What is Sprout Stage™?

Sprout Stage™ is when a company has taken its sweat equity, angel or seed capital and demonstrated a breakthrough core technology, product or brand with mass market potential.   We think of "sprouts" in two categories:  

1) a core demonstrated breakthrough technology:  this could be a search or recommendation engine, an algorithm, or hardware with unique capabilities.  For this type of technology, we are willing to invest prior to productization, though prefer a product or service to have been built on it already. Examples include Pandora's Music Genome Project. SoundHound's Speech to Meaning Engine, or goTenna's networking protocols.

2) a joyful product and brand: not all products or services have a core technology, some connect dots in a way that has not been well before or make something simpler, less expensive or more convenient than ever before.  For example a game, social network, marketplace, eCommerce company, subscription service, or connected device with a unique value proposition.  Companies in this category will have competed products and engaged users, even if the user base is small. Some companies have a very unique approach to how they think about their product and brand.  This is who we like to back. Examples include Bespoke Post, TodayTix and MeUndies

What is our sector focus?

Our target sectors are digital media and cloud services for consumers and enterprises including infrastructure, services and content.  These are industries where the Partners have passion, experience and insight. Our portfolio includes leaders in entertainment (including music, games, and video), software, cloud services, branded eCommerce, internet media search, artificial intelligence, hardware and connected devices. We seek new investments that push the limits of categorization and leverage new and existing infrastructure and technologies in exciting ways.