We scale wonderful businesses.
Gross Ventures is a venture capital firm backing visionary entrepreneurs who leverage technology to build the future. We invest at every stage—from seed through growth—across high-impact sectors such as AI, biotechnology and healthcare, consumer technology, blockchain and crypto, enterprise software, fintech, infrastructure, and more.
Our deep respect for founders stems from first-hand experience; our partners have built and led successful companies themselves. These leaders bring expertise to the companies we invest in. We believe that measurable outcomes, strong incentives, clear directives, high standards, and fast feedback is how we build a winning team.
At Gross Ventures, our goal is to foster a network of entrepreneurs, investors, executives, engineers, creative visionaries, and other industry experts. We’ve cultivated a broad ocean of resources, including technical and executive talent, marketing and communications support, industry connections, and leading decision makers in technology. This network demonstrates our commitment to helping portfolio companies accelerate growth, with dedicated operating teams providing strategic guidance and hands-on support across the full spectrum of company-building.
Our Process
Many early-stage founders don’t come in with an innate sense of how they’ll acquire customers. They might know the usual levers to pull and experiments to run, but every company is different — especially if they’re working in a new industry or domain. Whether you’re a consumer company trying to nail paid marketing or an enterprise company crafting its go-to-market strategy, the best way to get up to speed fast is the same: learn from folks who have been there before.
We have a VP of Customer Acquisition who works side-by-side with you in different programs like Sales Assist, an 8-week program to supercharge your sales efforts. Along with ride-alongs and deep customer discovery work on behalf of our companies, we’ve also embedded a Gross Ventures Team to serve as your first SDR in a dedicated sales sprint.
If we don’t have the answer, we know someone else who will. It’s our job to make it easy to find. The Gross Ventures Network platform allows our entire community (everyone at all of our companies) to candidly air their worries and problems, ask questions, and help others with what they’ve learned. Most questions asked on Network are answered within 24 hours, giving people a nearly real-time resource whenever they hit a wall. Many of the questions focus on customer acquisition and growth, how to evaluate the costs involved in GTM, what has already worked for others, and pathways to scaling.
Lastly, we have a real-world database of hundreds of experts across functional areas who we can connect to our companies to provide custom, focused advice based on the exact situation. Hailing from incredible careers at companies inside and outside the Gross Ventures portfolio, these folks have told us what they know in granular detail so we can match them very specifically to the right problem-solving opportunities — all on demand. So whether a startup needs to know how to restructure its sales team, which A/B test to run on its landing page, or how to calculate its CAC and LTV, we can set them up for a call, coffee, or meeting that will neutralize the problem and slingshot them forward, fast.
Growth isn’t something that just happens. It’s a slog. It’s hacking through the jungle and traversing the frontier without a map. Every single time. When that’s the reality in front of you, all you can ask for are the best guides — and we’ve got you covered.
These answers vary from company to company, but there are some general steps every founding team goes through. While we often try to move at the pace of the founder, an important rule applies: the less time we have to make a decision, the more conviction we have to feel about a company. Sometimes we spend months developing a relationship. Sometimes we move from intro to close in under a week. Generally speaking, here’s what you can expect:
1. Initial meeting: Before an initial meeting, we’ll look at any materials sent by the founder, determine whether the business fits our basic investment criteria, and try to ensure it’s not directly competitive with any of our existing investments. Your first meeting (or phone call) with a member of the investment team will typically be between 45 minutes and an hour. We let the founder do most of the talking, and hope they use the opportunity to dig into the specifics of their team and business.
2. Follow-up: Most of our “passes” occur after the initial meeting. If you’ve made it past that meeting, you’ll spend more time with your Gross Ventures point partner as we both continue to learn more about each other. At the same time, our partnership makes all decisions as a team. We sometimes introduce promising founders to another First Round partner for an additional conversation, typically the partner with the most “domain expertise” in that company’s area.
3. Partner meeting: If these conversations go well for both of us, we’ll typically make some reference/diligence calls and invite you to meet with the rest of the partners at our twice-weekly investment meeting. Here, you’ll have about an hour to tell your story to the entire partnership and answer questions.
4. Final Decision: After your presentation, our partnership will discuss your company in great detail with the goal to give you a final answer usually within 24 hours of the meeting. Typically, we fund about half of the companies that make it to our partner meeting.
We’re focused on being the world’s best partner for founders at the very first stages of company creation — so we’ve designed the firm to do just that. When you work with Gross Ventures, you get super active partners (most of whom are former founders themselves) working side-by-side with you on your biggest and smallest challenges. Whether it’s setting the strategy for a fundraise or thinking through your organizational design, we’re in your corner through the thick and thin of company building over those first few critical years.
On top of that, you get access to our 20+ person Platform Team, working to help you fast forward through the tough nitty-gritty of building a company so you can focus on what makes yours special. Whether it’s our Go-To-Market team mapping out your initial sales strategy, or our Talent Team connecting you with top-tier candidates for your critical early hires, we’re here to help across all your needs.
Most importantly, we pioneered the concept of transforming a portfolio into a community. When our partners were entrepreneurs themselves, the most valuable advice and support they ever received came from other founders. That’s why we provide the tools and forums you need for folks throughout your company to learn from and help their peers. If you’re a PM, a CFO or a junior marketer, you can benefit from the collective wisdom of many others.
Above all, we look for compelling and contrarian insight into how the world works. What do you understand about a market or a need that no one else does or that other companies in the space get wrong? And why is your company the most likely to win at addressing this gap?
Second, if you have a product in market, a group of passionate customers is a strong indicator for us. If there are people using your product or service who wouldn’t know what to do without you, we want to hear about it. That’s one of the strongest data points you can offer. As an extension of this, we want to see creative thinking around go-to-market strategy as well as product. The best partner companies take both seriously.
Third, we take a close look at the market you’re going after. Let’s say you win the whole thing — is the prize worth winning? The game is long and hard, and some markets are more rewarding than others. SaaS companies have a different range of opportunities than on-premise software makers. First-party retailers are valued very differently from third-party ecommerce sites. To mix our metaphors, before a founder starts building their castle, they have to make sure they’ve picked the right piece of land.
It’s said that successful founders should spend over 50% of their time on hiring during growth periods. We actually think this is an understatement. But we also know devoting this many hours to hiring while also running a company can seem impossible.
That’s why we have a small, focused team to help share the load. And our partners will always pick up the phone to help close candidates (they have a pretty astonishing batting average).
Our Talent Team works side-by-side with our earliest-stage companies to help them jumpstart their hiring process. Their work sourcing candidates and making introductions is complemented by our rich, proprietary dataset on compensation so that you can make the smartest offers. And, since we’ve now worked with over 500 startups, we’ve been able to put together best practice guides — essentially manuals written by veteran entrepreneurs — all in service of giving founders a head start on hiring.
Our Partners Love GV
"Ocean transformed the way I scaled my company. I went from feeling overwhelmed in my industry to confidently having a direction and doubled profits in our first year."
Patrick S., Blue H2o Pools