It is with profound gratitude and a sense of great purpose that Garrett, Tim, Kira and I officially announce today the closing of our $43M fund, Bee Partners III. 

You may have already learned this news from our own personal conversations these last few months or today from VC Journal and Crunchbase News. And as many of you know, we have been investing Bee Partners III since early 2018, with 10 positions already and one more pending. These companies represent a remarkable future, one in which we as humans co-evolve with machines, and the world is most definitely a better place. Much more to come about them in future posts. 

We also are announcing another important development: We’ve promoted Tim Smith to Partner!  We are delighted to have him assume the title of a role he has largely filled for the last two and a half years by both building the proprietary systems that help support our Founders and supporting them from the depth of his own experience as a longtime Silicon Valley Founder, advisor and angel investor. 

Now, empowered with an optimal fund size for pre-Seed investing and our incredible team, here’s what we stand for at Bee Partners: 

We will never leave pre-Seed.

We have no plans or desire to stray downstream and we absolutely remain committed to inception-stage investing. Founders ride a violent rollercoaster of entrepreneurship and we're committed to helping them straighten the path when it is most difficult. Being this early, vital support to a Founder and their nascent idea is critical to our success. That’s proven out in events like TubeMogul’s 2014 IPO, the $275M sale of BuildingConnected last year, and the valuation of another nine companies at more than $100M. Our investment model works, and we aim to keep continuously improving and learning through the work we do with our Founders. 

Machines will win, and how they win is up to our brilliant Founders.

We are in a window of profound change. The steps innovators and backers take, the designs we create, the outcomes we envision and build toward in the next few decades will be as important as those machines and processes that laid the foundation for the factory systems in the late 1800s and the Internet frameworks in the 1990s. But, to be clear, we as investors will not be the ones to deliver the solutions here. It will be Founders who are deeply immersed in the respective technical domains who will show us the best, most innovative ways forward. It falls to us as investors to identify the optimal traits of Founders and then trust the Founders to build the machines that will win. 

We welcome the crazy, the outlandish, the passionate.

Yep. Remarkable change comes from those who passionately apply their energy and precious time to deeply-felt problems. Share your dreams with us and if we invest, we commit to being your partner for life. Full stop. You’ll get an answer from us, we’ll tell it like it is. And yes, we’re wrong sometimes, but that goes back to our willingness to learn.   

On behalf of the team here at Bee Partners, thank you all for your support through these many years and the successes you’ve brought us all. We welcome your insights, feedback, dealflow and introductions. We look forward to partnering with you, investing alongside you, collaborating with you on your own journey, and welcoming you into our community. Most of all, we look forward to sharing a bright and hopeful future, one we’re honored to take part in creating.