- Former Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, partner Michele Griffin has joined Lightning Capital.
- She will spearhead a new $100 million ‘AI ripple effects’ fund, which the firm has just launched.
- Lightning has a multi-fund structure to offer short- to long-term liquidity to limited partners, or LPs, and a hands-on approach to managing its portfolio.
Lightning Capital has launched a new $100 million early-stage fund and brought in former Andreessen Horowitz partner Michele Griffin to lead it.
As general partner and COO, Griffin will help to blend a mega-fund mentality she learned on the East Coast with the agility of an emerging manager.
Lightning Capital, founded in 2018, is raising Venture Fund II, targeting Seed and Series A cheques of $1 to $5 million across around 10 to 15 portfolio companies.
It will invest in “AI ripple effects”, meaning startups that are building for AI’s second-order effects as it moves from experimentation to deployment, reshaping industries, infrastructure, and work. For example, companies that make the workforce feel excited and prepared for potential future changes, rather than displaced.
Griffin joins via a merger with Premier GTM, a go-to-market advisory she founded after leaving a16z, where she helped build the firm’s operating platform, or essentially its portfolio support functions. Premier GTM has advised VC firms including Craft Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners.
“I definitely didn’t have to [merge], because my business was going exceptionally well, but I felt like there was a massive opportunity for us to bring that skill set together and for me to finally invest,” Griffin tells Tech Funding News.
She was always interested in investing, she adds, but it’s not typical for an operating partner to move into an investment role at mega-funds “even though we’re so hands-on and have such a great lens.”
Griffin says she sits on both sides of the equation when it comes to go-to-market strategies. “I can see whether a company can actually sell, and I know the enterprise landscape well enough to spot gaps they don’t even know they have yet, but will,” she adds.
A hands-on approach
Her remit spans Fund II and broader operations. She will also focus on bringing in top advisors from her network to support portfolio companies through their growth.
“At these mega firms, they have people on staff for every business-building question. Emerging managers can’t afford that,” she said. “What I’ve built, and what I bring to Lightning, is a platform and network of ‘Avengers’ we can deploy into our companies – the best people, into the biggest gaps, very quickly.”
For example, she has brought in a government contracts team to help founders at a discounted cost, and plugged in specialists to market talent leaders to build sales teams.
Lightning’s two co-founding general partners, CEO Jason Albanese and CFO Jock Percy, also come from operating backgrounds, having both built and sold companies in the past.
Venture capitalists tend to say that they invest in the best teams. Indeed, “it’s a cliché for a reason,” Albanese tells TFN.
“Execution is 80, 90% of the success of companies, as opposed to their ideas,” Albanese says, adding that a key part of the firm’s model is helping founders let go of being a “jack of all trades” and build out a strong leadership team instead. Part of the trio’s sell is founder coaching, they aim to teach founders how to grow their businesses without burning out and to feel comfortable delegating.
The now-three GPs are split between San Francisco, Miami, and New York, meaning their exposure skews towards those markets. They do have a global remit, however, including Europe.
The new fund sits within a multi-fund structure that includes a secondaries and treasury strategy, aimed at LPs that Albanese describes as “institutional light”. It includes family offices and corporates looking for exposure to venture capital with more flexible liquidity options than traditional VC.
Indeed, it comes as venture capital faces a liquidity crisis. This could ease when hotly-anticipated IPOs from the likes of SpaceX and Anthropic take place. Lightning considers its short term liquidity, medium term liquidity, and longer-term liquidity options, which are possible due to the split of its funds, as an edge. “It’s a very powerful option” for LPs, Albanese says.
The partners did not disclose how much of the fund has been raised.
