while sequoias And as the Andreessen Horowitzes of the world grow in size, microfunds increase their influence on the industry, and their influence on venture capital can go in the opposite direction.
Whether you define micro-funds as under $50 million or under $25 million, these are funds that really help the future of the industry. They help venture capital centers take off, bring expertise and specialization to market, and fill a role in the venture capital ecosystem that large companies simply cannot.
They can also be credited with getting off the ground many of the big unicorns and public companies we know today, because many of them received their first dollars from micro-funds: Robinhood (Elefund), Coinbase (Initialized Capital, which was at the time a $7 million investment in funding) and Flexport (Anorak Ventures).
I’ve written about the rise of micro-funds in the US before, but when Sweetwood Ventures contacted me a month ago about its new funding strategy to support Nano – under $15 million – in Israel, I was there. He crawled. I didn’t realize the boom in microfunds would extend beyond the US market, but Sweetwood general partner Amit Kurz told me it’s something he’s been following for a few years.
