Our Vision
When we started Signia in 2012, we wanted to build a firm that reflected the type of investors we would have wanted to work with in our entrepreneurial careers. It all began with a simple mission that still holds true today: be the most helpful investor an entrepreneur will ever have.
Our Portfolio
Consumer
Enterprise
Team
Ed Cluss
Sunny Dhillon
Gina Domizio
Linus Liang
ANAGHA RAJE
Rick Thompson
Wider Team
Ideas
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Why Technology is the Last Hope to Solve the US Housing Shortage
Written by David Bloom The housing problem in the United States is no secret; it is top of mind for almost every American regardless of age, income level, or location. Unable to afford starter homes in many of the nation’s urban centers, young adults are renting longer than ever. Housing prices in ...
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The Essential Creator Economy
Written by David Bloom Over the past few months, we have seen investors, politicians, and media leaders stressing the need for innovation in essential industries across our country (e.g. Josh Wolfe on Defense, Katherine Boyle on supporting national interests, Noahpinion on New Industrialism, Ray Da...
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Making the Impossible, Possible: Investing in Frontier Technologies
By Linus Liang, Kevin Wu, Signia Venture Partners I co-teach a class at Stanford on Frontier Technologies and I am often asked how investors evaluate these ideas. While we don’t focus on deep tech investing at Signia, we recently had a panel of investors that do: Baris Aksoy, General Partner at AV8...
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5G Venture Opportunities & Challenges Ahead
By Linus Liang, Kevin Wu, Signia Venture Partners The recent release of Apple’s iPhone 12 with 5G capability has renewed consumer interest in 5G. Though the technology has been touted for years by wireless carriers and device manufacturers, its exact benefits are often still unclear to mass-market ...
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The Future of Local Card Shops
Just recently Panini released their newest line of NBA cards, the 2020–2021 Donruss. They were available online for $1000 apiece, close to a 10x increase from last year’s listing price. Despite the drastic change in price, these boxes were sold out within minutes of coming online, leaving collector...
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On-Time and On-Budget: A Construction Revolution
By David Bloom and Kevin Wu, Signia Venture Partners https://www.pexels.com/ Construction is the world’s single largest industry — a megalith by all accounts. Globally, even conservative projections estimate that it will represent 13% of GDP and see over $14 trillion in revenue by 2025. Yet when we...
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From Farm to Phone: A Paradigm Shift in Grocery
In the blink of an eye, millennials, moms, and grandparents alike have abandoned the decades-old practice of wandering dusty grocery aisles for the convenient and novel use of online grocery. While Instacart, Amazon Fresh, and others have been offering an alternative to brick and mortar grocery for...
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Takeaways from a Conversation on Early Stage Fundraising in the Current Climate
Written By Heidi Burns Hilton This week we chatted with Natalie Dillon from Maveron and Andy McLoughlin from Uncork Capital about early stage fundraising during these unprecedented times. It was a fun discussion where we gained insight from three unique early stage venture capital funds who are foc...
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Advice from a Morning with the CEO of Calm
Written By Heidi Burns Hilton We chatted with Michael Acton Smith, Co-founder and Co-Ceo of the billion dollar wellness company Calm. He and his co-founder are setting out to make the world a happier, healthier place and doing a pretty damn good job at it. Their dream is to make Calm “The Nike of t...
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Ways Associates Can Add Value in a COVID World
Written By David Bloom Over the past few weeks we have seen an increase in uncertainty in all parts of our lives due to the COVID pandemic. The volatile public market has had both historically good and bad days, consumer spending has changed drastically with shelter in place orders sweeping the nat...
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Meet Swoop
Founders: Amir Ghorbani, Peter Evenson and Ruben Schultz Location: Los Angeles, CA #WhoWhatWhy Who they are: Swoop is a group transportation and experience company designed to connect people with a variety of transportation options and curated experiences. Whether you need group transportation for ...
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Ways Signia Companies Can Support You During The Coronavirus Crisis
Got 99 COVID-19 problems, but a Signia portfolio company aint one… We don’t have all the answers, but we have a few. Here is how our portfolio companies can support you during these crazy and challenging times. In need of some fun? Download Sway and get dancing. If you are like us, you may be going...
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David Bloom: My Path to VC
Over the past several years countless people have reached out to me wanting to hear how (or why) I chose the unusual career path of venture capital right out of college. I had a rehearsed spiel for job interviews that I thought would make me hireable and a different answer to friends who thought I ...
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Meet Blue Ocean Gear
Founder: Kortney Opshaug Location: Bay Area, CA #WhoWhatWhy Who they are: Blue Ocean Gear prevents the economic and ecological impact of lost gear through IoT tracking technology. They have invented a Smart Buoy technology that tracks fishing gear at all times even if it’s far offshore. Data from t...
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Meet Whistle
Founders: Adam Foosaner and Michael Barile Location: San Francisco, CA #WhoWhatWhy Who they are: Whistle is the easiest way to sell your used electronics for the best possible price. Whistle provides an app-based service where users can sell their used electronics instantly and have them picked up ...
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How Home Good Brands are Evolving to Engage Millennial Homeowners
Millennials are widely known as the generation who prefers to rent rather than buy. Whether it’s taking an Uber or Lyft instead of owning a car, or leasing a place rather than taking out a mortgage, millennials are approaching the concept of ownership in a markedly different way than their predeces...
