Investment firm Homebrew has confirmed it raised $35 million for its seed stage venture fund. Run by ex-Googlers Hunter Walk and Satya Patel, it will use the funds to invest in products and platforms that serve the “Bottom Up Economy” and plans to do at most ten deals a year.
Earlier this month, CNN Fortune reported that Homebrew raised its initial fund although Walk declined to comment. It was also evident through a Form D filing with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund was closed back in April.
Today, the firm’s website is going up and Homebrew is publicly open for business. Walk describes it as a “hands-on, all-in model” whereby it will lead seed rounds and take board seats.
Homebrew is looking for those startups that fit into its thematic focus of the “Bottom Up Economy”, those services helping small to midsize businesses, makers, entertainers, and all the “little guys” trying to compete against the large corporations. The firm expects to make investments in marketplace technologies, SMB SaaS, collaboration, direct-to-consumer, and software as an API services.
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It will invest between $250,000 to $800,000 in seed round funding and says that it prefers to lead or co-lead the round with “a small syndicate of high quality angels and/or venture capital firms.” There may be cases where Homebrew might also join other rounds as well.
Startups funded by Homebrew can also take advantage of entrepreneurial advisors the firm has lined up, including industry veterans like TaskRabbit’s Leah Busque, Uber’s Ryan Graves, Twilio’s Jeff Lawson, Greylock Partners’ growth strategist Andy Johns, Karma’s Lee Linden, and others.
Homebrew was started earlier this year after Walk left his job at YouTube where he was its product chief. He reunited with Patel, formerly Twitter’s VP of Product, and stepped back into the investment space. In a previous life, Patel was a VC at Battery Ventures.
Photo credit: BAY ISMOYO/AFP/Getty Images
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