Philosophy
Great companies rarely look obvious at the start. They look strange, early, or too small. Our work is to recognise conviction in the people who see it first — and to be useful long before the outcome is clear.
Early-stage venture capital · Fund IV open
We back founders building what comes next.
Connect Club Network partners with exceptional teams at the earliest moments — often before the market agrees. We write the first check, stay for the long arc, and measure ourselves by the companies our founders build.
Partnered with
- Assets under management
- $740M
- Portfolio companies
- 96
- First-check investments
- 71%
- Founded
- 2014
About
A firm built around the founder, not the fund.
Mission
To be the most useful early partner a founder has. Not the loudest voice in the room, and never a passenger on the cap table. We take a small number of positions each year so that attention is never rationed.
Approach
We lead pre-seed and seed rounds from $500K to $6M, reserve heavily for follow-on, and decide in weeks rather than months. One partner owns the relationship from first meeting through every subsequent round.
Capital is abundant. Judgement, patience and a partner who answers the phone are not.
Backed by long-horizon capital
- University endowments
- Global foundations
- Sovereign funds
- Family offices
- 40+ of our own founders
Investment focus
Seven areas where we hold real conviction.
We invest with a thesis, not a checklist. Each area is led by a partner who has built or operated inside it.
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01
Artificial Intelligence
Applied models, agents and the tooling that turns research capability into dependable production software.
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02
Developer Tools
Products engineers adopt without a procurement cycle — bottom-up, opinionated, and loved before they are bought.
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03
Enterprise Software
Systems of record and workflow for industries where the software has been ignored for a decade.
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04
Climate
Energy, grid intelligence and industrial decarbonisation where unit economics beat sentiment.
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05
Healthcare
Clinical infrastructure, diagnostics and care delivery models that reduce cost while improving outcomes.
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06
Fintech
Payments, capital markets plumbing and the regulated rails that move money across borders.
Portfolio
Selected companies.
A partial list. Many of our investments remain unannounced at the founder’s request.
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Curelum
Autonomous operations for advanced-composite manufacturing — every ply, perfectly placed.
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Vantic
Evaluation infrastructure for teams shipping language models into production.
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Halyard
Deployment and observability tooling for distributed engineering organisations.
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Meridian Grid
Forecasting and dispatch software for utility-scale renewable operators.
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Northbound
Clinical documentation that returns hours of the week to practising physicians.
Operating platform
What happens after the wire.
A small, senior team you can actually reach — not a directory of services you never use.
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Talent & hiring
Direct sourcing for the first fifteen hires, compensation benchmarks, and honest reference calls on every executive candidate.
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Go-to-market
Warm paths into 400+ enterprise buyers across our network, plus pricing and packaging work before your first serious contract.
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Next round
Narrative, materials and a curated list of the right leads — introduced eight to ten weeks before you need the capital.
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Founder support
A confidential peer group of forty founders, and a partner who takes the difficult call on a Sunday without a calendar invite.
Founders
In their words.
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They committed on a Thursday after two conversations, at a stage when every other fund wanted another quarter of data. That decisiveness bought us six months.
Amara DialloCo-founder & CEO, Vantic -
We had a difficult eighteen months. They led the bridge before anyone asked and never once relitigated the original thesis.
Marta LindgrenCEO, Meridian Grid -
The most useful thing about Connect Club Network is what they don’t do. No theatre, no board performance — just direct answers when I ask for them.
Ravi ShankarFounder & CTO, Keystone Labs
Research & insights
What we’re thinking about.
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The margin structure of applied AI companies
Inference cost is falling faster than pricing power. What that means for seed-stage gross margins over the next three years.
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Connect Club Network closes Fund IV at $310M
Our fourth fund, backed by returning institutions and forty of our own founders, continues a single strategy: lead the first round.
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Hiring the first ten engineers
A practical playbook drawn from 96 portfolio companies — sequencing, sourcing, compensation and the two mistakes that repeat.
Building something early?
Send a short note. Every message is read by a partner, and we reply within two business days — including when the answer is no.