What $50M in New Capital Means for Entrepreneurs

Today we’re announcing the closing of our $50M Fund II for KdT Ventures. With the announcement, one important aspect is obvious: with this fresh capital, we will double down on supporting the earliest stages of a new wave of scientist-entrepreneurs fusing data, engineering, and science to solve previously intractable problems.

While we’re excited about closing this fund, we’re more excited to get down to work. With that in mind, we wanted to lay out some salient points about what this fund represents for scientist-entrepreneurs:

• KdT is not moving upmarket and will continue to be a true seed (or pre-seed) firm. KdT will continue to fill the void between SBIR and NIH grants and traditional Series A venture capital. We want to be your first institutional capital. We thrive when bold ideas are at their messiest, earliest stages.

• KdT typically writes checks between $750K-$1.5M. We aim to collaborate with others on each transaction, as life is better when deals are a win-win AND non-overlapping networks are key to venture success. This generally takes two forms: we lead/co-lead, syndicating with our broader group of co-investors or fill out an existing syndicate.

We generally ascribe to the two rule system that Peter Thiel previously described as: “First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. (Even quite successful companies usually succeed on a more humble scale.) This leads to rule number two: because rule number one is so restrictive, there can’t be any other rules.” With this perspective, we’ve sized our fund (and investment size), to provide for maximum flexibility. Whether a conformational or a linear epitope, we can design the corresponding and congruent paratrope.

• Despite the above general guidelines, KdT can flex up in financings. With more capital at our disposal, we can be agile and write larger checks when appropriate. This provides more flexibility for our portfolio companies as they think about round composition and internal v. external funding dynamics. When our management teams want or need support from existing investors, we can now provide that support in a more meaningful way moving forward.

• Our longevity as a firm was just extended. We’re going to be around to support you throughout the journey. The Seed ecosystem is fluid. But following our highly successful debut fund coupled with this new wave of capital, we will be here to fund frontier biology and chemistry for the foreseeable future. Plus we all left our original career tracks to work with you — we are entrepreneurs too.

So as the definition and boundary of what is science continues to permeate, we could not be more excited to learn from and alongside you.

-Team KdT