Capital
Venture Capital for the rest of us
Sandeep Ahuja
Having Mucker involved felt like having additional leadership team members we could turn to for experienced advice and guidance. The Mucker team truly knows how to build companies.”
97% Funded
Almost all Mucker startups to date have raised outside capital
300+ Mentors
The brightest entrepreneurs and executives in Silicon Valley and beyond
Billions Raised
Our Mucker companies have raises several billion in funding
Mucker Capital invests in pre-seed, seed, and Series A companies building defensible and scalable, Internet software and services businesses outside of Silicon Valley.
In addition to our MuckerLab Accelerator program, we partner with exceptional entrepreneurs to provide their earliest institutional funding and work with them side-by-side to help scale their new ventures. But, it is our conviction that we must provide more than just capital. As operators and entrepreneurs ourselves, we roll up our sleeves and work with entrepreneurs in all parts of their businesses that need additional resources –- product development, customer development, business development, operational infrastructure, recruiting, and fundraising.
We don’t care where you live, where you went to school, or who you know. We don’t live in Silicon Valley anymore and you don’t have to either to build a great company. If you have a unique insight into a product or market that you’ve commercialized into a business, we’d like to hear about it and see if we can help.
Long-term Partnerships
A Mucker investment is more than a check. At Mucker, we invest in founders and startups for the long haul of company-building. While we typically invest at the earliest stages of funding, we still work closely with and provide counsel to many founders years after they move beyond Series A.
Investing Outside Silicon Valley
Building a great company should not depend on your zip or post code. We help passionate founders outside Silicon Valley crack the black box that is the venture creation process, access a built-in network of mentors and advisors, and tap into diverse sources of funding.
Company Building Expertise
We’ve “been there, done that” and our familiarity with the startup journey can help anticipate what comes next for your company. Our investors, advisors, and mentors have deep experience building companies and can “see around the corner” to help guide your growth.
Mucker portfolio companies have raised billions from some of the best investors in the world, including:
Patrick Kann
Mucker helped me ‘see around the corner.’ They have such a breadth and depth to their understanding of the market, they saw things coming that I didn’t. That level of experience has helped me anticipate, prepare, and build a stronger business."
FAQs
What's a Mucker?
Our name is inspired by Thomas Edison’s vision of creating a space where brilliant entrepreneurs and hackers work together to create new and better products that either disrupt existing industries or create entirely new markets. Mucker Capital is named after the original hackers, the men who worked with Edison in his labs – Thomas Edison’s “muckers.”
The name for Edison’s muckers is said to have come from Edison’s experiments to invent a better formulation for bricks. Edison and his team spent more than a year testing different materials and binding agents, or “muck” as it was called at the time, before finally getting it right. That’s when Edison first began referring to his researchers as “muckers,” and the name stuck.
Historians have often called the R&D laboratory Edison’s greatest invention. Before Edison came along, inventors typically worked alone and relied more on inspiration than a repeatable process. Edison changed all that by effectively creating the modern innovation and commercialization accelerator by marrying a proprietary innovation process with a team of brilliant and ambitious young men from all over U.S. and Europe brought in to work with him. Many muckers eventually moved on to become successful inventors themselves after spending time with Edison.
(Please note, we have no affiliation with Thomas Edison, his heirs, estate, or any foundations or other entities associated with his name and likeness.)
Why is Los Angeles Mucker's Headquarters?
We believe Los Angeles (and more broadly, Southern California) is becoming a major technology hub, but is in need of additional funding and infrastructure at the very earliest stages of venture formation. Los Angeles has approximately the same size technical labor force as Silicon Valley — fueled in part by graduates from three of the top ten technical universities in the world (Caltech, UCLA, USC). LA has already produced dozens of venture-backed, tech success stories. Yet, it only has only a small fraction of the venture capital investment as Silicon Valley.
Like Silicon Valley entrepreneurs just a few years ago — before the advent of a large, vibrant angel community, micro-VCs and accelerators like Y Combinator — many entrepreneurs in Los Angeles need help turning their products and ideas into thriving businesses, raising capital, and operational advice. The startup ecosystem in Los Angeles is not yet as efficient as Silicon Valley, but Mucker is accelerating that evolution by helping entrepreneurs crack the black box that is the venture creation process, access a built in network of mentors and advisors, and tap into diverse sources of funding.
