Seattle venture capital firm Founders’ Co-op announced its sixth fund totaling $50 million, matching its previous fund’s size, to support another group of early-stage technology startups.
Chris DeVore, founding managing partner at Founders’ Co-op, indicated approximately 80-90% of investments will support Pacific Northwest founders, typically at pre-product or pre-revenue stages.
Established in 2008, Founders’ Co-op was an early supporter of billion-dollar companies including Remitly, Outreach, and Auth0.
The firm maintains its core strategy of backing ambitious technical founding teams in its region and helping them build companies that subsequently raise capital elsewhere.
“Our strategy has always been to be the best first-check investor in our chosen market, not to grow our AUM and wind up competing with the money-center investors our founders need for the next leg of the journey,” DeVore wrote in a blog post.
He added, regarding the fund size: “It’s not bigger, because as they say in venture, ‘your fund size is your strategy.’”
The new fund will support approximately 30 companies. Average initial investments will range from $1 million to $1.5 million. The firm targets 10% ownership at first investment. It does not invest in specific verticals, instead emphasizing entrepreneurs.
“We’re lucky to be alive in the greatest era of compounding technological advancement in human history,” DeVore wrote in the post. “And we expect that acceleration to continue. But no moment in the hype cycle, up to and including the current LLM wave, matters more than the people we back and the problems they choose to solve.”
Founders’ Co-op is now based inside Foundations, the new hub for Seattle-area entrepreneurs established last year by Aviel Ginzburg, general partner at Founders’ Co-op. It has quickly become a gathering point for the city’s startup community and an advantage for Founders’ Co-op.
“Foundations is Aviel’s love letter to the local founder community, so it’s not a fund project, but by making Seattle a better place to be a founder, and helping the strongest and most committed founders connect and share with each other, it has absolutely put compelling new investment opportunities in our path,” DeVore stated.
Asked recently if the firm is still optimistic about Seattle, DeVore stated: “like you wouldn’t believe.”
Some of the firm’s more recent investments include land use data startup Aarden AI, business automation AI company Logic, and internal help desk startup Ravenna.
DeVore indicated one team “particularly worth watching at the moment” is RowZero, a Seattle startup that sells spreadsheet software and raised $10 million in a seed round earlier this year.
Most limited partners in the new fund are returning investors, with a few new supporters from outside the region who “believe in small funds and the PNW as a differentiated and underserved market,” DeVore stated.
Founders’ Co-op raised $50 million for its fifth fund in 2021 and $25 million for its fourth fund in 2018.
DeVore previously led the Techstars Seattle accelerator but stepped down in 2019 to focus on Founders’ Co-op full time. Ginzburg, a Simply Measured co-founder who joined the firm in 2015 and became general partner in 2018, was managing director of Amazon’s Alexa Accelerator from 2017 to 2020.
Ginzburg launched Foundations following the surprising closure of Techstars Seattle last year.
Other Seattle-area firms raising new funds include Ascend, Flying Fish, and Graham & Walker. Longtime firm Madrona raised $770 million for its new funds earlier this year.
The $50 million fund size representing strategic constraint rather than limitation, with DeVore’s decision to match rather than exceed the previous fund demonstrating deliberate philosophy that larger capital pools force firms to write bigger checks competing against major coastal venture firms rather than maintaining focus on earliest-stage regional investments where Founders’ Co-op possesses competitive advantages.
The 80-90% Pacific Northwest investment concentration reflecting strong regional commitment, with the overwhelming majority of capital staying local rather than pursuing nationwide deal flow demonstrating that Founders’ Co-op believes the Seattle area generates sufficient high-quality founding teams to absorb nearly all available capital without geographic diversification.
The pre-product and pre-revenue stage focus targeting maximum risk-reward opportunities, with investments occurring before startups demonstrate product-market fit or generate revenue enabling Founders’ Co-op to acquire substantial equity stakes at lower valuations compensating for the elevated failure risk that earliest-stage ventures represent.
The 2008 founding placing Founders’ Co-op among Seattle’s established venture firms, with the 17-year operating history spanning multiple technology cycles from mobile app revolution through cloud computing to current artificial intelligence wave providing institutional knowledge about what enables Pacific Northwest startups to succeed nationally.
