Nearly 20 years after finding success helping startups build products, Canadian interface design company Metalab has launched Metalab Ventures to invest in a number of product-driven startups.
Serial entrepreneur and investor Andrew Wilkinson founded Metalab in 2006. The company has supported product innovation by companies like Slack, Coinbase, Uber, and Tumblr.
Metalab often works with startups, acting as a co-founder and helping get the product off the ground. Metalab was then “freed up” to grow, CEO Luke Des Cotes told TechCrunch. Metalab had a record year in 2023 and was involved in the development of his 40 products that were launched on the market last year.
Corporate venture capital has come a long way in recent years. For example, as a stable source of funding or if a startup has something Big Tech wants.
In the case of Metalab Ventures, the venture arm acts as a long-term value investor, essentially “putting its money where its mouth is,” De Coates said.
“I want to be on the road with them for the next 10 to 12 years,” he said. “We've been asked over and over again by founders when they'd invest, and sometimes we've actually done so, but up until now it's been very ad hoc. Today, we're formalizing that. It was a process that
Metalab Ventures has raised $15 million in capital commitment for its first fund to invest in product-led startups where strategy, design, and technology are key differentiators.
“Product-led” is the way a product becomes a differentiator for a business, De Coates said. Most companies base their success on how well their products are created and how well they connect with users. Metalab Ventures is looking for founders who “believe in the power of design as a tool to connect with users in a different and special way,” he said.
Des Cotes and Metalab's head of partnerships, David Tapp, are general partners at Metalab Ventures, which plans to invest in 25 to 35 startups at the pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages. De Corte said the company has made several undisclosed investments to date.
The new fund's limited partnership structure will include institutional investors, fund-to-fund and angel investors, as well as founders of companies with which Metallabs has previously worked. Metalabs is also an LP in the fund.
The company vets thousands of founders each year to decide who to back, and a similar process has been transferred to Metallab Ventures in how it evaluates investments, de Cort said. said.
When deciding where to invest in Metalab Ventures, the process includes getting to know the founders and whether the company can add value. Metalab often leverages his 160 employees for design, technology, product and research leadership.
“We were already operating pretty much like a venture fund,” De Coates said. “Now we go through that process and understand what the product is, what the opportunity is, what is the value that we can create here. When we believe in this business, human capital We believe this is a rare resource that can be invested in our business.”
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