INTERCONTINENTAL INNOVATION
ABOUT NYVC
NYVC is an innovative multi-stage and multi-platform venture capital firm acquiring minority interests in visionary startups with well-thought-out plans and strategies. Based primarily in the New York metropolitan area and Florida, we invest in startups with a US or global focus.
IDEAS: VISION AND FOCUS
Unlike most early-stage VCs, NYVC invests in ideas, not in people.
People form teams, and teams can be enhanced on the fly by sharing and shuffling skills and responsibilities. It is easier to find great people to help our portfolio startups than it is to find great startup ideas. A solid startup idea presented by an intelligent founder forms a more substantial foundation for success than a founder with a half-baked “me too” idea, even, and perhaps more so, when such founder comes with an impressive background. Many colossal venture capital failures stemmed from the mistaken premise that an accomplished founding team can make up for flaws in their startup’s business plan. In short, even the best jockey can’t win a race with a lame horse, but a promising racehorse will often “Win, Place, or Show” even with an average jockey.
Many visionaries may only be able to see what others cannot yet see; gifted orators, on the other hand, are able to inspire audiences to envision a promising outcome and become passionate about it. At NYVC, we realize that visionaries and orators are both important for startups to succeed, but we remain cognizant of the difference between pure hype and strategic fundamentals.
We help our portfolio startups develop a clear vision, a strategic roadmap, and a razor-sharp focus on critical long-term and short-term objectives, and obtain the resources, including gifted orators, they require to carry out their business plans.
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Bob Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
NYVC’s maiden fund seeks investment opportunities across a range of sectors primed for technology-based innovative solutions, primarily including the following sectors:
- AI/ML and Deep-Tech Platforms
- Crowdfunding and Secondary-Market Platform Technologies
- Entertainment-On-Demand Platforms
- FinTech and Multi-Ledger Technologies
- Fractional Investment Platforms
- Gaming Technologies
- Global Commerce Platforms
- Healthcare and Telemedicine Technologies
- Infrastructure and Energy Technologies
- Integrated Communication Technologies
- Market Aggregation Platforms
- Multimodal Transport Technologies
- Niche Biotech
- PropTech
- RealTech
- Remote Collaboration and Future-of-Work Platforms
- Retail and Dining Delivery Technologies, and
- SpaceTech.
NYVC participates in the following investment stages:
- Idea / Pre-Seed (BPMF)
- Angel / Seed (PMF)
- VC / Series A/B/C (Growth)
- Pre-Exit
“Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture.”
Amelia Earhart
“Analysis is the art of reverse engineering reality.”
Adam Silver
OUR PROCESS
Before we invest in an idea, we analyze two aspects of the underlying premise of the startup – its viability and its feasibility. A startup that passes our viability and feasibility analysis with flying colors is set to become a stellar success story. Whether your startup ultimately becomes an NYVC portfolio company or not, our process is provided here to help you “dot your i’s and cross your t’s”.
BEFORE WE ANALYZE THE PRODUCT-MARKET-FIT,
WE VERIFY THE PRODUCT-MARKET-NEED.
Our viability and feasibility analysis process seeks to clarify the following questions:
VIABILITY ANALYSIS
- Is the concept evolutionary, disruptive, or revolutionary?
- Does the target addressable market already perceive the product / service / offering as a need?
- If not, can we cost-effectively introduce and market it? Can we realistically become the category leader? (marketing plan / sales / user acquisition model / user retention)
- Why will prospective customers / users want to try the product / service? Why will they keep using it? Why will they switch away from their current practices? Can we successfully create an intuitive and enticing engagement / user experience? Can we, and how do we, create a product / service that users will perceive and appreciate as vital to their processes? (value proposition)
- Is the business commercially viable? Is the startup focused on user acquisition, on cash-flow growth, or on a balance of the two? (monetization / growth)
- What does the competitive landscape look like? Does the startup have adequate intellectual property protection? What are the niche’s barriers to entry?
- What are the startup’s funding and operational needs, plans, and milestones? Are they realistic? Can we minimize risk to investors by providing Contingent Milestone Installment (CMI) funding? (capital strategies)
- Do the startup and its team fit well with our criteria, stage, sector, and region competencies?
