Reilly Brennan, co-founder of Trucks Venture Capital, has spent more than a decade finding and investing in entrepreneurs building the future of transportation, including autonomous vehicle technology, electric air taxis, EV charger maintenance, mobility data platforms, and more. I've been doing it.
Now, Brennan, along with partners Jeffrey Schotts, Kathryn Schotts and Puneeth Melba, is looking for the next group of early-stage startups and a new 70 million yen to help build them. We have USD funding available. Trucks has not disclosed the names of the investors in the fund, but Brennan noted that there are seven strategic limited partners, including auto suppliers, tire manufacturers, insurance companies and airlines.
This is the San Francisco-based firm's third fund and its largest to date.
Tracks VC will make approximately 30 seed investments from the fund and write checks ranging from $500,000 to $2 million at the seed and pre-seed stages. Trucks typically aim to acquire around 10% stake as part of their strategy.
Trucks has already made several investments from this new fund, including charger installation-as-a-service startup TreeHouse, zero-emission jet aircraft company JetZero, low-cost high-frequency motion launch company Auriga Space, and the developer Carbis. Investing in start-up companies. AI master technology that supports mechanics.
Brennan noted that the firm's investment strategy has evolved a bit since its founding in 2014, but remains essentially the same as when it started. In particular, we have never looked for startups to fill slots or sectors.
“Our main strategy is that instead of saying, “We want to build four hydrogen companies and four EV charging companies with this fund, we want to build four hydrogen companies and four EV charging companies that are so good that good founders need to talk to you early on. That's something we tend not to do,” he explained.
A notable change in strategy occurred about six years ago. Rather than coming up with an idea and looking for founders, Trucks changed tack and focused on great founders.
“When we develop ideas and go looking for founders working on them, we end up making bad decisions because we were only looking for ideas and founders to confirm our own biases.” ” he said. “We realized we were seeing 100 to 150 new companies a month and thought, 'Why don't we wait and see if there are some great founders who can bring us new ideas that we haven't thought of? 'I think it gave us the flexibility to start doing things like aviation and aerospace that definitely weren't part of our mission back in 2015.' ”
Trax's past investments include Bear Flag Robotics, which was acquired by John Deere. and Zendrive, which Intuit acquired last year. Trucks also has investments in Joby Aviation, self-driving company Gatik, and autonomous flight control startup Skyryse.