Why Mucker?
Mucker is not for every entrepreneur or company. Our portfolio companies are our customers, and as in any service business, customer satisfaction is key to long-term success. As a result, our selection criteria are not solely based on whether we believe the company can generate a significant financial return in the long run. We need to be convinced that we can add significant value above and beyond our equity ownership in the company.
We treat every company as if they are our only investment. We fully buy into the dreams and travails of each of the entrepreneurs we back. We invest only in a few dozen companies a year. Our companies are not lottery tickets – their success is our success.
We believe we add incremental value in a few unique ways:
The Mucker investors are able to add strategic AND operational value to our companies because we are successful technology entrepreneurs and executives with collectively several hundred years of operating experience. We have held roles in the Internet industry as operating executives, entrepreneurs, and investors. We have founded numerous companies, operated companies at all stages, and helped scale some of the most successful companies in the Internet industry. We have spent our careers as operators at companies of all stages — startup to Fortune 100. We earned our stripes as product managers, marketers, engineers, and general managers. We have built companies from scratch, recruited co-founders, raised hundreds of millions in capital, and sold our ventures. We’ve been there before and we are not afraid to get our hands dirty and leverage our past experiences and networks to help Mucker entrepreneurs succeed.
We have split our careers between Los Angeles and Silicon Valley; as a result, we have deep ties to the tech communities in both markets (and have now added similar capacities in Austin and Toronto). We are able to bring business development, customer development, advisory, recruiting, and financing opportunities across geographies to our portfolio companies.
The Mucker mentor network includes some of the most successful executives, entrepreneurs, and investors in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and beyond. Our mentors are experts in diverse industries from media, entertainment, payments, eCommerce, fintech, adtech, AI, social, mobile, local, and more. They provide a level of expertise and diversity of perspective that complements that of the founders of Mucker. We offer our portfolio companies access to expertise not constrained by geography or industry.
How do I work with Mucker?
We review all submissions and pitches from our website on a regular basis, so we strongly encourage entrepreneurs to submit thoughtful and complete applications.
What does the Mucker team do all day?
We work full-time investing in and working with startup companies. As a result, we tell entrepreneurs to treat us as part of their founding team. Our portfolio companies have complete access to our time, experience, network, and knowledge. But most importantly, we are not afraid of digging in on the tactics of building their companies –- from drawing wireframes, drafting marketing materials, to managing AdWords campaign. Just like the entrepreneurs we work for, we will do whatever is necessary to help our portfolio companies win in the marketplace.
What does it take to be a Mucker?
We look for passionate, 100% committed entrepreneurs of any age and experience level with disruptive ideas who are willing and able to take the risk of turning their ideas into reality. We have a strong preference for fully formed teams of “builders,” with the skills and capabilities to build a product and take it to market.
How far along do we need to be in order to work with Mucker?
We invest in companies at various stages of maturity — some will have just a new idea on a napkin while others will have a company that is already generating revenue and looking to accelerate its growth. Enterprise and B2B startups typically can be earlier stage while consumer product companies would require more proof of product-market fit. Experienced teams with domain experience attacking underserved markets will need a lot less traction to get our attention. We’re happy to talk to you about your idea and let you know if it’s too early or too far along (and we’ll try to give you a couple of pointers along the way to make it worth your time).
Can I still pitch my company if we have been around for awhile?
Yes. Many companies we invest in have done significant product development work or have launched an early version of their product. While you may be well past the prototype stage, we will help you scale your business, raise funding, and do anything else we can to help your business succeed.
Do you have an accelerator program in addition to direct investments?
Yes, of course. As Mucker Capital, we invest directly in Seed and Series A stage companies that typically have more traction and/or more experienced founding teams.
MuckerLab is our Pre-Seed and Seed accelerator program. About half of our portfolio is part of the MuckerLab program.
To learn more about MuckerLab accelerator, please visit our Accelerator page.
Do I have to be in Los Angeles (or Austin or Toronto) to receive investment?
We make investments all over North America and in locations around the world. There is no requirement to relocate to be near one of our offices. Companies who wish to participate in the Mucker community in person, however, are welcome to do so at one or more of our offices. Many founders use some portion of the investment funds to pay to cover travel expenses incurred while visiting Mucker offices.