Investor profile
Cocoa Ventures
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Analyse your fitInvestment thesis
Cocoa Ventures describes itself as 'the founders' in-house VC' — a deliberately close, accessible model that prioritizes genuine working relationships over formal governance. The firm invests angel-sized checks of $150k-500k at pre-seed and seed stage, never leading rounds and taking no board seats. By staying off boards and keeping checks small, Cocoa can move quickly and maintain relationships with founders at the earliest and most formative stages without the governance overhead of traditional VC. The firm backs 'Killers with a Heart': brilliant beasts building crazy weird stuff that's hard to make, because it's inevitable to them. Cocoa doesn't give a damn about stake and has no minimum ownership requirement, allowing them to be 100% on the founder's side of the table. The firm provides VC hacks, network access, and emotional support, helping founders hack the system from the inside with independent and unfiltered investor insights.
Notable quotes
“We're looking for founders who are obsessed. If you don't have an excruciating reason why you want to solve this problem, it's very hard [to keep going]. And we want to see ambition that's borderline naive.”
“We see a lot of what is great in Europe. And we didn't want to be left out of a deal because our minimum stake was too high.”
“We have no morals when it comes to sectors. But we draw the line at the 'can't understand' [sectors] — it's important for us to build conviction.”
Recent investments
| Company | Round | Size | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calibre | Seed | — | 2026-04-22 |
| Cyclana Bio | Seed | — | 2025-10-20 |
| Crewline AI | Seed | — | 2025-07-25 |
| Condukt | Series A | — | 2025-06-22 |
| Foresight Data Machines | Seed | — | 2025-01-22 |
| Terraform Industries | Seed | — | 2025-01-01 |
| Fractile | Seed | — | 2024-05-31 |
| Speckle | Seed | — | 2022-05 |
| Papaya | Seed | — | — |
| Fuse | Seed | — | — |
Frequent co-investors
| VC firm | Deals together |
|---|---|
| Seedcamp | 7 |
| Foreword | 5 |
| Visionaries Club | 5 |
| Accel | 5 |
| Index Ventures | 5 |
| 20VC | 4 |
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