- Are the founders and executives amicable to cooperation and communication with investors?
- Do the most-probable ROI (x) and IRR (time weighted) scenarios fit our fund’s objectives?
- Are our exit objectives aligned with those of the founders and management? Is the company projected to become a profitable growth company? What are the realistic prospects or exit strategies of the company? (private growth / being acquired / an IPO)
“Serial entrepreneurs don’t just plan for the exit from the get-go; they are already envisioning the post-exit opportunities their venture will create for all stakeholders.”
FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS
Can the startup (with our help, if necessary):
- Efficiently budget utilization of available capital and achieve defined milestones?
- Achieve its development and promotion objectives on schedule and within budget?
- Establish, and remain focused on, its short-term and long-term objectives?
- Recruit, acquire, and retain needed talent and skill?
- Utilize our industry network for operational, growth, and strategic advantages?
- Attract senior executive management when needed?
- Attract additional funding to achieve its growth and exit objectives?
NYVC’S ESG/DEI IMPACT INVESTING POLICY
In line with NYVC’s fiduciary obligation to the pecuniary interests of its LPs, when reviewing and comparing investment opportunities, our primary objective is to achieve the highest possible net-to-LP IRR on every investment made by our funds. Under no circumstances will NYVC sacrifice fund returns in order to consider non-pecuniary items such as ESG factors. Accordingly, NYVC will seek to allocate a portion of its funds’ investment capital to startups that, in addition to having a comparably high likelihood of achieving stellar financial returns for the fund in accordance with the fund’s investment objectives, are also aiming to effect a positive environmental or social impact.
NYVC, however, comes across startups with significant potential to effect such positive environmental or social impact but lacking the potential to achieve a substantial ROI, or even presenting a likely risk of loss to investors. In such cases, NYVC would typically offer LPs (who have subscribed to receiving such offers) an opportunity to fund such startups directly or through a non-managed Impact-SPV. NYVC thus enables each LP to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether such an investment or a potential write-off is in line with such LP’s own fiduciary mandates and with its ESG and DEI allocation objectives and policies, which may vary from time to time based on such LP’s own risk/return objectives and its portfolio performance.
NYVC plans to form a separate impact fund for limited partners less concerned with loss of capital or a return on investment and seeking to allocate capital to ESG/DEI impact-focused early-stage startups without regard to risk or performance. NYVC will not charge LPs a management fee for managing such impact fund.
NYVC’S PIPELINE
“Innovation is change that unlocks new value.”
Jamie Notter
Emergence occurs when an ecosystem demonstrates properties or behaviors beyond the capabilities of individual parts of such ecosystem, properties or behaviors that only emerge as a result of interactions within the ecosystem.
NYVC participates in early-stage investments in startups founded by VenTree, a Venture Builder operated by NYVC’s founder and affiliates, and in unaffiliated startups. The following are some of VenTree’s seed-stage or pre-seed startups.
LOCATIONS & INVESTMENT REGIONS
NYVC currently operates primarily out of New York and Miami.
We invest in startups catering to the North American market, India, and the emerging Middle East / Central Africa (MECA) zone brought upon by the 2020 peace and normalization treaties between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan, and those in the works with Saudi Arabia and Oman.
Seth Frantzman, Ph.D., @sfrantzman, is a renown journalist and the executive director of MECRA, the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis, @MidEast_Center. To read more about this map click here.
General inquiries:
We are currently not accepting unsolicited pitches.
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Phone: +1 (212) 457-4950
Email: info@nyvc.com
Phone: +1 (305) 482-1520
Email: info@miamiseed.com
NYVC is proud to sponsor the Frum Founders Foundation (www.frumfounders.org) whose mission is to help underserved and under-represented young men and women from the marginalized Jewish Yeshivah (“Ultra-Orthodox”) community transition professionally into the high-tech startup economy, become self-sufficient, and achieve economic mobility and financial security.
For Limited Partners & NYVC Venture Partners
NYVC (CRD # 325272 / SEC # 802-127450) is a US SEC ERA (Exempt Reporting Adviser).
