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boldstart ventures

USILGBCAB2B SaaSAI/MLCybersecurityDevtoolsEnterpriseDeep Tech

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Investment thesis

boldstart ventures is the inception fund for bold technical founders building the autonomous enterprise. The firm partners with founders well before company creation—before a product, pitch deck, or company exists—leading pre-product rounds and rallying an early adopter enterprise network to help turn bold ideas into category-creating iconic companies. boldstart coined 'Inception Investing,' acting as a co-founder-like partner from day zero across AI-native infrastructure, security, developer tools, and SaaS. Since 2010, the firm has grown from a $1M proof-of-concept to over $1.1B AUM across seven funds, maintaining extreme concentration on developer-first enterprise infrastructure and resisting style drift into later-stage or generalist investing.

Notable quotes

"When others wait for signals, we bet on conviction."

Ed Sim · Fund VII launch press release / BusinessWire · 2025-07-08

"Inception is about far more than capital, it's about compound leverage."

Eliot Durbin · Fund VII launch press release / BusinessWire · 2025-07-08

"This is one of the greatest platform shifts I've seen in 29 years of being a venture capitalist."

Ed Sim · TechCrunch – Enterprise Tech Predictions 2025 · 2024-12-30

Team

Ed Sim

Founder & Managing General Partner

EnterpriseAI/MLCybersecurityB2B SaaSDevtools

Eliot Durbin

General Partner

EnterpriseB2B SaaSDevtoolsAI/ML

Ellen Chisa

Partner

DevtoolsB2B SaaSAI/MLEnterprise

Shomik Ghosh

Partner

CybersecurityDevtoolsB2B SaaSAI/ML

Ernest Addison

Associate

B2B SaaSAI/MLDeep Tech

Charlotte Chapanoff

General Manager / Head of Marketing & Global Events

Recent investments

CompanyRoundSizeDate
SnykSeed (Inception)2015-01-01
ClaySeries B$40m2025-01-22
CrewAISeed (Inception)$2m2024-10-22
KeycardSeed (Inception)$8m2025-10-21
AgentuitySeed$4m2025-01-01
BigIDSeed (Inception)2017-01-01
BlockdaemonSeed (Inception)2019-01-01
Protect AISeed (Inception)2022-01-01
KustomerSeed (Inception)2015-01-01
TesslSeed (Inception)$25m2024-11-14

Frequent co-investors

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