When prolific venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Lerer Hippeau announced in early 2024 that they were moving away from consumer technology, it sparked a debate on social networks find out if there are still opportunities.
Jim Scheinman and Sara Deshpande of Maven Ventures say “yes.” And to prove it, they raised $60 million in capital commitments for a fourth fund aimed at supporting “massive consumer technology trends.”
They say “massive” because it’s the company that spawned companies like videoconferencing giant Zoom and autonomous vehicle maker Cruise. Scheinman, founding managing partner, is even credited with coining the name Zoom.
As for the idea that no one wants to invest in consumer technology anymore, Scheinman told TechCrunch “that’s not true.” Like other industries, this one also experiences cycles in which consumers either think something is “the coolest thing ever” or “the worst.”
Consumer technology is at the bottom of the cycle, Scheinman said. He therefore believes that this is the best time to invest. “It’s quieter and there’s a lot less competition because fewer people are trying to invest,” he said.
When he started investing, the Internet was the first major platform. Then came mobile, then the cloud and AWS. Scheinman thought Web3 was going to be the next step, but that was overshadowed by artificial intelligence. As it launches, Maven will be there to help create the next game-changing healthcare AI company or robotic AI consumer company, he said.
“This is absolutely the time for multi-billion dollar companies to be born, within three to four years,” Scheinman said. “There are dozens of companies you’ve never heard of that will be household names like Zoom, Cruise and Facebook. Now is the time to invest in it.
Any new portfolio company will be in good company. Overall, 16% of Maven’s portfolio companies have reached a minimum exit or valuation of $500 million, or 10 times the industry average, general partners Scheinman and Deshpande told TechCrunch.
Scheinman launched the company in 2013 and brought on Deshpande soon after to focus on consumer AI and personalized medicine. They brought on investment partner Robert Ravanshenas in 2015, and again in 2020 after a stint in an operational role at a startup, to focus on fintech, longevity and consumer AI.
Together, the trio remains committed to pioneering similar consumer technology trends, including AI applications, personalized healthcare, climate and sustainability, family technology and fintech.
Fund IV brings total assets under management to $200 million and more than 50 investments in total. The company makes six to eight investments each year, writing checks averaging between $1 million and $1.5 million.
Maven has so far invested in seven new companies through the new fund, including Medeloop, a platform aimed at helping improve clinical research; Lutra AI, a startup that creates AI workflows from natural language; and AI agent company Multion.
One of the big themes of this new fund is investing in founders who have a unique vision for how this technology can improve consumers’ lives. Additionally, “how do we envision, with this new emergence and improvement of AI technology, being able to actually improve the lives of consumers all the way down to the consumer,” Deshpande said.
“Consumer trends will never go away,” Deshpande said. “Consumers are the spending engine of a healthy economy. We are all consumers. For us, it’s really that ability to be able to see what’s changing consumer behavior or a new technology that can have a huge impact on people’s lives. The founders come to us with an incredible vision that’s worth fighting for, and that’s the kind of thing we’re spending a lot of time on right now.
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