“Setting up the investment vehicle was so much easier than I thought!”
– No VC ever

As an investor, entrepreneur and creator, I have had to set up numerous companies over the years (to my tax accountant’s chagrin). And while I became more comfortable doing it over time, one aspect remained the same: it was always a very manual process that ended up being more challenging, more time consuming, and more expensive than I had anticipated.

Fund managers and syndicate leads experience this pain especially acutely. Investment vehicles are inherently complex and require consideration of and integration with compliance, contracts, tax laws, banking and reporting. At the same time, the number and pace of investment vehicles have exploded. There are now 2,889 US VC firms, a 2.5x increase since 2013, while the number of funds increased over 3x to 5,338 (NVCA). And that doesn’t even include all the investment SPVs and syndicates, which are increasingly gaining popularity.

Nik Talreja and David Meister uniquely experienced both sides of this process: first as lawyers at Cooley and other leading tech law firms, and then as VCs when they co-founded 18.ventures.

So they decided to do something about it, and co-founded Sydecar with the intent to streamline the fund formation process. Layering technology on top of their experiences as lawyers and VCs, Nik and David, along with an incredible team, have productized those manual, costly processes that have plagued us investment managers for years.

Sydecar’s products are designed to be both turnkey and flexible. Off the shelf, they are structured to handle back-office operations and automate banking, compliance, contracts, and reporting. By applying a standards-driven approach, they’re enabling investment managers to accelerate through the fund formation process to deal execution with a platform that meets fund investors’ and lawyers’ demands.

We met Nik and David at a particularly opportune time at Anthemis. We were seeing an increase in SPV activity in our own portfolio and our teams were looking for solutions to streamline that process. On the investment front, a core theme in our thesis was the massive opportunity emerging to digitize and productize the entire private equity value chain, especially in Venture .

When given the opportunity to invest in Sydecar’s Seed round, it was an easy decision. We’re excited to partner with Nik, David, and the team on a platform that we believe will truly revolutionize one of the most important parts of the investment management process.

Sydecar is launching out of stealth today, after supporting thousands of investors and over $350M in deals during their private beta. If you’re looking for a more effortless and elegant deal execution platform, you can visit their website to schedule your onboarding today.

If you’re like me and geek out on LLCs, good news, Sydecar is hiring.