About the firm
A small firm, on purpose.
We started The Bit Foundation in 2016 after a combined twenty years of building companies and watching good teams get advice from people who had never done the work. The firm is our attempt at the alternative.
Why we exist
Venture has grown enormously, and most of the growth went into fund size rather than judgment. A larger fund needs bigger outcomes, which means bigger checks, later entry points, and more companies per partner. Founders feel the result as a quarterly check-in and an introduction they could have made themselves.
We went the other way. Fund IV is $220M across six partners. Each of us carries around six active boards. That number is not a marketing detail, it is the whole strategy. It is why we can spend a Tuesday afternoon on your hiring problem, and why the person who wired the money is the person who picks up the phone.
The trade is real. We miss companies because we cannot move at growth-stage speed, and we get diluted in our best outcomes more than a larger fund would. We have made peace with both.
- First check written
- 2016
- Companies backed
- 180
- Combined portfolio value
- $4.8B
- Countries
- 41
Two partners, one fund, a lot of conviction
Roughly twelve a year, on purpose
Marked at last priced round
We have never required relocation
How we work
Four things we hold to
These get tested in the meetings where holding to them costs us something. That is the only test that counts.
- 01
Conviction over consensus
If everyone in the room agrees, we are probably late. We would rather be early and occasionally wrong.
- 02
Clear terms, plainly written
One page, standard documents, no side letters that surprise you at the Series B. You should understand your cap table without a lawyer.
- 03
Founders keep control
We take board seats when we are useful there and observer rights otherwise. Governance should not be a trophy.
- 04
We say no clearly
A fast no with a reason is more valuable than a slow maybe. You have a company to run.
History
Ten years, told briefly
- 2016 · Two partners, one small fund
- Amara Okafor and David Chen raised $40M from people who had backed them as operators. The first investment was a payments company that took four years to work.
- 2019 · The accelerator starts
- Founders kept asking for structure in the first year, so we built twelve weeks of it. Sixteen companies at a time, never more.
- 2022 · Fund III, and a harder market
- We invested through the downturn at roughly the same pace. Several of our strongest companies were funded in the quarters when nobody was writing checks.
- 2025 · Fund IV closes at $220M
- Smaller than we could have raised, on purpose. Six partners, around six active boards each, which is the constraint the rest of the firm follows from.
The people
Six partners, all of whom built something before they funded anything.
Amara, David, Priya, Marcus, Sofia, Grace. Between them: three companies founded, two acquisitions, one initial public offering, and a shared dislike of board meetings that exist to fill an hour.
Meet the team
If this sounds like the firm you want on your cap table
Send us the company. No introduction required, and no deck if you would rather write it out.