Identifying Category Creation
As pre-seed and seed investors, we partner with the people transforming enterprise supply chains.
From Proof of Value to Proof of Market.
We understand that company building involves many pieces, including product, operations, strategy, and marketing. We like to work with entrepreneurs who have built a product and demonstrated customer interest through a pilot or early revenue.
We are partners on finding product-market fit, helping founders identify unique integrations, business model strategy, and identifying pricing models in parallel with building product.
Our product-market playbook and industry advisors help our companies rapidly iterate on their unique selling points by talking to our corporate partners, industry advisors, and our entrepreneur network.
Thought Partners to Entrepreneurs
When you are creating a new category, you need coaches who help you think from first principles, expand your network, add creative energy, and help you execute.
Frequently Asked Questions
Stage
We are early-stage investors looking to back teams that have a minimum viable product. We guide companies from this “proof of value” to “proof of market” helping identify product-market fit, building well-rounded teams and brainstorming pricing, business model, distribution and channel strategy with our young companies. In terms of rounds, we typically invest at the Pre-Seed and Seed stages.
Our core focus is on the early stage. However, we are thematic investors and always like to help entrepreneurs working within our core themes, even if it ends up being too late for an investment from NewBuild. Do contact us if we can be of help.
Investment Process
Our investments tend to cluster around supply chain related deeptech, infrastructure software and applications. The infrastructure rails of AI, edge data, robotics, and cloud technologies are still in the process of being adopted across the supply chain. We invest in companies that bring these new capabilities to supply chain practitioners, with enterprise context. In particular, Physical AI infrastructure is a key focus for 2026.
In the application software world, we are investing across enterprise operations on the “make” side of the house, from materials sourcing, procurement to manufacturing, warehousing and supplier management.
In addition, we are seeing company formation around industry specific supply chains in semiconductors and data center buildouts. We have made several investments in early stage frontier projects in these spaces.
These are the themes where we are active right now, but our curiosity extends much further! If you’re building something different targeted at supply chain enterprise customers, we want to hear from you and learn about the vision of the future you have in mind. We will be respectful of your time and still add value via introductions to our network if it is not a fit for NewBuild.
We love to learn! Find a common connection, share something insightful about your space, tell us how you plan to change the world, or how we can help you on your journey. We are very responsive on email and (fairly) responsive via LinkedIn.
Yes! Since we are thematic investors, we see category defining clusters emerging in many areas around the US and Canada. We are also quite comfortable with "headquarter-less" and models or Delaware-incorporated companies with development teams outside the US. Our main criterion is that the companies target US enterprises as the initial/primary market segment.
Being a small firm, all our companies get the whole team, but if you have a specific team need, we are open to a conversation about it. Beyond Rohini and Chad, venture Partners like Madhav and our corporate practitioner advisors are also available to our companies as you build your business.
Our diligence process stands out in a couple of important ways. As thematic investors, we tend to meet our entrepreneurs half-way, with a prepared mind around market opportunities, technology readiness and burning problems among supply chain practitioners. What we look for initially is founder-market fit with the problem you are solving and a core technical insight that unlocks a category in spaces where we have some depth.
We take our companies through a timely investment process where you will meet our partners as well as key advisors and people from our extended network who would be valuable business partners. Our goal is to help all the companies we engage with irrespective of the final investment decision.
We continue to actively look at opportunities across the enterprise supply chain, from materials, procurement and manufacturing to supplier management, logistics and payments. In addition, we invest in horizontal infrastructure companies in robotics, physical AI, data and modern cloud architectures.
Our most recent investments have also focused on AI datacenter supply chain around planning, portability, and energy efficiency.
If you are building an interesting company in these spaces, please tell us more. We would be happy to help you.
Terms
Our investment amount will depend on the stage of the company, ranging from $500K to $2M. Occasionally, we can invest a smaller participating amount in an area that is at the edges of our thematic focus that we are learning about.
We invest with conviction and would like to have a material position on the cap table. Ideally that would be 10%, but we are open to a smaller ownership in later stage, category leading companies where we bring unique value or in network investments where we are developing theses.
We prefer to lead or co-lead in rounds. Stage wise, we will usually lead a pre-seed stage investment and can lead/co-lead seed rounds.
Working With Us
Yes, we take board seats or board observer roles in our companies. It is the most efficient way for us to have the business context needed to be helpful to our entrepreneurs on company culture, business development and product growth. As companies grow, we advise entrepreneurs on building balanced boards and developing strong operating plans.
We recently hosted a Supply & Demand Innovation Summit at Snowflake’s SVAI Hub and in past years, have hosted well-attended Women in Supply Chain Summits.
Please reach out if you wish to collaborate with us on events that add value to the supply chain startup ecosystem and support the next generation of women entrepreneurs.
We are always keeping our eyes open for new teammates. What we offer is the promise that you will learn tremendously, work with category defining companies right from day 1, participate in the growth of this firm, and progress towards becoming a full life-cycle investor – please reach out to team@Newbuild.VC if interested.
We are based in the Bay Area working from co-working spaces in Menlo Park and San Francisco.
Our thematic approach extends to the way we interact with our companies after investing. Many of our companies have met customers, distribution partners, and key hires through the initial diligence process. We extend the same network-based value post-investment.
Product-market strategy is another key area where our long experience in venture, the numerous successful prior investments, our connections, and current knowledge of technical edges, helps us be thought partners to our companies.
Finally, we actively help our portfolio companies secure co-investment and follow-on capital from investors we have worked with. As board members, guiding companies on successful business growth and capital raises is a key value add.
Yes, our portfolio companies are hiring and growing. Here are some job listings across the portfolio.
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