How early is ‘early stage’?

We aim to be the first outside investor. Our ideal stage is pre-seed or seed. Our ideal investment size is $500K-$2M for a meaningful equity stake.

I’ve raised some money from angels - can I still reach out?

Absolutely, some of our investments have been after a small round with angels or friends and family. Having said that if you’ve raised more than a few million dollars already, we’re probably not a good fit as we aim to get in early.

Do you have a industry or area focus?

No - while it’s true that our investments have mostly been in e-commerce, mobile apps and consumer goods and brands, we are chronically curious across many other areas as well. We weigh heavier our thesis around the specific entrepreneur’s potential than the industry they are currently operating in.

Do you have a geographic focus?

We are geographically agnostic. As a general rule, we do encourage entrepreneurs to pursue the US market, as it is the biggest and also the one where we have the most experience ourselves.

What’s the most important thing in your decision making process?

The entrepreneur. We look for founders that we trust and admire who are able to execute rapidly and believe in treating their Customers how they would want to be treated themselves.

We believe in playing long term games with long term people - on occasion we have been known to invest even in a terrific entrepreneur pre-idea.

What else do you look at?

If it works - the business must be able to earn decent returns on capital.

How much do you usually invest?

We typically like to invest between $500K to $2M.

Do you have strict ownership requirements?

Our ideal ownership is 20% post investment.

Does Trifecta Seed have to be the lead investor in the round?

While we prefer to be lead investors for the right businesses, it is not a must for us. We strongly prefer having a meaningful stake in the companies we invest in, so we can justify investing significant amounts of our time and energy helping the founders, but this does not mean that we have to lead the round.

What makes Trifecta Seed different?

We’re a proprietary investment firm, meaning that we invest our own funds from our own balance sheet. This means that we are able to offer permanent capital and be perfectly aligned with the founder on when to get liquidity. This contrasts with traditional VC/PE firms with funds that need to return capital to LPs typically within 7-10 years. For an entrepreneur raising money from an investor, the investor might be pushing them to sell the company prematurely so that the fund manager can get their maximum fee and avoid penalties on their fees for returning capital after a certain date.

When we invest in an entrepreneur, they know that they wont be forced into a liquidation event just because our managers are chasing higher carry.

We quite literally have aligned incentives with the entrepreneur. For a wonderful business, our favorite holding period is forever.

We’re also operators, and we think that we’re better investors for it.

If you are an early-stage entrepreneur looking for an investor, get in touch with us below.