The fundraising environment is challenging for emerging managers, defined as VC firms raising their first through third time.
But Katie Jacobs Stanton, a former head of media at Twitter who founded Moxxie Ventures in 2019, said that she had a much easier time than she was expecting when raising funds for her third time.
Moxxie, which invests in pre-seed and seed startups, announced on Tuesday that it closed a $95 million third fund, surpassing its target of $85 million.
When the firm started fundraising, Stanton and general partner Alex Roetter, who met Stanton when he was an SVP of engineering at Twitter, told limited partners that they don’t intend to start deploying the capital until 2025. Luckily for them, their LPs, which include funds-of-funds Cendana Capital and Accolade Partners, the Nature Conservatory, the outsourced CIO Global Endowment Management, and several universities, were eager to back the firm. Cendana founder Michael Kim described Stanton’s network as one of the deepest and widest among seed stage investors.
“It didn’t take us as long as we thought to fundraise. We’re really happy about that, but you never know,” Stanton said.
Although the five-year-old firm still hasn’t realized any meaningful exits, Stanton’s pre-Moxxie personal investing record through an investment collective #Angels, she co-founded with other female Twitter executives and alums, shows her investment prowess. She previously backed Carta, Coinbase and Airtable.
The success of Moxxie’s portfolio companies has been more modest so far. When asked to highlight some companies, Stanton has pointed to startups like Certn, an identity verification company that last year raised an $80 million Series B, and Spellbook, an AI co-pilot for drafting legal contracts, which in January scored a $20 million Series A led by Innovia.
Moxxie, whose name was inspired by the synonym for courage with an extra X for the female chromosome, has been on a mission of investing in underrepresented founders since its debut $25 million fund. Today, about a third of the firm’s portfolio companies are led by female founders and about a half have been founded by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), according to Stanton.
While the firm considers itself a generalist investor, it gravitates towards backing companies in healthtech, climate tech, SaaS, and AI applications, and has recently invested in a couple of robotics startups, including Jacobi Robotics, which is developing an AI-powered motion planning technology. Moxxie’s median check size is $1.5 million, and the firm aims to acquire roughly 10% of each startup when making its initial investment.
Stanton, who worked in the Obama administration during his first term, continues to be vocal about politics, the 2024 Presidential election, and how VCs are being more public about their political preferences.
She said that the current political transparency in the investing community is a good thing. In a world where capital remains a commodity, it can help founders decide who to choose as their backers because it shows “who can add value and who has values.”
