Thesis
Susa Ventures is a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture firm founded in 2013 on a simple conviction: founders building value and defensibility through data, network effects and economies of scale become category-defining businesses. The firm invests at day one, when momentum is just forming, and describes its job as helping founders build that momentum early — with capital, customers and talent. It looks for spiky founders: people who are multiple standard deviations away from normal across intelligence, ambition and determination. Its own record: 10% of its first two funds' companies became unicorns against a 1% industry average, and Susa-backed companies raise Series A rounds at roughly twice the industry-average valuation, leaving founders with more ownership at exit.
Sectors and stages
Susa's core funds invest at pre-seed and seed, with Susa Ventures IV writing $1–2 million seed cheques, while the parallel Susa Ventures Opportunities II writes $10–15 million cheques at Series B and C, mostly into existing portfolio companies. The firm is sector-agnostic but concentrates on fintech, healthcare, supply chain and SaaS, alongside enterprise software, consumer, logistics and frontier tech. It invests across North America, South America, Africa and Asia — its first Nigerian investment was Andela, and it later led the seed round of Lagos-based open-finance company Okra.
Fund size
Susa closed its debut Fund I at $25 million. In August 2021 it closed $375 million across two vehicles: the $125 million Susa Ventures IV seed fund and the $250 million Susa Ventures Opportunities II fund. In March 2025 it announced Susa Ventures Fund V, a $175 million seed-stage fund. The firm manages capital from US-based institutions including non-profit foundations, education endowments and healthcare providers.
Notable portfolio
The portfolio reads like a seed-stage hall of fame: Robinhood (backed from seed through IPO), Flexport (Susa participated across all five funding rounds), Mux, Newfront Insurance, Andela, Viz.ai, Stord and Okra. The first $25 million fund produced five companies valued at over $1 billion from seed.
Partners
Susa was founded by Chad Byers, Leo Polovets and Seth Berman, who serve as General Partners. Byers came from Integrate.com and Polovets was an early engineer at LinkedIn. Notably, Susa offers its founders the chance to become limited partners in a parallel fund with no fees and no carry — first offered with Susa Ventures III in 2019 and continued in Fund IV, with 91 portfolio founders participating.
Programmes run
Susa does not run an accelerator, but it operates founder-centric programmes around its funds: the no-fee, no-carry founder LP parallel fund aligns portfolio founders with the firm's economics.
Credits and perks
The firm does not publicly advertise a formal startup-credits or vendor-perks programme; this is not publicly disclosed.
Why it matters for founders
For seed-stage founders with a data or network-effects moat — in fintech, AI infrastructure, healthcare or supply chain — Susa is one of the strongest early partners a founder can find: it leads small, commits early, and its follow-on machinery has carried companies from seed cheques to IPO. The founder-LP parallel fund is a genuine differentiator, turning the portfolio into a community with aligned economics.