Strategy - Mercury Fund

Investment Themes

Work

Build

Journeys

Data

Power

Talent screening, aggregation, sourcing, and enablement, for the emerging “flex” economy

Digital transformation of the energy, manufacturing, construction, supply chains, and logistics industries

Frictionless product journeys transforming customer/buyer experiences

Enterprise tools for tracking, capturing, integrating, proving, and securing data

Broadening access to capital, knowledge, and opportunity through fintech, blockchains, and data

Talent screening, aggregation, sourcing, and enablement, for the emerging “flex” economy

Digital transformation of the energy, manufacturing, construction, supply chains, and logistics industries

Frictionless product journeys transforming customer/buyer experiences

Enterprise tools for tracking, capturing, integrating, proving, and securing data

Broadening access to capital, knowledge, and opportunity through fintech, blockchains, and data

Deal Attributes

Geography

Mercury looks to invest in entrepreneurs with a Middle American presence or seeking to leverage Middle American resources.

Stage

Mercury seeks out entrepreneurs who have demonstrated product-market fit and are ready to scale their software startup.

Size

Mercury looks to invest between $1 million and $4 million in Seed extension and Series A financings. We will also consider initial seed investments as small as $250,000 for startups with a strong thematic fit. Mercury expects to invest between $6 million and $8 million over the life of our portfolio companies.

Lead
Investor

Mercury is almost always a lead or co-lead investor. We look to collaborate with other venture investors, seed-stage VCs, strategic investors, and angel investors, but can also make an independent decision and catalyze and syndicate a company’s first institutional investment round.

The Mercury Method

The Mercury Method is a proprietary framework by which we evaluate startup investment opportunities. The framework includes a series of assessments and playbooks for improving a startup’s operational hygiene. After standard diligence on a startup has been completed, Mercury scorecards a startup on multiple business building aspects that are critical on the pathway to product-market fit.

Mercury’s mantra is “go slow to grow fast.” By slowing down our startups at a critical stage, we can address any operational process deficiencies early. The result is operationally clean and scalable startups that grow faster and fail less often than their early-stage counterparts.