Skip to main content

Two-year-old Day One Ventures raises new $52.5M fund to invest in Valley startups

Back in 2018 Day One Ventures launched in Silicon Valley specifically designed to be both a VC and an investor that would also lead marketing and communications for its portfolio. Two years on, Day One has invested in numerous startups to do just that and has today filed with the SEC its new $52.5M fund.

The new fund is similar to the first one: investing across industries from pre-seed to seed, with occasional series A investments (from $100K to $5M).

The fund was founded and is headed by Russian émigré Masha Drokova, who, since arriving in the US a few years ago, has been variously a PR and angel investor, but famously dumped her former life in Russia as a politician and TV reporter.

Drokova says the fund focuses on ‘day one’ companies, as defined by Jeff Bezos, which have ‘customer obsession’ in-built into their company culture.

She says the fund was raised during the pandemic over zoom with $45 million coming from LPs in the first fund. More than 30% of the capital is invested in POC founders; it has 25 female founders in its portfolio; and 33% of its capital is invested in high-growth ‘impact’ companies. Day one has frequently co-invested with Andreessen, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, and Lightspeed.

The fund has had three exits so far: Lvl5, Acquired, Feastly and has invested in Remote.com (with Index and Sequoia).

So far among its portfolio is:

• DoNotPay: British founder Joshua Browder, started a chatbot that pays your parking ticket, cancels subscriptions and gets refunds for you. This raised a $15M series A led by Coatue and Andreessen.
• Superhuman: An AI-based email client for execs founded by Brit Rahul Vohra – it has raised $35M series B from Andreessen.
• MSCHF: This creates viral and controversial products on a Supreme-drop-like model, invested with Founders Fund.
• Truebill: a personal finance & savings app.

The fund says its portfolio companies have now raised $825 million in aggregate; over 25% of its capital is in fintech companies; over 30% in AI-powered startups; and it claims to have hit over 500 media publications for its portfolio.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Drakova said “We choose startups with ‘customer obsession’ as the main focus for selection. Secondly, our value add in communications means we have people like Jack Randall who did comms for Robin Hood on our team. Not many women immigrants to the US have raised as much as this, as fast as this. So it’s a good sign for the market.”



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2UZc6MG
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Silent Revolution of On-Device AI: Why the Cloud Is No Longer King

Introduction For years, artificial intelligence has meant one thing: the cloud. Whether you’re asking ChatGPT a question, editing a photo with AI tools, or getting recommendations on Netflix — those decisions happen on distant servers, not your device. But that’s changing. Thanks to major advances in silicon, model compression, and memory architecture, AI is quietly migrating from giant data centres to the palm of your hand. Your phone, your laptop, your smartwatch — all are becoming AI engines in their own right. It’s a shift that redefines not just how AI works, but who controls it, how private it is, and what it can do for you. This article explores the rise of on-device AI — how it works, why it matters, and why the cloud’s days as the centre of the AI universe might be numbered. What Is On-Device AI? On-device AI refers to machine learning models that run locally on your smartphone, tablet, laptop, or edge device — without needing constant access to the cloud. In practi...
1 comment
Read more

Apple’s AI Push: Everything We Know About Apple Intelligence So Far

Apple’s WWDC 2025 confirmed what many suspected: Apple is finally making a serious leap into artificial intelligence. Dubbed “Apple Intelligence,” the suite of AI-powered tools, enhancements, and integrations marks the company’s biggest software evolution in a decade. But unlike competitors racing to plug AI into everything, Apple is taking a slower, more deliberate approach — one rooted in privacy, on-device processing, and ecosystem synergy. If you’re wondering what Apple Intelligence actually is, how it works, and what it means for your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you’re in the right place. This article breaks it all down.   What Is Apple Intelligence? Let’s get the terminology clear first. Apple Intelligence isn’t a product — it’s a platform. It’s not just a chatbot. It’s a system-wide integration of generative AI, machine learning, and personal context awareness, embedded across Apple’s OS platforms. Think of it as a foundational AI layer stitched into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Billionaire clothing dynasty heiress launches Everybody & Everyone to make fashion sustainable

Veronica Chou’s family has made its fortune at the forefront of the fast fashion business through investments in companies like Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger . But now, the heiress to an estimated $2.1 billion fortune is launching her own company, Everybody & Everyone , to prove that the fashion industry can be both environmentally sustainable and profitable. There’s no argument about the negative impacts of the fashion industry on the environment. The textiles industry primarily uses non-renewable resources — on the order of 98 million tons per year. That includes the oil to make synthetic fibers, fertilizers to grow cotton, and toxic chemicals to dye, treat, and produce the textiles used to make clothes. The greenhouse gas footprint from textiles production was roughly 1.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent in 2015 — more than all international flights and maritime shipments combined (and a lot of those maritime shipments and international flights were hauling clothes). The lit...
Post a Comment
Read more