645 Ventures scales firm, team, portfolio, and AUM to over half a billion since 2014 inception, backed by prestigious LP base
645 Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm that partners with exceptional founders building iconic technology companies, announced its oversubscribed fourth fund, Fund IV, alongside the launch of the firm’s first opportunity fund, Select I. The closing of these two funds, totaling $347M, tracks the venture firm’s exponential growth, scaling the portfolio to 50+ companies, 15 team members, two offices, and eight exit events since its inception in 2014. The new funds are backed by prestigious limited partners including endowments, foundations, fund of funds, family offices, and high net worth individuals. Due to 645’s top quartile performance, existing limited partners significantly increased their allocations to the new funds, and several new institutional LPs joined the roster.
The firm now has $550M+ in assets under management, and its notable portfolio companies include Iterable, FiscalNote, Goldbelly, Panther Labs, and Overtime, all of which 645 invested in at the early stage. 645 focuses on vertical and horizontal SaaS, infrastructure software, consumer categories such as online marketplaces, and Crypto/Web3. The firm has applied specific investment themes in these categories over multiple years, enabling it to be a prepared mind and help its portfolio founders.
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Founded by Nnamdi Okike and Aaron Holiday and supported by a growing team of experienced professionals, 645 applies growth-stage investment practices, advanced proprietary software, and significant value-add resources to help Seed and Series A startups scale exponentially to become category-leading businesses. Capitalizing on structural changes at the early stage including acceleration of startup formation across the globe, more rapid startup growth through inexpensive distribution channels and reduction in startup costs, and the proliferation of startup data, 645’s model enables the firm to identify and prioritize companies with the potential for exponential scaling combined with strong underlying unit economics. 645 pioneered outbound deal sourcing using software to identify and prioritize top investment prospects at the early stage, combined with supercharging its team’s networks to invest in the best while efficiently delivering value-add services to founders.
“Our Fund IV and Select I Fund enable 645 to continue applying the winning formula that has led us to invest in billion-dollar companies at their earliest stages,” said Nnamdi Okike, Managing Partner and Co-Founder at 645. “With these new funds, we’ll build on this formula by scaling our team and portfolio resources, continuing to lead the early-stage rounds of the highest-potential early-stage founders, and supporting our best companies through the growth stage via our Select Fund. These funds enable us to continue building on the vision that Aaron and I have had since inception: to build a generational venture firm that delivers exceptional returns to our limited partners.”
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While the firm has always invested at Seed and Series A and will continue applying this model with Fund IV, Select I enables the firm to follow-on with larger investments in its best companies at the growth stage. Fund IV will make initial investments at Seed and Series A with check sizes ranging from $1M to $10M. Select I will write later stage checks up to $15M into the best-performing companies that reach the growth stage from its earlier funds.
645 is on a mission to become one of the most value-added funds at the early stage and this new set of funds will enable the firm’s Success Team to double down in supporting founders building strong business fundamentals while committing larger investments to early and late stage rounds. The firm will continue scaling the Success Team, which super-charges founders with customer acquisition, talent recruitment, marketing and public relations, and capital raising support.
“We have a client-service mindset where we make delivering for founders our number one priority,” said Aaron Holiday, Managing Partner and Co-Founder at 645. “We have built a team of experts and proprietary software that enables us to immediately respond to our founders’ hiring, customer acquisition, marketing, and access to capital needs. Since starting the firm in 2014, we have facilitated over 300+ customer, talent, fundraising, and strategic introductions that have contributed to our concentrated early-stage portfolio scaling to over $2B in revenues and nearly 4,000 new jobs created in less than a decade. We have only scratched the surface on the type of support we can deliver to founders. Fund IV and Select I enable us to invest more heavily in our growing team and partner more closely with our founders along their journeys to category leadership and IPO.”
In addition to 645’s top institutional LPs, the firm also includes top operators, founders, VC investors and financiers who form the firm’s Connected Network. The Connected Network is in place to lean into the firm’s breakout successes and to support those companies as they navigate the challenges of becoming dominant category leading businesses.
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