Tenacity Venture Capital

Ben Narasin Benjamin (BΞN) Narasin spent 8 years as a seed investor and 7 as a traditional VC, the last roughly 5 at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), before launching Tenacity with NEA’s support. There was a big story in the WSJ at the time - https://lnkd.in/gcu7K9nw Tenacity focusses on the earliest stages of venture: Seed and Pre-Seed. The fund sees about 5000 pitches a year and seeks to fund the top 1-2 bps of those founders. In 2021 9 made it through the gauntlet and 6 in 2022. We specialize in helping founders raise rounds from Tier 1 VCs. Nine of our 15 companies have raised at higher valuations/caps from our matchmaking. NEA Managing General Partner Scott Sandell led the Series A of their company Arkestro at $26 on $100, and the founder says Tenacity was critical to the raise. More information and a wealth of founder testimonials (including Arkestro's) are available on the Tenacity Linked In Page.

Thanks Steve Westly - after more than a decade it's great to have your POV on Tenacity and why founders should work with us.

While it's been a tough two years in VC, Tenacity Venture Capital portfolio of phenomenal founders makes me proud; 13 of our 18 companies have already raised additional money at prices higher than we paid, two more have signed term sheets, and another has a round in red-lines. While predicting long term performance early in a fund's life is hard, AngelList's review of their fund data revealed the best way to predict future GP performance is how successful a fund is with follow on rounds in its portfolio. Here's a link to the full recording of Angel List Confidential's: By the numbers: using data to identify great GPs | AngelList Confidential 2023. Notes on data around markups starts at minute 16. https://lnkd.in/gRP-pTm3

When Tenacity Venture Capital co-led the seed round for Cameron Harris and CoFit hey were just launching an embedded fintech marketplace - now that business is the business, as hoped.

I seeded Branch, and co-led the A as an individual seed investor, I re-upped at Tenacity Venture Capital'. Alex , the founder, and I have worked together for many years and his is one the few boards I sit on.

The road to a material exit to Blackstone for Vungle and Zain Jaffer was a wild ride and I have fond memories of various update meals and often hard conversations - proud of Zain and glad to have him as a founder LP.

I funded Zach Coelius startup and now work with him post his exit and new adventure as an investor - he claims he modeled much of his investing on what he learned from me, and I still recall the call when he reached out for my POV on wether he should try (I said yes). Congrats on Coelius Capital

I seeded Branch and then co-led the Series A, both alongside New Enterprise Associates (NEA) before I worked there. Dmitri Gaskin went on to achieve his life dream of buying a goat farm - and I helped with that too through a secondary I participated in.

I have been doing fintech since 2007 (LendingClub) and Peter Hazlehurst, who I funded at Synctera is one of 3 people I call when it's beyond me.

I lead the round for Blink while at TriplePoint Capital and Kevin Stephens has gone on to do many interesting things since. Blink exitted to Yahoo