Micro venture capital is money invested to

seed A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiospe ...

early-stage emerging companies with amounts of finance that is typically less than that of traditional

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

. In contrast to traditional venture capital which is money used to invest in companies looking to fund growth (also referred to as a

Series A round A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

of funding), micro venture capital consists of smaller seed investments, typically between $25K to $500K, in companies that have yet to gain traction. In the United States, the number of micro venture capital firms have continued to rise rapidly over the last 5 years, and have become an important source of finance for

startup companies A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

Principles

Micro venture capital generally share certain characteristics: *Initial investment at the seed stage *Investment on behalf of 3rd party

Limited Partners A limited partnership (LP) is a form of partnership similar to a general partnership except that while a general partnership must have at least two general partners (GPs), a limited partnership must have at least one GP and at least one limited ...

*Most commonly have fund sizes that are less than $50MM Most micro venture capital firms pursue startups that are at their seed stage because of their lower initial cost basis. Though there is a high probability that the majority of these startups will not survive long enough to reach a Series A round of funding, micro venture capital firms are willing to make the investment because startups generally do not require large sums of capital to bring a product to market, and because they believe that it requires only a few successful companies for them to see profitable returns.

Examples

In the United States, there are over 236 micro venture capital firms, with more than half located in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

. Notable examples include SV Angel, which had invested in

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropb ...

(a file hosting service valued at $10 billion as of January 2014), and

Lowercase Capital Lowercase Capital is an American venture capital firm that provided seed and early stage funding for a number of successful startups including Twitter, Twilio, Kickstarter, Uber, Instagram, and Stripe. It raised over $1 billion in capital and s ...

which had invested in

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...

References

{{reflist Venture capital Microfinance

Principles

Examples

See also

References