Liquid Link Ventures
Private companies in the digital economy.
Ventures is the area of Liquid Link scoped to private investments in software and the infrastructure underneath it. No company is held and no investment has been made.
What sits in scope
Ventures is the private counterpart to Digital. Where Digital is written around markets a position can be entered and exited on, Ventures is written around companies, which are held for years and cannot be exited on a screen. The two areas exist separately because that difference changes almost everything about how an investment has to be structured and reviewed.
The scope below sets out the kinds of company the area is built to look at. It is a statement of what Build Capital intends Ventures to cover, not a description of anything owned.
Scope
- AI companies
- SaaS
- Fintech
- Software and developer tools
- Cybersecurity
- Marketplaces and creator tools
- Digital-infrastructure startups
Why the scope is drawn around software
The lines in the scope share one property: each is a business whose product is software, or whose value sits in software that other businesses depend on. That is a narrower filter than technology, and it is narrow on purpose. A filter that admits everything is not a filter, and an area that will start small needs to be able to say no quickly.
Developer tools, cybersecurity and digital infrastructure sit in scope for the same reason. They are sold to buyers who have already decided they need the category, which makes the demand question easier to reason about than it is for something sold to a consumer on impulse.
Marketplaces and creator tools sit in scope because they are where software meets an audience, which is the ground the rest of Liquid Link already stands on. An investment there tends to teach the platform something it can use in more than one area.
The filter
Software, or the layer other software depends on. Everything else is out of scope for this area, whatever else recommends it.
How Ventures is meant to work
Build Capital's stated preference across the firm is to structure around the asset rather than to build a structure first and then look for something to put in it. Applied here, that means the vehicle for a private investment would be decided against the specific company and the specific counterparty, with counsel, at the point there is one.
It also means the honest description of this area today is a scope and an intention. Ventures will describe how it invests when it has invested, and not before.
The order of work
Write the scope. Find the company. Structure around it, with counsel. Only then describe it publicly.
What is held today
No companies. Ventures has made no investment, holds no position in any private company, and has no pipeline it would describe as one. That is the accurate state of the area and it is stated here rather than left to be inferred from an empty page.
The neighbouring areas: Digital covers liquid markets, Labs covers businesses built in-house rather than bought, and Liquid Link sets out how the five areas fit together.