Afore Capital

Thrilled to be closing out a spectacular year at Afore. We have been laser-focused on leading pre-seed rounds for exceptional founders since 2016, and now almost nine years later, pre-seed is more popular than ever. In fact, it was the only category of venture which saw a net increase in funding volume between 2021-2023. As we reflect on 2024, we're proud of our portfolio and team for achieving some exciting things, a few highlights: 👉 $300+ million in follow-on capital raised by portfolio companies, from firms like Benchmark, Accel, General Catalyst, Lightspeed, Khosla, and many others 👉 Successful acquisition of our Fund I portfolio company Kubecost (cloud cost monitoring) by IBM, congrats to Webb Brown and Ajay Tripathy 👉 Hosted our 7th and biggest Pre-Seed Summit yet with 300+ attendees and keynote speakers Apoorva Mehta, Frederic Kerrest, and Aaron Levie (the founders of Instacart, Okta, and Box) 👉 18 new founders-in-residence investments this year as we continue to grow out the program and support people at the earliest stages of their company-building journeys 👉 Welcomed 2 new team members: Joseph Cardini (investing team, fmr Antler / Okta) and Jared Luttrell (VP of Finance, fmr Correlation / KPMG) 👉 Started a community for co-founder-matching / placing top operators into jobs, achieving a 75% open rate and facilitated 300+ introductions in the first 3 months Stay turned for a big announcement from the Afore team very soon. Excited for the year ahead - and happy holidays 🎉

This is the pitch competition that I wish I had when I was a student at the University of Waterloo! I remember 10 years ago pitching Velocity for $25k and now Gaurav Jain Anamitra Banerji are offering up to $500k and an all-expenses paid trip to San Francisco and face time with the entire investment team of one of the top pre-seed firms. This is one of the best opportunity for a student and I definitely recommend applying. No idea is too early! Great to see Waterloo alumni supporting future Waterloo founders!

🚨 Calling all University of Waterloo founders & aspiring entrepreneurs! Our virtual pitch competition is accepting applicants on a rolling basis - if you need a quick study break before finals, take 10 minutes to pitch us your idea :) ✈️ Winners get flown to San Francisco to meet our full investment team 🏆 One reserved spot in our next Founders in Residence cohort for a Waterloo team 💰 Chance at up to $500K in funding Yes, we really mean ANY stage - whether you're: Still brainstorming your idea Building your first MVP Pre-product or pre-revenue We invest in founders at the earliest stages because we believe great companies start with great ideas. APPLY HERE: https://lnkd.in/gFf_h8gV

Today I'm happy to announce that Palette is coming out of stealth At Palette, we're building the next generation of web performance monitoring. It features: - Production JavaScript profiling - First-class interaction performance metrics - Chrome Devtools-like perf debugging experience Notion used Palette to reduce typing latency by 15%. We raised from Afore Capital, hired a small team, and are starting to onboard companies off our waitlist. Follow me to stay updated on what we're building.

Great chat with Gaurav Jain the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of ⁠Afore Capital⁠! Afore is a $300M fund to support product-oriented founders at the very earliest stage (pre-seed). Their sweet spot is the $1-3M round, where they can lead the pre-seed round as an institutional investor alongside high-value angels. They look for companies that are product-led and are built by founders with non-obvious insights and infectious ambitions. Afore is an investor in Neo Financial (where I used to work) and BenchSci (Liran Belenzon past guest). We discussed... -Gaurav's journey as an immigrant. -The co-op program at Waterloo was pivotal in shaping his career. -Founding Polar Mobile provided his first exposure to venture capital. -Afore Capital was created to address the gap in pre-seed funding. -Key traits of successful founders. -Investing in founders is more about the team than the idea. -Afore's investment process. -The importance of AI and the future of investing.

Excited to be working with the Meta team to bring agentic AI to legal work. Check out how we leverage #Llama models to deliver cutting-edge AI securely and transparently to legal organizations. https://lnkd.in/eEAJ7-y3 Vecflow #Legaltech #Meta #Llama

Thrilled about the announcement of our portfolio company New Lantern's Series A round today, led by Benchmark It has been incredible to watch Shiva Suri's rapid progression since his initial pre-seed round, and we're even more excited about what's to come 🎉 https://lnkd.in/dWfyDGKj

It has been a pleasure to have partnered with Keychain early, and we're excited about the announcement of their $15m Series A today valuing the company at $250m+ Keychain is building the platform for CPG manufacturing, and is being used by some of the largest retailers and brands in the world https://lnkd.in/deuxAJAi

The final countdown is on to Afore’s 7th Annual Pre-Seed Summit! Pre-Seed has always been our bread and butter at Afore. We love to help founders figure out how to navigate the challenges that come along with launching a company for the first time. When we see risk, we run towards it, not away from it. That’s why operate programs like Founders in Residence (FIR), designed to support teams who are still actively ideating. At the Summit, we’ll have the opportunity to hear from seasoned entrepreneurs like Apoorva Mehta, Frederic Kerrest, and Aaron Levie. Something they all have in common? They spent a lot of time testing different ideas, navigating pivots, and pushing through challenging market conditions before they hit it big. All the best companies start out hacking their way through the ideation maze, just like our FIRs! The in-person event is at full capacity, but you can register to watch the live broadcast here: https://lnkd.in/gu-phqyc If you're a founder interested in learning more about FIR, check out our site here: https://afore.vc/residence

🚨 Calling all University of Waterloo founders & aspiring entrepreneurs! We're hosting a virtual pitch competition for the Waterloo community with some huge opportunities up for grabs: ✈️ Winners get flown to San Francisco to meet our full investment team 🏆 One reserved spot in our next Founders in Residence cohort for a Waterloo team 💰 Chance at up to $500K in funding Yes, we really mean ANY stage - whether you're: Still brainstorming your idea Building your first MVP Pre-product or pre-revenue Take 10 minutes to pitch your vision. We invest in founders at the earliest stages because we believe great companies start with great ideas. APPLY HERE: https://lnkd.in/gFf_h8gV