EXCLUSIVE: Root Ventures Raises $190 Million Fourth Fund for Early Bets on Wonky Startups
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Venture capital
20 min read
The article centers on Root Ventures raising a fund and competing with mega-funds. Understanding the history, structure, and economics of venture capital—from limited partners to fund economics to the power law of returns—provides essential context for why smaller firms struggle to differentiate.
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Andreessen Horowitz
16 min read
Directly mentioned as an example of the mega-funds that have transformed Silicon Valley. Learning about a16z's founding, its 'media company that invests' model, and its role in professionalizing VC explains the competitive landscape Root Ventures is pushing against.
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Homebrew Computer Club
2 min read
Root Ventures explicitly evokes 'an older version of Silicon Valley, one still ruled by hackers and tinkerers.' The Homebrew Computer Club represents exactly that era—the grassroots, hobbyist origins of personal computing that produced Apple and shaped the Valley's original culture.
The crew at Root Ventures seems to think they’re living in an older version of Silicon Valley, one still ruled by hackers and tinkerers — before the MBAs and big money flooded in.
In reality, we live at a time when mega funds like Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst keep getting bigger. And many of the top AI startups are competing to show how much money they can gobble up.
Smaller venture capital firms are desperate to find ways to stand out.
Root Ventures is hosting their command-line website on an espresso machine. (They assure me there’s a cloud backup if it gets overwhelmed.)
Root Ventures is sponsoring a robot fight club. They host office hacking days.
“The reason we’re all here is because we like technology in the anthropological sense,” says Root Ventures Kane Hsieh. “If we were EV-maximizing we’d be at quant hedge funds.”
Root Ventures is announcing today in Newcomer that it has raised $190 million from the likes of University of Chicago, Adams Street, State of New Mexico, Loyola, DuPont Trust, and Brown Advisory.
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