Stay in touch with the occasional update.
At RRE we look for credible teams executing against incredible ideas. While our investment decisions are based on many factors, we tend to focus on three main criteria when evaluating a new opportunity.
Team: Category-defining companies are founded by exceptional teams with the relentless spirit and passion necessary for extraordinary execution. Our companies founders have a deep affinity for the problem they want to solve or the experience they wish to create. This can take several forms, including deep industry expertise, successful prior ventures, demonstrated drive, or all the above.
Product: Great teams tend to create great products. That said, we believe that new companies need to create products that are more than incrementally better than existing solutions. Our companies build products that are impossible to ignore. Truly amazing product is what distinguishes a technology company from numerous other would-be disruptors.
Market: There are many large industries. Only some are ripe for disruption. Similarly, there are many bold ideas for new market categories but only certain moments when these categories can actually emerge. We look at structural and competitive landscapes while harnessing our experience working with the world’s largest corporations to determine whether a market is large, growing, and able to change. We invest in businesses disrupting such markets.
Unlike many venture firms, RRE does not have hard and fast areas of investment. We are sector agnostic and happy to consider deals in any space. We research and evaluate new markets often, and we occasionally invest in completely new areas for the firm. Each of our investment team members looks deeply at more than one industry at a time. Of course, we do have deep portfolios and expertise in several industries. You can see more about each of these below:
Our LPs are a typical mix for a venture capital fund. We’re backed by numerous pension funds, along with enterprises, universities, fund of funds, high net worth individuals, and more.
We believe our deep commitment to true partnership with entrepreneurs and our firm values set us apart. We're ready to throw our experience, networks, and expertise behind founders in the pivotal moments that alter a company's trajectory. We're not easily surprised after 25 years of working with startups, and we work to earn your trust so that when things go right (or go wrong), you know we'll be there to support you when you call.
If you want to hear from our entrepreneurs about what it's like to work with us, please see our collection of founder videos!
We generally aim to invest ~$250K into a seed round or $3-8M into a Series A round, although we don’t stick to our own norms 100% of the time.
We aim to lead or co-lead at the Series A and own 15-25% of the company. Seed rounds are more flexible.
At the seed stage, we participate rather than lead and do not take a board seat. If we invest at the Series A, we typically both lead the round and take a board seat, remaining highly active investors throughout the growth of the company.
Yes. We have funds set aside for follow-on investment and often continue investing in our current portfolio in multiple subsequent rounds.
Yes! If you’re an early-stage company based in the US, we’d love to chat. Reach out to us with your deck at [email protected].
It’s never too early to let us know about what you’re working on and start getting to know one another. We invest in new companies at the seed and Series A, so we love to meet companies from Day 1.
Please send a note to [email protected], together with a deck if you have one. (Decks help us route your company to the relevant member of our investment team.) The right person from the team will be in touch if there might be a fit with our investment theses and we’d like to learn more.
Unfortunately, as an early-stage investment fund, we’re not a fit for companies who have already raised a Series A or beyond.
Absolutely! We love to hear from the whole country and our current portfolio includes companies based in 24 different states. Over 50% of our portfolio is based outside the New York area.
Yellow light: While we love a startup looking for global domination (and we do look at select Canadian companies), we only very rarely invest in companies founded or based outside the US and probably aren’t a fit for you.
A typical investment decision can last 2-8 weeks from the time you initally reach out, depending on timing and level of diligence your company requires. We'll typically meet 1:1 first before pulling in more of the team and holding a full team meeting to finalize a decision.
We generally like to see an investment presentation in the form of a deck as a helpful way to visualize information about your company. We also will want to be able to check out your financial model so that we can understand your plan and assumptions. We will also want to meet directly with the founder and any cofounders of the business.
RRE is committed to supporting our portfolio throughout the life of each company.
We're ready to throw our experience, networks, and expertise behind founders in the pivotal moments that impact a company's trajectory. We're not easily shocked, and we work to earn your trust so that when things go right (or go wrong), you know we'll be there to support you. Our platform team also provides resources and portfolio impact programs to each of our companies.
RRE has extensive experience in raising venture funding for our portfolio. Our networks and knowledge of the venture funding process will ensure you get the help you need when it's time to raise the next round. Simply put, we know the process inside and out and can give you the leverage you need to raise tricky rounds. We’ve helped our companies raise 250+ follow on rounds and $6.2B in additional capital over the years.
Our decades of work with Fortune 500 companies mean that when you’re ready to meet your first enterprise customers, we can throw our support behind you. We’ll help connect you with teams looking for your solution, get you real feedback on your product, and demystify the process —we made over 100 targeted 1:1 introductions between our portfolio and major enterprises in 2018.
RRE knows that it takes incredible leaders and strong teams to build the next game-changing company, and we're eager to support you on your journey. Alongside our talent matching and jobs board, our companies benefit from RRE’s talent development program, RRE LEAD. Our LEAD sessions are leadership development days for every level of manager within our portfolio companies’ organizations, where you and your team can dive deep into startup-specific management learnings alongside your peers. Nominate yourself or a deserving leader from your team for one of our 3x yearly cohorts.
We welcome your interest! There are thousands of open roles in our portfolio at any given time, which you can find here. For interesting roles, please apply directly.
Please also sign up for the RRE Talent Network, which will help us connect you with our companies if a match comes up in the future.
We’re a small team that doesn’t hire often. When we are, you can hear about it from us by signing up to stay in touch by hitting the "Subscribe" button. We’d suggest checking out work at startups as well as this list of resources to help you on your way:
Sign up for newsletters such as Stricly.VC, Mattermark, and Fortune's "Term Sheet" and Axios to follow what is going on in the industry. In Term Sheet, look for the "Firms & Funds" section for new funds since people are often hiring after they raise a new fund.
John Gannon's blog has good articles on getting into VC and more importantly, an updated VC job posting list on the bottom of the page that is the most up-to-date in the industry (scroll down until you see the header "Venture Capital Internships and Jobs").
Lerer Hippeau’s "How to get into venture" series has good information as well.
For platform roles in venture, check out more at the VC Platform website for roles and content or this overview from our team.
As a firm that facilitates innovation for many industries, RRE has a responsibility to act in a respectful, compassionate, and inclusive manner. We work to promote these values within our portfolio and beyond.
Within our portfolio, we devote significant resources to developing management teams, including training on creating teams with great cultures that promote diversity, inclusiveness, and belonging. We also require our companies to report their team's workforce diversity metrics to RRE (alongside their data on finance and business goals) to encourage measurement.
Within the ecosystem, we're leaders and active participants in initiatives like AllRaise, Moving Forward, and NYC BLEND, which seeks to increase the proportion of venture dollars going to underrepresented founders.
Our official policy and contact information (and those for many other funds) on these topics can be found here.
As you look to get involved in the NYC tech community, it’s great to begin in person. To find great networking events, sign up for these mailing lists: Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Gary's Guide, Stacklist, Firstmark's Data-Driven series, and Work-Bench (enter email on the bottom for the Enterprise Weekly). They each have a long list of quality events to choose from in their regular newsletters.
We’d love to hear from you. Please reach out to [email protected] or check out our press kit here.
We aim to be responsive in a few ways:
For funding inquiries for your company, please reach out to [email protected] (and include a deck).
For press inquiries, please reach out to [email protected].
For any other or more general inquiries, please reach out to [email protected].
