I find myself explaining what we do at CoVenture more as our model evolves. This post is meant to compliment and expand on my original post on Joining CoVenture; as such, I’ll skip the preamble here.
At CoVenture, we do two things together with and for startup companies:
- We write software in exchange for equity, and
- We invest cash as a part of a financing round.
As a rule, we do these two things simultaneously. That is, we invest cash into companies for which we develop software, and vice-versa. We often get involved with a founding team and a newly-formed startup, but have also invested (software and cash) in companies that have already raised more than $1 million in capital, launched one or more products, and/or been through a well-known accelerator. I’ll explain more about our software and cash investments a bit more below.
Writing software includes web and native mobile (Android and iOS) applications, both front- and back-end. We’re also experimenting with hybrid mobile frameworks for appropriate use cases. Typical projects involve the first version of a new product, a new version of an existing product, or a mobile version of a web product. Note that we do not own the IP associated with the software we build; our portfolio companies do.
Cash investments are typically $25,000 as a part of a larger financing round. This might be a first “friends & family” financing, a pre-seed or a seed round. In selected cases, we will invest ahead of a new fundraising round and/or can help founders with their fundraising processes. We are flexible about the financing instrument used, whether equity, convertible note, or safe.
With help from our portfolio company founders, we continue to evolve our activities and preferences on both fronts. As such, I imagine I’ll continue to add posts on this topic over time.
