Premise Ventures
Investment Thesis
We invest $500K–$3M at pre-seed and seed in spiky technical founders building AI-native tools and agentic software for power users. Based in San Francisco.
Premise backs founders building AI-native tools, agentic software, and AI agents for power users. We are specifically interested in products where AI is not a feature bolted onto an existing workflow but the core architecture of the product itself. This includes AI-powered consumer and prosumer applications, developer tools that leverage agentic pipelines, and infrastructure that enables the next generation of autonomous software.
We write checks of $500K to $3M at pre-seed and seed. We are typically the first institutional capital in, which means we work closely with founders from the earliest days of company formation through product-market fit and beyond.
Our focus is San Francisco, though the best founders are everywhere and we invest nationally.
AI is a platform shift, not a feature.
We believe AI-native tools will replace entire categories of software over the next decade. The founders who understand this at a fundamental level, and build accordingly, will create the defining companies of this era. We are not interested in AI wrappers. We are interested in companies where the AI architecture is the product.
Power users pull the market.
The most durable consumer and prosumer products are built for people who push software to its limits. Win the power user, and the mainstream follows. We have seen this pattern repeatedly across our prior investments, and we look for it in every company we back.
Founders first, always.
We were founders and operators before we were investors. That shapes everything: how we evaluate companies, how we support founders, and how we show up when things get hard. We do not believe in passive capital. We believe in being the investor you wish you had.
Spiky beats well-rounded.
The best founders have an unfair edge: a technical depth that others cannot replicate, a distribution insight that seems obvious in retrospect, or a domain obsession that borders on irrational. We look for that spike. A well-rounded founder with no sharp edges rarely builds a category-defining company.
We back spiky technical founders with an unfair edge. That edge can take many forms: a deep technical ability that lets them build things others cannot, a distribution insight that gives them an asymmetric path to users, or a domain obsession that makes them the only person who could have built this particular product at this particular moment.
We do not require a co-founder, a complete team, or a finished product. We invest in people who have a clear and defensible view of why they are the right person to build this, and why now is the right time.
Writing a check is the beginning, not the end. We work closely with founders across the full arc of early company building. Our operational backgrounds mean we can engage at the level of detail that actually matters.
Specifically, we help with product and metrics framing — defining what success looks like and how to measure it. We work on value proposition and emotional pull — helping founders articulate why their product matters in a way that resonates with users and future investors. We think through roadmap and sequencing — what to build first, what to defer, and how to sequence features to maximize learning. We help define the ideal customer profile and sharpen go-to-market sequencing so early distribution is intentional rather than accidental.
We also engage on hiring strategy — who to hire first and how to attract exceptional people to an early-stage company — and on fundraising narrative and connections, helping founders tell their story clearly and make warm introductions to the right investors for their Series A.
Vanessa Larco is a co-founder of Premise. She was previously an Investment Committee Member at NEA, where she led investments in consumer and enterprise technology. Before venture, she held product and engineering roles at Box, Twilio, Xbox, and Disney. Her prior investments include Robinhood, Greenlight, Instabase, and others.
Mercedes Bent is a co-founder of Premise. She was Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners for six years, leading investments in app layer companies. She was named one of nine Rising Stars in Venture Capital by the Wall Street Journal. She is a former startup operator and founder, and a Goldman Sachs, Harvard, and Stanford GSB alum.
If you are building something in AI-native tools, agentic software, or AI-powered products for power users, we want to hear from you. Email us at [email protected].
A cold email is fine. A warm introduction is better. Either way, tell us: what you are building, why you are the right person to build it, what stage you are at, and what you are raising. We read everything and respond to what resonates.
We make decisions quickly. If there is a fit, you will hear back within a week.