What we got wrong about vertical AI in 2024
We passed on four companies for the same reason, and three of them are now doing well. Here is the mistake we made and the question we ask instead.
Early-stage venture capital
Capital for the long build.
Rifatela backs technical founders at pre-seed and seed. We write the first cheque, keep reserves for the rounds that follow, and stay close enough to be useful.
$420MUnder management across three funds
64Companies backed since 2014
11Countries where founders are building
78%First cheques we led or co-led
What we look for
Founders who know the problem better than the market does.
The companies we like tend to start with an unfashionable observation. Someone has run the systems, sat in the clinic, priced the risk, or maintained the tooling, and they know exactly where the work breaks.
That knowledge is hard to fake and hard to copy. It also makes the first two years less romantic than a pitch deck suggests, which is fine by us. We underwrite the decade, not the quarter.
We invest across infrastructure, applied AI, fintech, security, climate, and health. Six areas, chosen because we can hold a real opinion in each one.
After the cheque
The help founders actually ask for.
Four things come up again and again. We built the firm around them and left the rest alone.
01
Hiring
Marcus and his team have placed more than 200 people into portfolio companies. Most of them into the first ten seats, where a bad hire is expensive.
02
Customers
We keep a live map of who in our network buys what. Introductions come with context, not a blind forward.
03
The next round
We start on the Series A story about nine months out. That means metrics you can defend and a narrative you did not invent in a hurry.
04
The hard conversations
Cofounder splits, layoffs, a down round, a product that is not working. We have been through these and we do not flinch when they come up.
PortfolioSelected
A few of the companies we have backed.
From a founder
“They led our pre-seed when we had a prototype and one pilot. Two years on, the thing I value most is that they tell me what they think before I ask.”
Insights
What we are writing about.
Pricing when your costs move every quarter
Inference costs fall, usage climbs, and the pricing page you wrote at launch stops making sense. Notes from eleven portfolio companies that repriced.
The first ten hires still decide the company
Our talent team looked at hiring data across the portfolio. The pattern is unglamorous: teams that hired slowly at the start moved faster at Series B.
Tell us what you are building.
Send a short note. We read every one and reply within five working days, whatever the answer.