We’re founders who invest in early-stage startups and help other founders build successful businesses.
Frequently asked questions
What stage do you invest in?
We invest in early stage companies (pre-seed, seed, series A). We are comfortable meeting early when a founder is still in the "idea" stage, and we're willing to invest pre-revenue and even pre-product. We've also written a good number of checks for companies that already have significant traction. Every situation is different.
How big is your investment team?
It's just Kat and Rapha. This means all of your communication will be directly with us.
What areas do you invest in?
We invest primarily in B2B SaaS, APIs, fintech, marketplaces and occasionally in consumer. This includes areas like remote work, developer tools, low-code/no-code, AI/ML, and infrastructure tech.
Most of our investments are in the US and Europe, but we're also very bullish on the growing startup ecosystems in Latin America and Asia, and have made a growing number of investments there.
What's your check size?
We invest $50K to $200K depending on the size of round. We don't lead and instead look to partner with other investors. Often, we will be one of the first checks in and then work with founders to identify a lead investor and strategic angels.
How do you evaluate companies?
Since we invest in early stage startups, the single biggest thing we look for are strong, first-principled founders with a bias for excellent execution. In particular, it's critical that founders have a clear direction and can persuasively communicate so they can attract future employees, customers, partners, and investors. We also evaluate if the business model can be successful and if the type of work it entails plays to the founders' strengths.
At the earliest stage, the "company" might be just the general outline of the space, the problems, and perhaps a Figma prototype of the solution. We evaluate if this is something that can become a big company based on market size, industry trends, intensity and frequency of current user pain points, and whatever other data points we have.
In parallel, we evaluate founder-company fit. If we could choose who starts this company, would it be these founders? Are their strengths suited to this space? For example, two incredible sales leaders likely have less of an advantage starting a consumer mobile app company than starting another enterprise sales company where they can leverage their skills and industry contacts. Motivation is also critical and something we actively seek to understand: why are the founders starting a company, and why this one in particular.
How do you balance investing with being full-time founders?
We generally do investor-related work in the evenings and schedule meetings with founders during the weekends to minimize context-switching and enable us to be full-time founders ourselves during the weekdays. Hence the name Evening Fund.
Sometimes things can't wait until the weekend or evening, and in this case we are always reachable by text and can hop on an urgent call.
Why do you invest?
Because it feels good to help others and it makes us better founders ourselves. Also, we enjoy the craft and strategy of investing.
Investing is not our full-time job, and it's not how we make our income (now or in the future). Even if our portfolio has a 10x return, it's small change compared to our equity stakes in our own companies. This fact helps align our incentives with the founders we support. We will always do what's right for you, even if it's not best for us as investors.
How can I reach you?