Avid Ventures has launched its second early-stage fund closing $87 million. This brings the total capital raised by the company to over $165 million. The Avid Fund II will back exceptional founders building transformative software and fintech companies from Seed to Series B stages.
This VC fund comes close on the heels of similar funds such as Costanoa Ventures and SET Ventures.
Who invested in the fund?
The VC firm welcomed new institutional investors, including The Mellon Foundation, Hall Capital Partners, Vintage Investment Partners, UJA-Federation of New York, Soka University, and CM Wealth Advisors, among others. Returning Fund I investors include Foundry, General Catalyst, and multi-billion dollar philanthropic family offices. It was also backed by leading investors and executives such as Brian Singerman (Partner, Founders Fund), Rob Hayes (Partner, First Round), and Susan Sobbott (former multi-decade American Express leader).
Investment strategy
Avid Ventures follows a differentiated Toehold/Double Down investment strategy. It invests between $500k and $2 million in collaborative Toehold cheques at the Seed through Series A, and up to $10 million Double Down cheques at the Series B stage.
The VC firm also serves as a Strategic Finance Advisor to its companies, developing an insider perspective and earning the ability to Double Down into portfolio winners.
In addition to the investment, Avid Ventures develops close relationships with portfolio founders by serving as an extension of their teams across strategic finance and business development. It offers continuous support across strategic growth modelling and KPI dashboard building, warm customer and partner introductions, hand-picked advisor introductions, vetted talent recruiting, as well as fundraising advice and introductions to top-tier investors.
Who is behind the VC?
Based in New York City, Avid Ventures was founded in 2020 by Managing Partner Addie Lerner, who spent the prior decade investing at General Catalyst, General Atlantic, and Goldman Sachs. Since then, Lerner has been partnered with Founding Investor Tali (Vogelstein) Miller, formerly an early-stage investor at Bessemer Venture Partners.
As a part of expanding its team, Irene Gendelman, a former private equity investor at Silver Lake with prior investment banking experience at Evercore, joined the investment team. Dan Deutsch also joined the VC in early 2024 as Vice President of Finance to lead its Finance and Operations functions alongside Allie Yurkevich, Avid’s Operations Manager.
“We are excited to continue to back a new wave of visionary founders with this fresh pool of capital and scaled team. Given our combined experience from General Catalyst, General Atlantic, Bessemer, and Silver Lake, we are confident we have the right team in place to identify and partner with top founders, while further delivering our bespoke Strategic Finance value-add,” said Avid Ventures’ Managing Partner Addie Lerner. “We are grateful for the support from our returning Fund I investors and are delighted to build long-term relationships with this new group of Fund II partners who are proven backers of emerging managers.”
Portfolio of investments
Already, the Avid Fund II has completed five initial investments in various sectors, including payments, insurance, gaming, and data analytics.
It has backed 20 companies in its $72 million Fund I, including Nova Credit, Alloy, Coast, Clara, Oyster, Basis, and Thatch. To date, Avid has made meaningful Double Down investments in Alloy and Coast, which each represent concentrated, double-digit percentages of Fund I.
Avid has also invested in and maintained a close relationship with Lerner’s General Catalyst portfolio company Rapyd through a series of SPVs.
“The Avid team has been incredible, supporting Coast with conviction from just after our Seed through our recent Series B,” said Daniel Simon, founder and CEO of Coast, one of Avid’s largest Fund I positions. “They are veteran analysts and investors, and have been critical with the strategic aspects of building our financial models to the tactical hustling of doing deals with some of our largest fleet customers. They consistently feed us leads – including our very first design partner, which was a plumbing business. I’ve invited Addie to all the board meetings because I deeply value her perspective as an investor and a friend, and consider the Avid team to truly be part of the Coast team.”
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Addie and Tali since the very inception of Avid and at our prior company Nova Credit,” said Nicky Goulimis, co-founder and CEO of Avid Fund II portfolio company Tunic, and co-founder and former COO of Avid Fund I company Nova Credit. “They were the first investors we called about our new idea — and they provided invaluable intel but also hustle to help us make this business a reality. They consistently give us real feedback and real help, on everything from cap table dynamics to hiring. We believe Avid is defining the modern operating model for VC and we are thrilled to get to partner with them!”
“I have enjoyed working with Addie since she first invested in Rapyd’s Series B when she was at General Catalyst,” said Arik Shtilman, co-founder and CEO of Rapyd. “She has been instrumental to our growth from an early-stage company to our current position as a global industry leader. She can do “magic” with spreadsheets and CFO-like data analysis, and has been an invaluable board observer for over five years. Avid can be worth an additional number of multipliers in a founder’s next round, and I strongly recommend any founder find a way to get Avid involved.”
