Felicis Ventures

Felicis
Pronounciation: fell-e-sis
Latin, meaning: lucky, fortunate, happy.

About

At Felicis Ventures, our Mission is to back the world’s most iconic companies of today and tomorrow. Our founders have a passion for product, thinking out of the box to solve hard problems and dominate critical markets. Since 2006 we have invested in over 100 companies, 46 of which have been acquired by industry leaders such as Apple, AT&T, Disney, eBay, Facebook, Google, Groupon, Intuit, Microsoft and Twitter.

We are a boutique venture fund, customizing our relationship with each portfolio company in a way that’s meaningful and critical for them. We partner with founders and strive to deliver high value help where needed. How we invest and work with companies can be boiled down to 4 key tenets:

  • 1

    Prepared Mind

    We feel strongly that great investments are a consequence of deep conviction. We do our homework on our key focus areas, and try to be vocal where we feel we see the most interesting opportunities.

  • 2

    ALIGNMENT OF INCENTIVES

    We designed the size of our fund so we are not driven by ownership and do not make investment decisions solely based on potential exit size. At the same time our fund has enough scale to allow us to play a critical role for the companies we back. As our track record indicates, we define success the same way our founders do.

  • 3

    Product Visionaries

    What separates a great product from a good one is its ability to be an order of magnitude better than the current alternative. That requires a founder with laser sharp focus on true product differentiation and intelligent time and capital allocation. We seek to partner with such product visionaries and do whatever it takes to help them achieve their goals.

  • 4

    Art of Connections

    Our goal with every connection we make and every interaction we have, is to increase possibility of success. Our most important contribution to our founders is making connections that matter, at a time that’s critical.

FOCUS

We focus on 5 key areas (mobile, e-commerce, enterprise, education and health) and on what we believe to be new groundbreaking technologies, such as 3-d imaging, bio informatics, and connected devices.

FREQUENTLY ASKED

How large is Felicis Ventures’ asset base?

Felicis Ventures has over $100M in total committed assets: $4.5M angel fund in 2006, $41M super-angel fund raised in 2010 and $70M boutique VC fund raised in 2012.

What is your investment strategy?

Our goal is to back the iconic technology companies of today and tomorrow. To do so, we look to partner with the best companies and founders in our key focus areas, irrespective of stage, location, and in most cases valuation.

Our 5 principal focus areas are: mobile, e-commerce, consumer enterprise, education and health. We aim to complement those core themes of conviction with exploratory bets in new groundbreaking technologies (3D imaging, bio-informatics, connected devices and others).

By investing in themes of conviction we create a virtuous cycle: the clusters of world’s best companies in a given focus area allow us to have more relevant and recent knowledge to propagate amongst our companies (which in turn makes us smarter when it comes to expanding our portfolio).

What do you look for in companies?

We prefer to let our founders define their own success. For us, it’s not about specific return numbers, but finding and supporting the world’s best founders as they build iconic companies.

But how do you know what makes an iconic company? We like to use a “rule of 10”. For us, such companies offer products or solutions that are 10x better than the status quo: faster, cheaper, easier etc. We believe that those attributes then translate to deeper and sustainable moats establishing those companies as leaders in their fields.

How much do you invest?

We have a wide range of investments: from $100,000 to a few million per company.

We have a collaborative approach and look to ensure that the founders get the best support possible (what might mean us reducing our allocation to make enough space for other value-added investors to join the syndicate).

We sometimes lead investments and take board seats. Other times we join syndicates of experienced angels, superangels and/or top-tier venture capital firms. Regardless of investment size we are available to help all our companies in critical areas where needed.

Are you only a seed/early stage fund?

Our key focus is to make sure we partner with the best founders and companies in our areas of focus. At times we will miss an opportunity to invest at the seed stage but that does not prevent us from participating in a later financing: as long as we believe we have value to add and the company still has significant growth to be had.

As such, 67% of our investments were made at a time when the company was in pre-revenue stage, 23% in the early revenue stage and 11% in the revenue growth stage.

Do you only invest in companies based in the United States?

No. We’re proud to say that the founders in our portfolio represent 23 different nationalities from all continents (Antarctica excluded!) and we have invested in companies operating in 6 countries other than the United States (Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Israel, Finland and Germany).

Because all three investment partners were born and raised outside the US (Brazil, India and Turkey), we not only understand different market realities but also have deep networks in our respective regions – what has proven to be of significant value to our portfolio companies.

When investing outside the US we look to partner with a local co-investor, who we have a strong relationship with.