This spring, we celebrated five years of Stellation Capital with a party at one of our Brooklyn favorites, Place des Fêtes. The night brought together portfolio founders, family, friends, co-investors, and the LPs who make our work possible: our very own constellation of support and talent, one more robust than I ever could have imagined when we launched in 2021. Back then, coming out of the tumult of the pandemic, we closed our first fund and held a fervent belief that (as my former General Catalyst partner Joel Cutler always reminded us) the best is yet to come.
Since then, we’ve been fortunate to partner with a growing group of founders at various stages in their careers, renewing my deeply held belief that relationships are at the core of first-check investing: our conviction starts with the people, and forging ties with them for the (dare I say, Odyssey-like) haul.
For some of our founders, that’s meant working together through several companies; I first met Ari Weinstein and Conrad Kramer when they were incoming MIT students, backed their first company Workflow (acquired by Apple) during my time leading Rough Draft Ventures, the student funding effort I founded and led at General Catalyst when I myself was a student. We joined them again for Software Applications Inc, building a powerful natural language interface for the Mac, and they joined forces with OpenAI through M&A last fall.
We’ve backed bright-eyed newcomers — I first met Revin founder Quinn Litherland when we recruited him to expand Rough Draft Ventures to Northeastern with his leadership on our team; now, Revin’s AI workflow tool powers critical operations for some of North America’s largest residential service providers.
We’ve also partnered with deeply passionate domain experts. Energy philomaths Keeley Erhardt, PhD, and Will Fisher, a longtime energy executive (or, as he would call it, “the LeBron James of Power Gen”), sparked our imagination with their vision for Strobe, AI-powered software that transforms commercial real estate and scattered energy assets into a single modern, market-aware power plant.
As it goes in venture, not all of our experiments panned out (see: our mini crypto experiment, piloting $100K-250K checks to help companies get off the ground, shortly after which hit winter). Not every company trajectory got out of the gate as we thought it would: we’ve seen our fair share of unexpected pivots! Like our founders, we are in the business of testing hypotheses and running experiments, reflecting on learnings from challenges, and doing more of what works with refined focus and intention.
Fund II builds on the experience and insights of the first five years, perhaps the most important being the value of collaboration, starting with our own team. Bringing on Rhian Horton as Principal at Stellation and Vanessa Rosario as Chief of Staff transformed our firm and what we expect from the teams we work with. We know from personal experience that while there’s a certain nimbleness to the individual, there is also strength, longevity, and integrity in leading with a values-aligned group.
Likewise, with Fund I, we had the privilege of working alongside a number of co-investors. We’ve experienced firsthand just how rewarding and valuable it is – to us and to the founders we work with – to join arms and have 2-3 institutions work together alongside operator angels in service of a founding team from the onset. We’re doubling-down on our commitment to co-leading whenever possible and working alongside investors we respect, and already have done so with: Mainframe with Lachy Groom, Thea co-led with General Catalyst, and three more in stealth we’re excited to share this fall.
As Stellation begins this next chapter, I remain most proud of the incredible founders we’ve supported. They’re in far-ranging sectors from consumer health and energy to fintech and developer tools, with different goals and wildly different approaches, but they all share a deep conviction in their missions and the humility to grow. Looking at our portfolio of companies, some of which weren’t even conceivable just five years ago, I know we are in the midst of phenomenal change. When I see the teams we work with, the problems they’re already solving, and their visions for the years ahead, I am reminded that still, the best is yet to come.
Stellation Capital leads and co-leads first institutional checks of $1M–$3M across vertical AI, consumer, and physical AI & robotics. Say hello@stellation.vc.