When we believe in your vision and your team, we get conviction quickly. We often write the first large check a company receives. We aren’t afraid to assume the responsibilities of lead investor, and we are also happy to co-lead or follow alongside other great seed investors. When we commit, we leverage our relationships with other early-stage investors to help you fill your round with the best, most useful investors.

*While cash is important, entrepreneurs choose to work with us for the help, support and useful advice we provide. (Please see “How We Work” section below for more details.)

We invest at fair valuations on fair terms with total transparency (when your term sheets are clean, there’s nothing to hide). All companies and valuations are different. We are flexible on check size based on your needs, but as a general rule: Our average initial investment is $2 million; it can be as low as $1.5 million or as high as $4 million. We aim for an initial ownership position between 10% and 12%+ when we lead a round, and between 8% and 10% when we don’t.

We stay deeply involved with the founding team throughout the most intense period of a company’s life: the early years. As new investors join the board, we transition out to make room. Even then, we remain supportive and available to the team for the whole journey — no matter what the outcome. Over the years, we have seen successful entrepreneurs come back to us for funding two or three times.

Whether we are the lead of your round, or a member of the syndicate, we often recommend to add an investor seat to the board at seed stage. It’s not about taking control — it will remain in your hands. But it will help you get in the habit of managing a board in advance of your Series A. It is not an absolute must, but if we are your largest investor, we’ll be happy to take a board seat.

No two startups look alike, so we don’t deliver prescriptive formulas on how to build or scale. We work with you one-on-one to develop a custom plan to help you achieve your specific goals — and we adjust together as often as necessary. We also bring resources from our network so you can talk to experts about challenges you are facing.

We are transparent and straightforward. Sometimes that means encouraging and supporting you to keep going; sometimes that means telling you a truth that might be hard to hear, but has your best interests in mind. We’ll also cheer for you and challenge you to do more when we think you have the potential.

We will help you raise smart money. We have spent decades cultivating trusted relationships with other investors. We pay close attention to changing trends, teams, and interests at other VC firms in order to help you pitch the right story to the right investors at the right time for your A, B and C rounds.

The first 18 months of your company’s life are critical. It’s not just about surviving; it’s about learning a lot, fast, in a hyper-competitive environment to build the infrastructure of your future business — people, product, technology, processes. How do we know we’re making a difference? Our follow-on investors consistently tell us our companies have stronger foundations and fundamentals than many of their peers — giving them an unfair competitive advantage.

All startups — even the ones that become billion-dollar behemoths — have tough times. Lots of things can go wrong: a problem with your product eviscerates your release date; you and your cofounder disagree on the fundamental vision of your company; a rogue butterfly from China forces customs to hold up your shipping container; the US Postmaster General shows up to arrest you (in error) for shipping fraud... and on and on. When things go wrong, you need a trusted partner — someone you are comfortable telling all the gory details. We won’t walk away; we’re here to help you work out the kinks.

Start right, it makes all the difference. A good team, chosen early, can speed up your success. We show you how. We guide. We coach. We teach you the proven ways and help you figure out how they fit into what you’re building. We'll help you pick your first team, your first executives. We help you build the processes, the systems, the backbone of your venture. And most important, we help you shape a working culture that thrives. It's about getting it done, and done well. That's our part in your story.

Our platform team works for you. We’ve built a thriving community around the idea of “sharing the bread” — everyone has something of value to contribute.

Events: We bring our founders and experts from our network together more than 40 times a year — at intimate dinners, networking parties, educational roundtables and larger summits. Our goal? To spark conversations, generate ideas, and create a tight, supportive community.

Uncork Advisor Platform: Each executive has been hand-vetted for the Uncork network. Uncork portfolio companies can leverage Continuum’s network of experienced executives and industry experts to solve their most pressing business problems.

Community & Knowledge Sharing: Our Slack channel connects founders so they can share day-to-day questions and concerns, and share resources. We’ve built a robust platform which includes everything from vetted service providers to playbooks.

Professional Development Opportunities: From curated leadership programs aimed at helping our founders improve their interpersonal influence, communicate more effectively, and be more inspiring and authentic as a leader to speaking opportunities to matching founders and execs with media, we assist you in what matters.

The Uncork platform has been developed over the years thanks to our strategic partnership with Goodwin.

At Uncork Capital, we are committed to offering a safe, welcoming, and respectful environment for everyone in our entrepreneurial community. We believe people, companies, and communities thrive when teams are diverse and inclusive. We have zero tolerance for any form of harassment or discrimination by or towards our employees, consultants, vendors or other services providers, as well as by or towards our startup founders or their employees. You can view our policy here.

Any inappropriate behavior by or towards a member of our Uncork community should be reported to our internal compliance officer, Ashley Cravens at complaints@uncorkcapital.com for proper investigation. We also welcome questions about our policies and comments on fostering a more diverse ecosystem at movingforward@uncorkcapital.com.

Since the start of Uncork (then SoftTech VC), giving back to our community has been a core aspect of who we are. We recognize that we would not be where we are today if not for the support and generosity of others. We've made a point to create a culture of giving back, whether that be with our time, through donations, or otherwise. So far to date, we have given to 30+ organizations through donations and countless hours of our individual time teaching or mentoring emerging investors and entrepreneurs.

To give you an idea of the organizations we proudly contribute to, we've highlighted a few:

Callisto

All Raise

Founders Pledge

The Equal Justice Initiative

Most entrepreneurs reach out to us through our network: founders we have backed, executives we have worked with, co-investors of ours, accelerators we have worked with, etc. LinkedIn and Crunchbase are your best friends to figure out how to access us.

Still can’t find a warm intro to anyone on our team? No Problem. For pitch deck submissions, submit your deck to pitches@uncorkcapital.com. We will be in touch directly if we are interested in learning more about your company.