We believe we are seeing profound changes in the way business works. Our investor, Bloomberg L.P., wants to support and understand these changes. Backing and building startups is a wonderful way to do that, so we created Bloomberg Beta. Below is a snapshot of basic information on us, and a link to our previously-internal operating manual—with many details on how we work.
Bloomberg Beta is a venture firm backed by Bloomberg L.P., investing out of a $75M fund. (We are now investing out of our second fund. The first was the same size, so we now have $150M in total under management.) While we focus on areas broadly of interest to Bloomberg, we choose our investments independently, without preference for companies who have or want a relationship with Bloomberg. We invest for financial return. We do see Bloomberg as a template for startups—founded on a powerful idea, bringing transparency to markets, achieving global scale, with a strong and open culture that embraces technology, led by its founders for decades.
We often think about how to build as much trust as possible with founders, and we believe transparency is the first step to that. If founders understand how we think, what we believe, and why, that begins to build trust.
So, a few months after we started our fund, when we were writing an operating manual for ourselves (covering everything from check sizes, to diligence questions, core beliefs, etc.), we decided to take a chance and open source it. Founders told us, again and again, how much time it saved to have facts out in the open, how it helped them decide whether to work with us. (The ones who wanted to skip talking to us also saved a step, which is terrific. Founder time is precious.) We started seeing stars and forks, and we decided to go even further.
Now we've moved our entire web presence to GitHub to become even more transparent. Here, you can see how things have changed over time, propose improvements, or even take our ideas and make them your own (the investments are ours, though...). You can also see the things you'd usually find on a venture investor's website, like a list of our founders and the questions we ask ourselves when evaluating startups. We're grateful you're taking the time to learn about us.
So here you are. When in doubt, as they say, read the (ahem) manual. :)
Roy Bahat — Twitter // LinkedIn // Blog
Karin Klein — Twitter // LinkedIn // Blog
James Cham — Twitter // LinkedIn
Shivon Zilis — Twitter // LinkedIn
Morgan Polotan — Twitter // LinkedIn
Shaina Conners - Twitter // LinkedIn
San Francisco — 140 New Montgomery St., 22nd Floor — Map
New York — 731 Lexington Ave. — Map
Our founders requested an anonymous way to ask us questions, so we're providing it for you, too. Right here.
(If you're not one of our founders, then it'll be impossible for you to see the reply in our founder Slack channel -- not to fear, we are collecting the answers under the "BetaAUA" topic on Quora for everyone else. If we've already answered the question in our manual, e.g., "how should I get in touch with you?" then we will respectfully ignore the question.)
This manual is open sourced under a Creative Commons license.