We seed the future by funding, supporting, and championing early stage entrepreneurs.
Core values
Diversity
Diversity is an essential part of Ulu’s investment thesis; it makes sense and is profitable. Diverse teams tend to be more effective, more profitable and more likely to outperform less diverse organizations because their backgrounds give them a wider array of tools and talent.
Disciplined decision analysis
We generate attractive venture returns using a disciplined, repeatable decision making process that analyzes risk-reward trade-offs. Ulu’s portfolio construction takes into account the low chance of an outlier and optimizes for outlier success. This approach makes us conventional in the world of institutional investors, but contrarian as compared to other VCs.
Transparency
We show entrepreneurs how we evaluate startups before they even meet with us by making available a rubric for evaluating startups for seed funding. This communicates the high bar companies must demonstrate to be moved from our qualitative process to the next level of diligence.
Insights
Making Rentals Part of the American Dream
When you can’t find anyone else to fix a problem, sometimes you just have to do it yourself. Jonas Bordo, Co-founder and CEO of Dwellsy, realized the rental marketplace was broken, especially after the decline [...]
How to Successfully Shut Down a Company
When things don’t go well for founders, their decision to shut down the company is one of the most painful things they’re forced to do as entrepreneurs —their startup may be their passion and their [...]
Conserving the World’s Most Valuable Resource Using Mobile AR
The Silicon Valley tech scene exploded just when Ulupreneur Chris Morace, founder and CEO of Overlay, graduated from Stanford in the 1990s. He jokes that his was the last class of folks to have studied [...]
