The Rise of Operator VC funds | White Star Capital Collects $360M | YC’s New Partner For Its Bio Push

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Operator funds: On Wednesday, Vibe Capital announced its second fund, a $70 million vehicle, with capital raised entirely from inside the venture industry and not from some “random family office,” firm cofounder Ankur Nagpal explained in a thread on Twitter. The fund’s investor base is a mixture of startup founders and operators, content creators and 10 VC funds, Nagpal tells Midas Touch. “There is a preference from founders to raise from other founders and operators,” says Nagpal, who founded edtech company Teachable. “I became a big believer in this class of investing and decided to raise our fund that way.”

Cofounder and general partner Larsen Jensen spun out Harpoon Ventures from Lightspeed Venture Partners in 2018, which provided funding to its former partner’s new firm. From there, Jensen also accompanied his former firm to institutional LP meetings. Harpoon received backing from Andreessen Horowitz, as well. Plexo Capital, founded in 2017, made investing in other venture funds part of its fund thesis, reserving a slice of capital for the strategy. Plexo specifically backs funds led by underrepresented VCs in an effort to help solve the funding gap and provide needed guidance to firms raising and deploying capital for the first time. 

Symbiotic: For Plexo, investing in other VC funds aligns with its mission of putting funding in the hands of underrepresented groups. Vibe chose this route for efficiency. Working with others in the industry allows for quick turnaround times on commitments and none of the bureaucracy that comes with working with traditional investors like multiple in-person due diligence meetings or yearly audits customized for each LP, Nagpal says...

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The storied accelerator has tapped visiting partners, former nVision Medical founder and CEO Surbhi Sarna, to step into a group partner role. Her mission: to help deepen and standardize YC’s playbook when it comes to bio and life sciences participants, all while supporting other entrepreneurs who may not fit the traditional biotech VC funding pipeline mold.

Sarna is taking the baton from YC managing director Jared Friedman, the former Scribd cofounder who has overseen YC’s growing bio portfolio in recent years, among other commitments. Like YC’s own founders and the software entrepreneurs it first brought in, Friedman notes, Sarna herself was doubted for being too young and inexperienced to build nVision. Sarna, who suffered a brush with ovarian cancer at age 13, set out at age 24 to build a device that could detect the deadly disease in a woman’s fallopian tubes.  “It took me a year and 50-plus meetings to raise my first $250,000 to go build a prototype,” she says. Sarna ultimately sold nVision to Boston Scientific in 2018 for $275 million, including earnouts.

The mission: As Y Combinator’s bio-focused partner, Sarna’s job will be two-fold: deepen and standardize the support YC provides companies in biotech and life sciences, and pick more winners bringing a level of technical know-how YC’s partners have lacked until now...

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