in go-to-market execution, recruiting, business strategy, finance, and budgeting.
• Deep Domain Expertise: With decades of experience as operators and investors, the Venture Guides team is focused on the infrastructure software market, supporting portfolio companies in navigating the complexities of this domain.

“Venture Guides stood out to us because of its active GTM guiding and strong track record of +80% success rate,” said Naj Husain, 4x founder and Elastio CEO. “At Elastio, our expert scanning engine builds resiliency into customers’ data layer to stop ransomware attacks. Venture Guides helps us to deliver our value to customers faster and more effectively.”

"We’re deeply grateful for our investors’ confidence and partnership, enabling us to continue our mission of building the next generation of innovative technology companies,” said Benjamin Nye, Managing Partner at Venture Guides. “With this second fund, we remain firmly committed to serving our investors and portfolio founders - providing not only capital but also the guiding required to compete and win in the infrastructure software market.”

About Venture Guides Venture Guides is a venture capital firm offering a team-based investing and operating approach that accelerates early-stage portfolio startups with business management and go-to-market strategies in the software infrastructure market. The firm’s deep domain expertise and active guiding delivers entrepreneurs consistent yield and strong profit performance. The Venture Guides team is a 6x honoree on the Forbes’ Midas List of the world’s best venture investors and are former operators, builders, and innovators whose careers have included roles such as CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, CHROs, and GCs. The Venture Guides teams’ previous portfolio performance includes >80% positive outcomes on previous investments with 45% eventually reaching >$1B valuations, including Dynatrace, Rapid7, Turbonomic, Solarwinds, LinkedIn, and DocuSign.

Learn more about Venture Guides at www.ventureguides.com.

Fonte: Business Wire