New-age investment firms such as Anzu Partners, Hitachi Ventures, Myriad Venture Partners, and SkyRiver Ventures based in Boston are revolutionizing the venture capital industry with their collaborative approach. This collaboration strategy, contrasting with the intense rivalry that characterizes most venture capital practices, has pushed Boston to the forefront of supportive and inclusive funding opportunities for startups.
The cooperative approach, where firms aggregate their resources and knowledge to spur innovation, also contributes to Boston’s thriving innovation economy. Each of these firms maintains their distinctive investment decision-making techniques while focusing on deep tech investment, shifting away from traditional practices.
Inspired by the success of startup accelerators, the firms have started establishing symbiotic relationships with them, seeing them as valuable assets in deep tech investment. This change in strategy provides opportunities to grow resources, share insights, and fine-tune collective investment strategies.
Senior Partner at SkyRiver Ventures, Mr. Hyuk-Jeen Suh, underscores that partnerships are a crucial component of deep tech investments. He emphasizes an alliance-oriented approach over exclusively competitive strategies, citing increased success rates for deep tech projects which often require substantial funding and teamwork.
Collaboration among the firms, which invest in diverse sectors such as climate tech, AI and biotech, attracts deep tech startups, requiring significant capital, infrastructure, and varied expertise. The collaborative model offers optimized risk management as it is not solely reliant on one firm, and also supports startups in exploring new technologies.
The collaborative model’s shared physical space encourages knowledge sharing. This setting allows diverse individuals to collectively identify potential investment opportunities and make strategic decisions. It also facilitates the integration of diverse perspectives, driving forward innovative ideas.
The industry envisages this collective method, currently utilized as shared office spaces, to potentially expand to include more collaborators or even a pooled fund similar to an angel syndicate. Thus, we could gradually see a shift from dominant limited partner models, signaling a more inclusive and dynamic venture capital system.
