Early-stage startups focused on business-to-business business have another source of capital to draw on. Monta Vista Capital secured $48 million in capital commitments for its third fund, its largest to date, to support B2B startups.
The Silicon Valley firm was founded by Venktesh Shukla, who began investing at the angel stage as part of the TiE Silicon Valley business group, and also served as former president. He is the current president of TiE Global.
Venktesh Shukla, Monta Vista Capital, venture capital
Shukla and his group of partners, including General Partner Roger Krakoff, have experience in the areas of ai, cloud, security and data. They take a team approach to investing and often do so in the pre-revenue stage. Monta Vista targets startups in infrastructure, vertical SaaS and digital transformation of industries, such as mining and textiles.
“We have these deep domain experts that we trust for their diligence and judgment before we make the investment,” Shukla told TechCrunch. “And unlike most seed funds, which typically have a one-man fund of this size, we believe investing is a team sport. We made a decision collectively to have the agility of a small fund, but all the resources of a very large fund.”
Also distinguishing Monta Vista is that the company does not raise capital from institutional investors, but instead leverages a large network of 65 individual investors. Shukla calls the network the company’s “secret superpower,” and that this network gives the company its deal flow, diligence, and portfolio company support. Monta Vista has now raised $72.8 million across the three funds.
Although the third fund is $48 million, securing part of that capital is exclusive. Monta Vista made only 12 investments from its second fund and plans to invest in 15 companies with the third fund. That said, the company will contribute between $1 million and $2 million to each company, Shukla said. This year, Monta Vista is on track to invest in about five companies.
Previous investments include marketing technology company Captiv8, customs clearance company KlearNow and Eridan, a mobile infrastructure company.
Monta Vista also had some successes from its previous funds, including API security company Cequence Security, which raised a Series C in 2021, and Tekion, an automotive retail platform that announced a $250 million Series D, also in 2021. Another is Nyansa, a VMWare acquired company that manages the mobility performance of enterprise wireless networks in 2020.
“It’s been a fun experience,” Shukla said. “Even with all the pessimism that prevails, the train of innovation does not stop. Whether times are good or bad, good entrepreneurs have very compelling ideas, and that is our goal: to find those compelling ideas.”
