4.0
3.7 
2.8 
2.8 
3.4 Great Team, Great Experience
Fund: Applied Ventures
Posted by Brenor Brophy on 2011-06-03
Full disclosure, my name is on the post and my company is funded by Applied Ventures (amongst others). Frankly they have been a great investor for us and I have nothing bad to say.
When nobody else would fund us in the dark days of 2009, Applied came through with seed funding in the form of a note. This was a great deal for the founders, we got enough money to fully prove our technology and boost our valuation so that the seed funding converted at the series A valuation (which was based on 9 months of work and results as opposed to just a powerpoint deck).
Almost every startup hits a reset at some point. In our case we realized on the day the seed funding was to close that our technology had a great glaring defect. We disclosed it to Applied and they wired the money anyway. Even while realizing that everything we'd told them about our product's reliability up to that point was now defunct. They could have pulled the plug there and then, most investors would have, but they gave us the benefit of doubt and thankfully were proved right when we had fixed the problem four months later.
When we needed help with equipment, subject matter experts, customer & investor introductions they helped. And while many investors are willing to help, I'm happy to report that Applied's help was in fact mostly useful.
We have now closed a series A. All through the process Applied has helped us in closing with the new investors in a deal that is quite favorable to the founders.
We have worked with Chris Moran and Tony Chao and they are without doubt two of the most reasonable and nice guys as you will find in venture capital. In the more than 3 years I've been working with them I have always found them to be completely ethical, open and honest. They have consistently gone the extra mile for us when we needed it.
tl;dr We've had a great experience becoming an Applied Ventures portfolio company.
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