General Partners: Richard Dulude, Chris Gardner, Lily Lyman, James Orsillo
Head of Community: Jenni Goodman
Founding: 2015
Mission: It takes a community
Team: 10 & 100% Local
Workplace: Hybrid
LPs: Funds, Endowments & Strategic Investors
Stage: Pre-Seed & Seed
Focus Area(s): B2B Enterprise Software
Key Portfolio Companies (Locally): CloudZero, Goldcast, Hi Marley, Salsify, Tetrascience, Wonderment
Fund Size: $250M+ AUM
Underscore, an early-stage stage venture capital firm based here in Boston, believes it takes a community to build an enduring company. Those aren’t just words. I believe they do the most community building at scale of any early stage venture firm in Boston to connect entrepreneurs, operators, builders, and community partners with each other on behalf of the Boston startup ecosystem.
Underscore focuses on investing in early stage (Pre-Seed & Seed) B2B Enterprise Software startups across the U.S. Last Wednesday, they hosted a Q1 Core Coffee Shop gathering for their Core Community and members of the MGMT Boston Operators Club were lucky enough to join in!
More than 100 leaders from the Boston ecosystem came to make connections, share learnings, and discuss the current landscape. Jenni Goodman & Richard Dulude shared a few words about the work Underscore is doing to help their portfolio companies and community members endure the chilly February (and market) air to make the event.
There’s plenty of operational caution and some talented folks looking for new roles out there but I also heard a lot of optimism for this coming (super?)cycle. There are SaaS companies still steadily growing, early stage AI companies leveraging text, video & audio technology to help drive enterprise efficiencies, and some startups even gearing up for major headcount growth in 2024.
There’s a lot to love about what’s being built in Boston and I *know* some of the community’s best days are ahead. Thank you to Brian, Lily, Claire, Devin, Jenni, Jimmy, Richard, and the rest of the Underscore team for hosting us. It was great to learn more about the work you do for Boston startups, operators, and the ecosystem at large. Excited for more Core Coffees in the future!
Underscore Core Summit – September 19, 2023 – #CoreSummit23
It’s been a couple weeks but I’m still 🐝 buzzing 🐝 from The Underscore VC Core Summit #CoreSummit23 on 9/19.
600+ members of the Boston startup community came together for a great day of content, community building, and shared learnings. And hats off to the Underscore team – Jenni Goodman, Claire Crowther, Devin Nash, the entire investment team, and many more for planning such an awesome day.
Here are some rapid takeaways on this Fall Friday:
- 🤖 The AI & Fundraising Sessions were at capacity. To give you an idea of a couple topics that are top of mind for an entire industry
- 📈 Rahul Vohra, Founder of Superhuman, shared some great learnings on finding Product Market Fit from his famed First Round Capital article during a fireside chat. He was even wearing the same jacket as the header photo, like he emerged off the web page, to share IRL. The British accent helps make his knowledge sound even more prestigious too
- 🛣 GTM is changing as we emerge from the Covid era. Finding your customers where they are – physically, digitally, and with a variety of new strategic blends – is table stakes for growth
- 🤩 The startup industry is mainstream. Yes, it’s a difficult market moment. But if ChatGPT is like…a year old and your mom knows about it, or at least your cousin, what does that mean? If more companies are technology companies and software has eaten a huge chunk of the world…what does that mean?!?
I guess we’ll just have to keep building and find out! Thank you team for the thoughtful and inspiring day!