By Savanna Maloney, August 29, 2024
For this deep dive, we spoke to Jack Crawford, Founding General Partner of Impact Venture Capital.
Tell us about your firm. What makes it different?
Impact Venture Capital invests in seed-stage artificial intelligence (AI) companies. Our investment experience in AI since our first fund in 2016 makes us a first mover. Following our historical success in managing the venture portfolio for Oracle, we realized the importance of AI for corporations and began gathering market insights from our broad network of relationships with corporate venture groups and corporate M&A teams. Like the internet transforming every business and consumer segment, our view is that AI is rapidly evolving as the most significant innovation of our lifetime with advancements in machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision.
Being operators prior to Impact Venture Capital with corporate careers in the tech space at Oracle, Sprint, AT&T, NTT Communications, and NetApp makes us one of the most experienced teams in collaborations with corporate investors. Our portfolio from our first two funds was built by identifying visionary founders deploying AI technology in key industries like security, finance, and digital health.
We primarily differentiate our firm through our deep collaboration with a broad network of corporate investors who have made over $500M of follow-on investments in our portfolio companies. These corporate investors serve as research partners, customers, and potential acquirers for our portfolio companies. By acting like scouts for deals strategically relevant by stage and industry sector, we have developed active working relationships with more than 100 corporate investors. The market insights provided by these corporate investors have elevated our investing IQ at the seed level by enhancing our investment selection process, mitigating the risk of seed investments, and accelerating the path of our portfolio companies to successful exits.
What defines your portfolio?
AI applied to security, finance, and digital health defines our portfolio with a particular focus on deep tech and software platforms. As AI applications are created with a focus on data management, cybersecurity, and process automation, we find smart passionate founders making bold moves to create market-leading companies.
We support our portfolio companies in raising subsequent rounds of funding from corporate venture groups as the key element of our investment strategy. Alongside corporate co-investors like Intel, Zoom, Qualcomm, Applied Materials, SK Hynix, Yamaha, Kubota, and many others, we are working to add valuable market insight, management and board talent, and customers in support of our portfolio companies.
Our access to corporate investors empowers startups with resources for product development, accelerates their growth with new customers, and helps take advantage of market tailwinds toward an eventual exit while avoiding some of the obstacles in otherwise challenging industries.
Tell us about the current VC landscape in your geography/region.
With Impact Venture Capital team members in California and New York, we believe these two ecosystems are leading the way with innovations in AI. Given the combination of innovation from California, financial markets of New York, and world class universities in both states, we expect these venture ecosystems to continue thriving.
Although our geographic focus includes companies located anywhere in the US, we are particularly excited about the innovation economy in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, and New York City. Since our active collaboration with corporate investors is not bound by geography, we have the flexibility to invest in relevant startups wherever they might be, and by honing in on stage and industry relevant deals, our corporate partners can help provide insights on where best to invest.
What are the benefits of being an NVCA member?
We firmly believe in the positive global impact of the US venture capital industry. The NVCA has assembled the most significant and influential network of venture capital firms and corporate investors in the world in a collaborative community. By investing and collaborating alongside the more than 50 corporate venture groups who are NVCA members into smart entrepreneurs, we can help build incredibly valuable companies that will solve some of the biggest challenges the world faces today.
Being part of a network of corporate and venture capital peers who believe in this effort, share best practices, and hold each other to a high level of venture investment standards is a no-brainer. Since joining the NVCA in 2016, our ability to collaborate and help guide policy in support of capital formation and innovation in the US has been critical for all key stakeholders in the venture ecosystem.
What’s ahead for your firm?
After a recent initial close of Impact Venture Capital’s “Fund III”, we’ve evolved from our initial launch to become a powerhouse of seasoned, well-connected seed investors, boasting one of the most expansive and engaged corporate investor networks in the industry. We continue to benchmark the best-practices of top VC firms with a focus on systematic sourcing and selection, curated introductions to customers and investors, and the identification of exit paths at each stage of the company.
Our collaborations with corporate investors will continue to expand including our “Impact TV” corporate venture video series, our “CVC Squads” focus groups, and “Knowledge Drop” learning sessions. Finally, we are committed to deepening our active collaborations with the global corporate network of investors within the Kauffman Fellows group and engaging with the NVCA’s exclusive “CVC Working Group” sessions to drive forward innovative investment strategies and industry leadership.
