Notation Capital raises $27 million venture fund, dispenses with ‘pre-seed’ label

Notation Capital announced Wednesday that it has raised a second venture fund of $27 million, more than three times the size of its first fund.

The VC is also reclassifying what it is, eschewing the term “pre-seed” in favor of “first-check.”

“The terminology that founders must navigate for early-stage funding is as confusing as it’s ever been, so we hope our mission is crystal clear — to partner with technical founding teams in underestimated geographies on day zero, before the opportunity is obvious,” founders Nick Chirls and Alex Lines wrote in a Medium post Wednesday. “Notation is a ‘first check’ venture firm.”

We’ll continue to focus on teams here in NYC, but will also make investments in other underestimated startup ecosystems outside Silicon Valley.

— Notation (@notationcapital) February 7, 2018

The Brooklyn-based fund will also begin to look beyond New York City for investments. The founders wrote that startups in cities like Toronto, Austin and elsewhere “might be just as likely, or perhaps more likely, to discover the new new thing that transforms an industry in the next decade.”

Chirls and Lines created Notation Capital in 2015, with an $8 million fund. It has since invested small amounts, often as the first investor, in 23 startups. Nearly all of the startups are New York-based, and several, including Carmera, Bulletin and Uru are based here in Brooklyn.