Anu Hariharan, who led YC Continuity earlier than the storied accelerator scrapped this system, has partnered with two of her former colleagues and former Brex govt Lucas Fox to launch a brand new fund that’s focusing on elevating about $350 million and working a program that some peg as “YC for growth,” 4 sources conversant in the matter informed TechCrunch.
The brand new fund, whose identify is Avra, plans to function an eight-week program with a cohort of a few dozen post-Collection A startups every quarter. The invite-only program will decide startups with robust product market match and producing at the least a couple of million {dollars} in income, folks briefed on the matter informed TechCrunch.
Resembling Y Combinator’s strategy, the initiative goals to attach startup founders with skilled entrepreneurs on the late-stage. Along with Avra’s companions — in addition to Hariharan and Fox, one other two former YC executives are founding members of Avra, based on sources — these seasoned enterprise leaders will information the newer CEOs by means of numerous challenges, together with mature within the management function, and help them in steering away from frequent errors.
Avra just lately concluded its maiden eight-week program. It plans to supply to spend money on a number of the startups in every cohort, a number of the sources stated, requesting anonymity as the main points are non-public.
Hariharan and Fox declined to remark.
The primary cohort of startups included Runway, Supabase, Roboflow and Hextech, the sources stated. Barry McCardel, co-founder and chief govt of Hex, confirmed that his startup participated in Avra’s maiden program. Tony Xu of DoorDash and Parker Conrad of Rippling had been among the many mentors within the first cohort.
“The thing that sold me on Avra was the caliber of guests they had come in to speak with us. It was remarkably useful and inspiring to hear from other founders, CEOs, and operators about how they built their companies. I am usually pretty skeptical of VC programming – but Anu’s insight and the quality of the guests made it truly useful and worthwhile,” McCardel informed TechCrunch in an e mail.
Cristobal Valenzuela of Runway additionally confirmed the startup’s participation in Avra’s first cohort.
“The program was excellent,” he informed TechCrunch. “Primarily they invited some of the most exceptional CEOs who have faced similar challenges that we are going through now. The program is well-structured, filling in a lot of the blind spots we had over the next 24 month horizon.” Supabase and Roboflow didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
YC’s abrupt transfer earlier this 12 months to desert its growth-stage fund caught a number of executives off guard, together with Hariharan and Ali Rowghani, who collectively managed the late-stage fund. This sudden shift additionally left a niche within the development and late-stage enterprise sphere, significantly for a fund able to offering sources and connections akin to YC’s fashion.
Through the years, Hariharan has constructed a robust fame for being extremely supportive of founders, a trait evident in her continued board membership in quite a few YC Continuity portfolio startups. Simply two months after YC shut Continuity fund, she had finalized plans for launching Avra, based on people who interacted together with her in Could.
“‘Early growth’ companies are in an awkward phase: you may have PMF, but still have a lot to figure out. [Avra’s] program hit all the biggest, hardest challenges we are dealing with, and gives us a chance to spend time with experts and peers who have gone through the same thing. It was super useful. My only feedback is that I wish the program went longer,” stated Hex’s McCardel.