About Us

Strategy

Building great companies is your passion. Investing at the earliest stage and helping entrepreneurs realize their dreams is ours.

SoftTech VC is an early stage venture capital firm managing seed stage funds, SoftTech VC II and SoftTech VC III. Our funds are backed by a mix of institutional and private investors. At SoftTech, we have consistently invested in 20 new opportunities a year.

Our founder and managing partner Jeff Clavier launched SoftTech VC in 2004, making the original 20+ investments (our non-traditional ‘Fund I’) as a business angel, investing his own capital, time and experience. As one of the original ‘super angels’ in the valley, Jeff developed SoftTech VC’s implementation of the micro-vc concept which has become so popular.

In 2007, we launched SoftTech VC II, a 15M seed fund focusing on the consumer Internet space, aiming at investing in 60+ companies over 3 years. In 2011, our $55M SoftTech VC III successor fund made its debut. Our principals have been involved in over 100 startups as investors, advisors or founders. SoftTech VC has seen 20+ exits, and our companies have raised over $800M in follow-on financing. Today, SoftTech VC is among the most active investors in early stage consumer Internet and mobile startups.

Learn about our investment focus »

Our “THREE ASSES” Rule

A smart-ass team with a kick-ass product in a big ass market. You will find this quote at the back of Jeff's business card, as it summarizes the three things that we are looking for in an opportunity: fantastic entrepreneurs, a great product and a market that is big enough to create/grow or disrupt. But to be clear:

Entrepreneurs > Product > Market

When you factor all the ingredients (and the bit of luck) that are necessary to lead a startup from inception to a successful outcome - however big or small, the Founders make up more than half of these. But we have learnt the hard way that great entrepreneurs can come up with sucky products in non-markets. That's why we are forcing ourselves to look for these three components in most opportunities SoftTech invests in.

If you get a chance to read Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup by our good friends Brad Feld and David Cohen - a fantastic compilation of entrepreneurship tips and tricks - you will see Jeff's chapter on The Three Asses Rules (we're still amazed the tag line made it through the editing process by the way).