So, what’s unique about G2C Ventures?
..and why successful founders say they love working with us
Looking for the G2C origin story? Read about our decade-long journey to launching the fund here: Announcing G2C Venture Partners
Want to cut through the VC jargon and get straight answers?
Here’s everything you wanted to know about G2C Ventures and our approach to building the cognitive enterprise.
Why are you starting G2C Ventures now?
We have been building enterprise application companies for many decades and started investing in early-stage startups – first check in, high conviction plays – 10+ years ago.
Our co-investing activities naturally evolved into formalized syndicates and once we exited our respective ventures – the three of us spent considerable time incubating G2C to ensure perfect alignment on sourcing, selecting, and supporting founders.
The timing for our venture fund launch couldn’t be better!
Enterprise applications are undergoing a complete tech refresh with AI, creating an opportunity similar to when Oracle dominated client-server or Salesforce conquered SaaS.
The companies being built on today’s cognitive enterprise tech stack will define enterprise software for decades to come.
What do you look for in founders you work with?
We back founders with unique market insights, strong technical backgrounds, and ability to adapt quickly.
For early-career founders – we look for academic excellence followed by impressive early career achievements.
For seasoned entrepreneurs or business executives – we value career accomplishments, learnings from failure, and deep domain/market experience.
Most importantly we look for grit – that all-encompassing, relentless drive to push through challenges without losing sight of the vision.
With these founders we look for alignment to build an endearing partnership that lasts throughout the company’s lifecycle and often continues beyond .
What exactly is this “Cognitive Stack” you keep talking about?
The Cognitive Stack mirrors how our brain works – perceiving information, reasoning through it, taking action and orchestrating everything around those actions seamlessly.
Perception Layer: Systems that understand what matters to your business. Like (one of Sunil’s earlier investments) Observe.AI – where customer service leaders define success metrics directly without technical intermediaries.
Reasoning Layer: Real-time decision engines guided by business rules. Think insurance platforms where underwriting executives define policies in plain English that the AI translates into algorithms.
Action Layer: Controlled execution within defined boundaries. Like contract automation where legal teams set approval workflows or sales assistants where leaders define performance targets.
Orchestration Layer: The command center where business priorities drive AI behavior. For example a content orchestration platform lets communication teams coordinate multiple AI systems without coding. Marketing leaders can visually design approval workflows that route different content types to the right stakeholders, maintaining human oversight for sensitive messaging while automating routine communications – without any engineering or IT involvement.
What sets our approach apart isn’t just the technology – we believe AI technology will be ubiquitous – it’s ensuring business users, not just engineers or IT shapes how AI functions across the enterprise.
How early do you invest?
We prefer to lead the first round of investment and will also co-invest in early rounds.
We often invest before the product is fully refined or even when all the co-founders haven’t come together yet.
What matters most to us is a founder’s commitment to solving a critical market problem and a compelling vision for the solution.
PS – Note on what we look for
What’s your check size and investment approach?
We invest $1-2M when leading early stage rounds and smaller amounts $250k+ when co-investing.
We prefer priced rounds and require a board seat when leading the round where we bring other co-investors who have invested with us over the years.
Whether leading or co-investing we remain deeply involved in building the company.
While we put our investment guard rails in place, we are in the company building business and allocate capital to generate above market returns for our co-investors.
We are not in the capital allocation business that helps build businesses.
Do you have geographic requirements?
We prefer at least one founder to be based in Silicon Valley or planning to relocate or regularly travels here (independent of our investment).
What don’t you invest in?
No climate tech, consumer tech, or hardware.
If it’s not an enterprise software application with a unique application of emerging AI tech stacks we’re not the right partners for you.
We steer clear of technologies requiring lengthy regulatory clearance cycles or FDA approvals.
We focus where we add the most value for the most promising founders.
How are you different from other enterprise AI investors?
We respect and collaborate with the many excellent angel and early venture investors in enterprise AI.
Our unique contribution comes from three specific areas:
Founder DNA + Customer Access: Our relationship networks include executives who have been our former customers and collaborators and trust our judgment. For founders, this means introductions to trusted early design partners and go-to-market channels who will spend time to help refine your product vision from early days.
GTM Acceleration: We don’t just open doors – we help shape collateral and messaging and structure deals with channel partners. Our portfolio companies navigate procurement and security reviews faster because we understand how enterprise decisions really get made.
Capital: We prepare for your follow-on financing rounds from day one – helping shape your business plan, investment thesis and key performance metrics while cultivating interest in your company with investors who can lead subsequent rounds of financing. Our portfolio companies raise subsequent rounds from the best investors at market valuations because we actively prepare them for financing success and capital efficiency from day one.
When challenges arise you need partners who can do more than be a sounding board – you will get partners who will roll up their sleeves and help you execute solutions.
That’s the G2C difference. We are all in.
Is my company too far along for G2C?
If you’re approaching a few MM in Annualized Recurring Revenue (ARR) it’s a little beyond our sweet spot but we are happy to connect with founders building enterprise AI companies and explore how we can help.
Our greatest company building value comes when we can help founders shape product-market-fit and subsequent go-to-market partners and financing strategies from the earliest stages.
How can founders connect with you?
Reach out directly on LinkedIn or through our website or send email to founders@g2cventures.com.
We participate in university incubators, accelerators, industry events and conferences focused on enterprise tech and founders. If you know of an event we should be part of drop us a note!
What does G2C stand for?
G2C is “Grit to Capital.”
We partner with founders who pour everything they have into realizing their vision.
That raw determination, that fire, that humility, and that perseverance – that’s the all encompassing grit we are talking about.
When you pair that grit with the right amount of capital bonded with real partnership… that’s when magic happens that others read about years later in front page headlines (..or 40 sec viral tik tok reels!)
That’s when companies don’t just grow – they transform industries.
That’s what we’re building here.
How do you help with product-market-fit?
We start with a strong founder-market fit and help crystallize the problem definition.
We spend iterations to transform your promising idea into market-desired solutions
Design Partner Acceleration: With a narrow initial problem-solution definition and a longer term vision refined, we tap our executive network to secure early design partners who become your first reference customers and co-creators.
Solution Messaging: we help translate technical capabilities into business outcomes that ideal customer teams across a large enough initial market segment can justify paying for.
Impact Modeling: We help develop ROI tools that shift sales conversations from features to quantifiable business outcomes.
Go-to-Market Execution: We bring battle-tested approaches for sales enablement and pipeline generation, shortening first sales cycles by up to 50%.
Channel Strategy: We help identify and secure the right partners to scale beyond direct sales, including introductions to key decision makers at these partner organizations.
We have refined these approaches across dozens of enterprise startups, helping companies achieve product-market fit with less capital and in shorter timeframes.
Do you have a thesis on AI regulation?
We believe companies that build responsible AI with business controls from the start will win in the long run.
We help our founders navigate emerging regulations by designing systems where business leaders maintain oversight and accountability.
This isn’t just good ethics – it’s good business.
What’s your take on the current AI funding environment?
While there’s certainly froth in parts of the AI market we see tremendous opportunity in enterprise applications built on the cognitive stack. The funding environment is becoming more discerning which benefits founders building sustainable businesses rather than chasing hype cycles.
We are less concerned with timing the market and more focused on backing founders solving real problems with practical AI applications that put business leaders in control.
The opportunity to build next generation leaders in Enterprise AI applications is just about beginning.