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Expanding our team, our investment focus, and our geography…
Expanding our team, our investment focus, and our geography… We are excited to announce our $85 million Signia Venture Partners III early-stage fund that closed during 2018. We want to take this opportunity to reflect on our past two funds and tell you a bit about transition into our third fund. Si...
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Digital Influencers and the Dollars That Follow Them
Animated characters are as old as human storytelling itself, dating back thousands of years to cave drawings that depict animals in motion. It was really in the last century, however — a period bookended by the first animated short film in 1908 and Pixar’s success with computer animation with Toy S...
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InstaGrandmas: Is Selling To Seniors On Social Media Worth Your Brand Dollars?
The last ten years have seen a sea change in the world of consumer packaged goods, as nimble digital-native brands have built empires off the maturation of e-commerce infrastructure and the proliferation of social content channels (e.g. Instagram, Snap, etc.). Changing consumer values in younger bu...
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InstaGrandmas: Is Selling To Seniors On Social Media Worth Your Brand Dollars?
The last ten years have seen a sea change in the world of consumer packaged goods, as nimble digital-native brands have built empires off the maturation of e-commerce infrastructure and the proliferation of social content channels (e.g. Instagram, Snap, etc.). Changing consumer values in younger bu...
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Security Tokens Will Be Coming Soon To An Exchange Near You
While cryptocurrencies have generated the lion’s share of investment and attention to date, I’m more excited about the potential for another blockchain-based digital asset: security tokens. Security tokens are defined as “any blockchain-based representation of value that is subject to regulation un...
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3 Ways Early-Stage VCs Add Value to Portfolio Companies
There’s more to early-stage investor value than just money. Credit: ShutterstockWith investors deploying record amounts of capital, founders and executive in search of cash don’t have to look too hard for it these days. But it’s important to remember that not all investment dollars are created equa...
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Real Estate Tech Joins the Unicorns
Why investors are suddenly so bullish on real estate tech start-ups. Four pillars: Changing the way we live, work, play, or learn. This is the foundation for each of Signia’s investments. Even though we’ve invested in a wide variety of frontier tech companies, we make sure all of our investments to...
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Back to School: Crypto-Tech 101
Investing in blockchain companies over the past couple of years, I’ve realized how little I know and how new the category is for venture investors. For fear of becoming dumb money, I went back to ‘school’ with a cryptography friend last week who schooled me in some basics on BTC, Byzantine Fault To...
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How To “Hire” The Right Venture Capitalist
Not long ago, the top concern for founder teams was, “Will we be able to raise?” Today, that is no longer the case. Thanks to an unprecedented flow of capital, talented entrepreneurs have no shortage of suitors eager to support their visions. Crunchbase estimates that investors put $214 billion int...
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Your Next Home Will Be Bought or Sold Through Your Phone
Why we doubled-down on Reali Today I’m proud to announce Signia’s continued investment in Reali, an AI-powered real estate company changing the home buying and selling experience. I am passionate about real estate tech and Reali is the perfect example of how innovative thinking mixed with new techn...
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Instagram Is Eating the World
The news that Instagram will be offering longer-form content Earlier this week, Instagram sent the worlds of entertainment, content, and social media into a collective fit with its announcement of IGTV, a longer-form vertical video service. The announcement shows the clear intentions of Facebook’s ...
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Everyone is Unique. Why Shouldn’t Your Protein Be Too?
Article was originally published in StartU The Rise of Personalization For everyone who hasn’t been into a GNC lately, here is a quick refresher. The shelves are stocked with exotics jugs and bottles labeled things like “Shattered Ripped” and “Pump Fuel” promising increased energy and faster muscle...
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Machine Learning is Changing Real Estate
Announcing Landis, our newest investment. In the age of the Internet, disintermediation is commonplace. Some of today’s most valuable tech companies have built their business on simply eliminating the middleman — just look at what Apple Music did to record labels. In the real estate industry howeve...
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Player’s Lounge: The Best Way to Play Video Games for Money
It’s no secret that skilled video game players like to see where they stand relative to all the other players online. Every game, from FIFA to Call of Duty, provides worldwide rankings for their players. Take FIFA for example. With over 10M copies sold in 2017 alone, the community of players is eno...
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The Benefits of Sports Figures Coming into Silicon Valley
Over the past few years, an increasing number of athletes and team owners have begun to invest time and money into Silicon Valley. Athletes have stopped spending money on status symbols like cars and houses, and begun parking their money in the hottest tech startups. While the price tags on both of...
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How GV Closes Information Asymmetries and Creates Value
I wrote this while taking a class in the Information School at UC Berkeley When it comes to investing in startups, venture capitalists constantly operate in a world of hidden information. The ability to evaluate companies and pick out future winners relies as much on intuition and experience as it ...
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Welcoming Activity Assist to the DRF Family
We are excited to announce our investment in Activity Assist, an EdTech company looking to bring field trip planning and execution for schools to the 21st century. By digitizing how teachers plan field trips and execute the event, Activity Assist is saving schools time and money, as well as allowin...
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Startup Trends From A Student Venture Capitalist’s Perspective
Here at Dorm Room Fund it is our job as student investment partners to keep up with the latest startup and venture capital (VC) industry news. This could be as simple as keeping up to date on the newest funding rounds or as complex as trying to identify and predict up and coming trends. Rather than...