附近上门

Dedicated pre-seed and seed firm has closed on fund 3 at $450 million, its largest seed fund to date.

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We spoke with the team to understand its evolution as a fund over the last four years.

鈥淲e are singularly focused on being the best and first institutional investor,鈥� said , one of the firm’s founding partners. Given how early NFX invests 鈥渨e’re very comfortable with a great team and a rough concept,鈥� he said.

The firm, based in San Francisco and Israel, raised its first seed fund in 2017 at $150 million. Its second fund, raised in 2019, was $275 million, close to double the first fund. And fund 3 is even larger at $450 million, tripling its first fund size.

We count over 190 portfolio companies it has invested in to date, per 附近上门 data.

Beyond marketplaces

The three founding partners , Pete Flint and added a fourth general partner, , over a year ago. Beller, who worked on (previously Libra) at , will lead investments in crypto, amongst other sectors. , promoted to general partner as part of that announcement, signals the firm’s increased interest in tech-bio.

NFX plans to invest in 70-plus additional companies with this new fund, with around 50 percent of it reserved for pro rata follow-on funding.

鈥淲hat gets me really excited about fund 3, and the fact that we’re bringing on Omri to do bio, [is that] we’re [also] doing proptech and crypto and fintech and gaming, and they actually all overlap,鈥� said Beller on the firm鈥檚 鈥渨ide enough aperture, to not miss the best founders who might be playing around in weird places.鈥�

On what it takes to be successful at seed, Beller said 鈥淵ou need to get into the best deals, and then you need to do a good job so that the best founders tell their friends to go back to you.鈥�

To support companies at seed, NFX has 45 staff members, with a platform team that it has built to help with recruiting, marketing, growth strategies, financial and legal support as well as a community platform to connect founders to share best practices.

On tech-bio

We spoke with Amirav-Drory about the firm鈥檚 wide-ranging tech-bio practice, including therapeutics, diagnostics, food-ag, chemicals, materials and energy. The firm likes to invest in 鈥減latform technologies and the intersection of tech and bio,鈥� said Amirav-Drory.

The firm is a seed investor in , recently valued at over $1 billion in a Series D funding. Mammoth has a diagnostic DNA sequencing platform as well as unique IP for small CRISPR proteins, he said.

NFX is also an investor in drug delivery companies, namely , which can deliver antibodies to the brain. 鈥淎ntibodies are an important modality for curing diseases, but 98 percent of antibodies don’t reach the brain,鈥� said Amirav-Drory.

Another portfolio company, is modifying T-cells as a CRISPR delivery platform. 鈥淒elivery is one of the most important problems to solve for CRISPR,鈥� he said.

, a fund 2 investment that recently raised a $100 million Series B, detects cancer through a liquid biopsy. 鈥淓very cancer patient has its own unique biomarker that you can track,鈥� said Amirav-Drory. 鈥淪o instead of waiting months to see if a different intervention actually works, you can see every two weeks.鈥�

More on seed

In 2021, multistage venture firms are raising large dedicated seed funds. announced a $400 million fund in August 2021, and announced a $500 million dedicated seed fund a month later. closed on its fourth dedicated seed fund of $195 million in early 2021 targeting U.S. and European startups.

With larger seed funds announced this year, we expect seed to become more competitive.

Photo courtesy of NFX: General Partners at NFX from left, Omri Amirav-Drory, Morgan Beller, James Currier, Gigi Levy-Weiss and Pete Flint.