01
A decision in fourteen days
From first call to final answer. If we need longer, we tell you why and give you a date.
About the firm
Founded by operators who had raised badly first.
99SA started in 2015 because three founders kept meeting the same problem: capital was available, but useful capital was not.
Our story
Ninety-nine no's
The name is not clever branding. Our founding partner heard ninety-nine no's raising the seed round for her first company — a payments business that later processed billions and was acquired by a bank that had passed on it twice.
The hundredth investor was not smarter. They were simply willing to spend an afternoon understanding a business that did not fit an existing pattern.
That is the entire premise of this firm: the returns in venture do not come from consensus. They come from being early to something that looks wrong until it looks inevitable.
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2015
Fund I — $22M
Nine investments, all pre-seed, all in fintech infrastructure. Two remain private at over $1B.
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2018
Fund II — $55M
Expanded into applied machine learning. First offices outside Europe.
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2021
Fund III — $103M
Added the climate and industrial practice. Hired our first full-time talent partner.
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2025
Fund IV — $180M
Current fund. Same cheque sizes, same cadence — deliberately not a bigger strategy.
Principles
Five commitments we can be held to
Values are worthless unless a founder can point at one and say you broke it.
02
The real reason for a no
You get our actual objection in writing. It may be wrong, and you are welcome to argue.
03
We never lead a down round we caused
No structure, no ratchets, no recapitalisation that quietly wipes out the founding team.
04
One partner, all the way through
The person who backed you stays your point of contact. No hand-off to an associate after closing.
05
Silence is a choice, not a habit
We reply to every founder email within two business days, including the ones we passed on.
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Hold us to these
If we fall short of any of the above, write to the managing partner directly at accountability@99saventures.com.
By the numbers
Fund IV at a glance
$180M
Fund size
52%
Held for follow-on
10/yr
New investments
14 days
Decision window
Meet the people behind the fund
Six partners, four of whom have founded companies and two of whom have wound one down. Both experiences turned out to be useful.