Captain Ventures

Profile

Captain Ventures is a seed-stage investment firm based in between Salt Lake City and San Francisco, founded by Tyler Hogge, who previously served as a Partner at Pelion Venture Partners. The firm is currently led solely by Hogge, leveraging his extensive background as a product lead at Divvy and investor at Pelion. Captain Ventures differentiates itself by adopting a non-competitive and co-investment approach, explicitly ensuring they do not lead rounds, but instead, co-invest with other general partners to offer complementary capital in competitive rounds.

The firm focuses on seed-stage investments, primarily in the first two funding rounds of a company, with check sizes averaging $750,000. Geographically, they have no restrictive boundaries, allowing for potential investments anywhere. Their investment philosophy is sector-agnostic, a 'founder-first' approach with a commitment to not leading investment rounds to enable quick decisions and speed in helping other firms win competitive rounds. Captain Ventures launched its first fund, Seed Fund I, with approximately $33 million raised from a diverse group of institutional and prominent individual investors.

Notable investments include Vector, a defense tech company that raised a $61 million Series A, and earlier angel-backed companies such as Nursa, Neighbor, Seis, and Flexport. The fund anticipates making 25 to 30 investments, capitalizing on Tyler Hogge's strong network and operational expertise from his time at Divvy and Pelion Venture Partners.