Invite us on your adventure
We invest up to $100k in pre-seed founders.
Thesis
Pre-seed investing is a ticket for a ringside view to the adventures and journeys of the some of the smartest and most driven people. As founders and operators, we love hanging out and spending time with founders who are solving big problems. As builders, we are excited about two phenomenon happening around us that is creating amazing opportunities to build iconic companies and products.
In the past 20 years, tech companies have built insanely large consumer products or B2B SaaS aimed largely at other tech companies or technical problems. The next wave will build applications for the rest of the economy - industrials, transportation, services, utilities, government. We believe that the next 20 years of innovation will dwarf the last 20 years. The intersection of hardware and software, Vertical-SaaS, and diffusion of tailored AI applications are all trends leading in that direction.
Additionally, AI's growth is remarkable, with GPU advancements outpacing Moore's Law and the rapid scaling of large AI models. We anticipate an extraordinary pace of progress in the next 5 to 10 years.
If you are building something that intersects our view of the world - reach out to us.
Team
We are four friends from Stanford. We bonded over our love for entrepreneurship, sports (marathon runners, skiing etc.), and adventure (mountains). We are full time founders and operators and enjoy pre-seed investing to be around other amazing founders.
Rish - co-founder at Spot AI (backed by Bessemer, Redpoint, Scale); ex-Samsara (IoT unicorn); co-founder at Letsintern (India’s largest internship platform); 6x return on angel investments
Andrew - Chief of Staff to Eric Schmidt; ex-U.S. Foreign Service Officer; ex-Special Assistant to Secretary of State John Kerry; co-invests with former co-workers at McKinsey and Google X
Geoff - co-founder at Spoken (YC’22), founder of Cabrio Taxi (exit to Pedicab United); private investor alongside GV, Redpoint, Bessemer, Serena Ventures, NIH; executive coach to CEOs
Marcin - founder Good Morning Ventures (invested early in 20+ companies; $1.5B+ valuation);ex-Marketing Wizards (8-figure exit to Dentsu); co-founding investor at Miesna Paczka
The Explorer Fund Portfolio
