The three of us met in 2015 to build Clearbit. Clearbit started as a data API used by engineers, and evolved into the Data Activation Platform used by almost every unicorn SaaS company in the world–a ~200 person company with 1000+ enterprise customers and 500,000+ users.
7 years and 20,000 working hours later, the three of us are still going strong. We know how to work together, how to disagree, how to make decisions, and have an unfair amount of fun along the way.
Earl Grey is our second act. We’re taking everything we learned scaling ourselves at Clearbit, from first time founders to executives, and using it to help the next generation of founders. We believe in this new wave of early-stage venture. The wave of founders funding founders in seed and pre-seed. Founders have the capital, stage relevant experience, and the tactical network to be significantly more valuable in the early sages of company building.
We decided on venture as our next project for a few reasons.
- We have access. We are flooded with high quality inbound from founder friends, referrals from our network of other founder investors, and even from more traditional venture funds who value our early-stage expertise.
- The internet is still in its relative infancy. As the economy is continues to transition to digital, internet companies and specifically those that make it easier to build on the internet will continue to increase in value. It’s a phenomenal market that we know more intimately than most.
- Capitalism remains the greatest driver of innovation and human progress the world has ever seen. Capital allocation and early-stage venture dive innovation and make the world a better place.
- We see an opportunity to do venture differently. To run the fund like a startup, building products, community, and network effects into our investment model. Ask us about our early experiments.
We have always believed that what we do in large part defines who we are, but it does not capture us in our entirety.
Amit is the smartest of us. Our strategic business brain, king deal maker, and managing partner at Earl Grey Capital. He ran all things sales, customer success, and partnerships at Clearbit as Chief Business Officer. He also is an avid sportsman (Stanford Lacrosse), a loving uncle, and can sing every lyric to Dua Lipa’s new album.
Matt is the most creative of us. He was the voice of Clearbit and now of Earl Grey, and has run marketing, growth, product, and served as Clearbit’s Interim CEO. He is endlessly curious and you’ll never find him in the same place for long. If you need a recommendation for the best dive bar in Bosnia, softest cashmere sweater in NYC, or which fitness influencer to talk to about the creator economy–he’s your guy.
Alex is our inventor and pace setter. He drives himself and those around him to execute faster than anyone else we know. He can solve problems often faster than he can explain them and never stops learning how to improve. He is also a bit of an author, writing books on engineering, CEO development, and even manager training. Lastly, he is an admitted Twitter addict and even bought a yacht to try to limit his screen time.
At the end of the day, we are three friends who love working together and saw an opportunity in the market for us to build an amazing venture practice. Our combined skillsets, network, and ability to execute made it a no-brainer to launch Earl Grey and our early success is proving the hypothesis.
[Going to insert social proof here]
what we want to be “read”:
- founder brand = company that startups/founders knows/uses (hundreds of thousands of users, etc), content creates trust...
- why we are doing this / what do we believe in = tech legimately solves problems/creates value, the market oppty is still ripe esp in crypto, not about woke/virtue signaling/chest thumping..
- we are in the cool kids club, even if not that loud....
- not a joke microfund = who the 3 of us, complementary skills, work together, going to run this like a startup, track record is serious at this point/we have too much oppty... running the fund like a startup (building products, things that scale, driving real value)
- not your average vc = we aren’t chest-thumping on twitter, just doing the work (ex. tons of deal, reputation w ppl), network over years paying off .... we are technical... which technical founders quickly recognize....
- more about us as individuals = we seem like good/trustworthy partners... references would go here....