Bond Capital

Boldstart Ventures is a New York-based venture capital firm founded in 2010 by Ed Sim, built around the concept of inception investing: partnering with technical founders before they have a product, before they have a team, and sometimes before they have formalized a company. Sim has described the firm's role as being a co-architect of the company alongside the founder, helping to shape the product thesis, recruit the first engineering team, and land the first enterprise design partners, all before most seed investors would even consider writing a check. The firm focuses exclusively on enterprise infrastructure, developer tools, cybersecurity, and AI-native software businesses, and is the only institutional early-stage investor to have built this niche so systematically over more than fifteen years. Boldstart manages more than $1.1 billion across seven funds, with the most recent fund a dedicated $250 million AI-focused vehicle. Ed Sim has been ranked number one on Business Insider's Seed 100 list for 2023 and 2024, and is a perennial Forbes Midas Seed List honoree. The firm has made more than 224 investments with 35 portfolio exits. Notable portfolio companies include Snyk, the developer-first security platform valued at $7.4 billion; BigID, the data intelligence and security platform; Kustomer, the customer service platform acquired by Meta for $1 billion; Protect AI, acquired by Palo Alto Networks for approximately $700 million in 2025; Superhuman, the email productivity platform acquired by Grammarly; SecurityScorecard; Clay; CrewAI; and Blockdaemon. Beyond its original investments in BigID, Cockroach Labs, Snyk, and Starburst, the portfolio has expanded to include dozens of enterprise AI, developer tooling, and security companies.