We just finished raising our second fund in the middle of a pandemic. A little more than $25m to continue leading seed rounds for B2B SaaS companies building all over. Proud of our team and thankful for all of our investors and founders.

Here is how it went down...

1) Coming into 2020, we were feeling great about Fund 1. We did exactly what we told our investors we were going to do. We built up an awesome portfolio of fast growing B2B SaaS companies outside of Silicon Valley. We led or co-led nearly all of them.

2) We stuck to our strategy. There is temptation at every turn to raise bigger and bigger funds if you can. We have told our investors that we’re going to raise multiple similar sized funds and that is exactly what we’re doing.

3) We started the new year with commitments from our largest and most supportive investors. We lined up meetings for February, March, and April to raise the rest of the fund.

4) All of our February meetings were in Texas so we were able to build a lot of interest and support. It looked like with a couple of months of travel in March and April we could wrap things up and be off to the races.

5) And then the pandemic hit. The stock market was crashing daily. People were getting sick. Even one of my biggest investors got COVID-19 and it was hitting him hard. This was a low point where I was not sure if Fund 2 would come together at all.

6) By now, like every other VC firm, we were just doing our best to support our portfolio companies. Do we trim expenses? Do we lay people off? Do we take the PPP? What about our office?? Let’s recut all of those 2020 plans, fast!

7) We also had two companies with pre-pandemic term sheets and one company with a pre-pandemic M&A offer. These were all exciting deals for each company but as you can imagine, there was a doomsday scenario here where some or all of the deals fall apart. Yikes.

8) As we got into April things quickly started to look better. We got our deals done and the stock market was rebounding. The world at large felt awful but our little world of venture and SaaS was feeling ok. Maybe even good.

9) We ended up putting a little bit more capital into eight of our portfolio companies to help them weather the sales slowdowns. Things were mostly moving in the right direction.

10) We added two rockstars to our team. It was a scary time to add costs but I wanted to honor our commitments. Alfred is now our chief storyteller, helping portfolio companies tell their stories; and Avery supports internal operations, much needed with our growth.

11) We started capital raising again in May. It was not smooth sailing but investors were excited. It helped that our “B2B SaaS outside of Silicon Valley” strategy aligns with a pandemic/post-pandemic world.

12) We also pivoted quickly to making investment decisions over video. Video has flattened the world and we have never done so many deals in such a short period of time. Thank you to all of the amazing founders letting us be part of your journey!

13) After hundreds of pitch meetings, calls, zooms and everything in between, we’d like to thank our 83 investors who believed in us during these crazy times. We are incredibly grateful for everyone’s support.

14) If you're a B2B SaaS founder building something great, we’d love to connect! We invest pre-seed & seed and love to be part of the first $1m-ish raised. You can reach out to us on twitter, linkedin, yac, or email. Cold or warm, anything works.

15) Overall, I couldn’t be more excited. We’ve now invested in 40+ founder led companies. We raised our second fund in a pandemic. We’ve built an awesome team. And we’re just getting started.