Vanessa Larco, former Partner at New Enterprise Associates, is launching Premise, a new consumer venture fund with Mercedes Bent from Lightspeed. The fund targets early-stage consumer software startups, a segment that has struggled to secure financing recently.
The structure is interesting: two-person GP team running the fund like a startup. That means investment memos, performance KPIs, and internal R&D tools. Not the usual VC playbook.
Larco's background: product roles at Microsoft Xbox and Twilio before a decade in early-stage investing at NEA. She led investments in Robinhood (through its 2021 IPO) and Greenlight, with board seats at Mejuri, Assembled, and Cleo.
The investment framework centres on technical founding teams. Larco emphasises that successful startup evaluation hinges on the founding team's background, execution power, and storytelling ability over the idea itself. Distribution mechanism matters too: whether through an efficient sales team, partnerships, or viral growth.
The core thesis: back companies OpenAI will not kill. OpenAI deprecated Sora and quietly shut down checkout inside ChatGPT within months of launching them. Not everything the frontier labs touch wins. Premise invests in founders who out-ship everyone chasing them long enough to build durable moats.
For sales leaders watching the AI wave, the distribution angle is worth tracking. Larco notes the old go-to-market playbook is breaking, especially in DevTools. Someone on the founding team has to "nerd out" on distribution. No-playbook moments are where growth happens.
The fund is in launch phase. No ANZ presence announced yet, though both partners have global networks and prior experience investing in international markets. Headcount remains at two partners, no sales staff reported.
Comp details: not disclosed. This is a VC firm, not a sales organisation. But the playbook of running a fund like a startup, with formal KPIs and performance tracking, mirrors how high-performing sales orgs operate.