The Remitly, Outreach, and Auth0 billion-dollar exits validating the investment strategy, with multiple “unicorn” outcomes from portfolio companies demonstrating that backing ambitious regional technical teams at their earliest stages can produce extraordinary returns justifying the high-risk early-stage investment approach.
The “best first-check investor” positioning articulating competitive differentiation, with DeVore’s framing emphasizing that Founders’ Co-op doesn’t attempt competing on fund size, brand recognition, or value-added services against Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, or other Sand Hill Road giants but instead excels at being founders’ first institutional capital source.
The assets under management growth avoidance reflecting anti-scaling philosophy, with the explicit rejection of becoming larger fund manager demonstrating countercultural venture capital strategy where success means maintaining focus and advantages rather than expanding into larger deals where competitive dynamics fundamentally differ.
The “your fund size is your strategy” venture maxim explaining the unchanged capital raising, with the industry truism recognizing that $50 million funds must deploy capital differently than $500 million funds requiring distinct investment approaches, ownership targets, and exit expectations that larger funds cannot pursue without generating insufficient returns.
The 30-company portfolio target calculating to concentrated approach, with approximately $1.67 million average investment per company enabling meaningful ownership stakes and hands-on support contrasting with spray-and-pray strategies where firms make dozens of tiny bets hoping a few succeed without providing substantive assistance.
The $1-1.5 million initial check size reflecting current seed-stage norms, with the investment range typical of institutional seed rounds in 2025 where companies have progressed beyond friends-and-family financing but haven’t yet achieved the traction justifying Series A rounds from growth-stage investors.
The 10% ownership target at first investment establishing baseline economics, with the double-digit stake providing sufficient exposure that successful exits generate meaningful fund returns while leaving room for follow-on investors to acquire significant ownership without excessively diluting founders who ultimately need to maintain enough equity to stay motivated.
The sector-agnostic investment approach prioritizing people over markets, with the refusal to specialize in specific verticals like fintech, healthcare, or enterprise software reflecting belief that exceptional founders identify and solve important problems regardless of industry creating better investment opportunities than attempting to predict which sectors will produce the decade’s winners.
The “greatest era of compounding technological advancement” characterization expressing DeVore’s techno-optimism, with the sweeping statement about human history’s most transformative period reflecting venture capitalists’ fundamental belief that exponential technology improvements create unprecedented entrepreneurial opportunities justifying continued startup investment despite periodic market corrections.
The LLM wave reference acknowledging current artificial intelligence hype, with the mention of large language models like ChatGPT demonstrating awareness of the latest technology trend while the “no moment matters more than the people” qualification suggesting that successful investing requires looking past temporary enthusiasms to identify enduring entrepreneur quality.
The Foundations hub co-location providing deal flow advantages, with the physical proximity to Seattle’s entrepreneur gathering space creating informal networking opportunities where Founders’ Co-op partners naturally encounter promising founders before they formally begin fundraising giving the firm advantaged access to compelling investment opportunities.
Aviel Ginzburg’s “love letter to the local founder community” characterization framing Foundations as altruistic rather than commercial, with the positioning attempting to present the entrepreneur hub as community-building project rather than lead generation mechanism for Founders’ Co-op though the acknowledged “compelling new investment opportunities” reveal the obvious business benefits.
The “like you wouldn’t believe” Seattle optimism expressing DeVore’s unshakeable regional conviction, with the emphatic response to questions about continued Pacific Northwest enthusiasm demonstrating that despite remote work enabling geographic arbitrage and San Francisco’s gravitational pull, Founders’ Co-op believes Seattle remains exceptional startup ecosystem.
The Aarden AI, Logic, and Ravenna recent investments spanning diverse applications, with the portfolio companies addressing land use data analysis, business process automation, and internal help desk support demonstrating the sector-agnostic strategy where Founders’ Co-op backs strong teams solving varied problems rather than clustering investments around particular thesis.
The RowZero “particularly worth watching” designation providing portfolio company endorsement, with DeVore’s public highlighting of the spreadsheet software startup that raised $10 million seed round offering market signal about which Founders’ Co-op investments insiders view as having exceptional potential beyond the typical portfolio company trajectory.
The returning limited partner base indicating investor satisfaction, with most capital coming from existing fund investors rather than requiring extensive new fundraising suggesting that Founders’ Co-op’s historical returns justify continued commitments without needing to convince skeptical new institutional allocators about the Pacific Northwest investment thesis.
