DeVC is a Pre-Seed venture capital firm which is anchored by Matrix Partners India ($1.5bn+ AUM) and ~40+ Indian founders & executives who lead startups with a combined market cap of ~$25bn.
DeVC is unique: It is a “network-led” venture capital firm.
A group of ~40 Indian founders & operators act like Venture Partners i.e. they help the DeVC team source and evaluate and support the companies through the critical product to business transition phase (i.e. 0-1, 1-10).
🧠 Think of it as replicating Pixar’s “braintrust” model but for investing
✅ It is one of the few VC funds that offers me an opportunity to:
(a) Build (i.e. build out the Tech infrastructure / fund OS)
(b) Invest at a fast pace (i.e. the fund does a high volume of fresh investments per year)
(c) Learn from the BEST (i.e. investors who have made ~1000+ investments over the past decade)
Having been a founder & an individual investor, I was very keen to understand the world of institutional investing. Opportunities to join a Venture Capital firm don’t come by often, so when I got the call in January this year, I knew I had to evaluate it seriously.
🙏 Very grateful to everyone who gave me valuable inputs in this decision making process - the partners at Matrix India (Aakash & Vikram), Utsav from iSeed, Jivraj from ISV, Amit from 77Capital, Arjun from V3 Ventures, Aviral (formerly of Venture Highway), Miten from CRED, Rahul from Trifecta, Kunal from Titan and Sajith from Blume.
⏰ I’m joining DeVC at a crucible moment: DeVC is now in its 2nd year and we are ramping up our investments, growing the team & building key content IP. I’ll be working with DC - Divyanshi who was part of the BharatPe founding team) on pretty much everything!
For the 1st time in my career, I had options. And, for the 1st time in my life, I was intentional about the decision - took 3+ months, spoke to 50+ investors and did 100s of hours of research before deciding that I will laterally shift from operating to investing.
😅 It feels strange to be on the “other side of the table” now - but, I’m looking forward to learning from everyone around me! Thank you of being part of the journey!
#startups #india #venturecapital
This post was originally shared by Rahul Mathur on Linkedin.