A Pittsburgh-based venture capital firm has been named among an inaugural list that looks to highlight the venture capital industry's newest fund managers who are receiving praise from their limited partners and from the startup founders who have received their investment.
Reinforced Ventures, which is led by investment partners Euan Guttridge and Liam Krut, is one of 50 groups included in Signature Block's "Emerging 50" list. Signature Block is the newsletter and publication name of the media arm from the Weekend Fund, an early-stage startup investment firm based in San Francisco.
"Reinforced Ventures beats the rush on early stage deeptech," a blog post on Signature Block said. "The [general partners] are ex-founders who've built a network of 1,650+ engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists to evaluate the team, technology and timing before the financial value is obvious."
Established in 2020, Reinforced Ventures looks to offer investments between $100,000 and $150,000 to companies based in Pittsburgh or to those that have ties to the region. Its portfolio includes local tech startups like Edge Case Research, Gridwise, Locomation, Mach9 Robotics, OtterTune and others.
Guttridge, who previously led the technical program management operations at autonomous vehicle developer Uber Advanced Technologies Group in Pittsburgh, and Krut, who has a background in due diligence as well as a data scientist and researcher, spearhead these efforts, which have attracted addition inquires since Reinforced's featuring on the list.
"We've already had a number of people reach out to us who are excited about our unique approach to venture investing and want to get involved in some way," Krut said. "I think the other thing to mention is we're continuing to bring on new investors with niche expertise that they can offer and active roles in portfolio companies. We're continuing to grow with our portfolio and with new investors."
Krut said the firm currently has $27 million in assets under management, which he said he's looking to grow even amid the current economic conditions where tech companies of all sizes are seeing drastic shifts in valuations.
"We've really hustled to find overlooked opportunities for the past two years and have had to hone our skills for selling to the startups and get the prices that we think are fair for our investors and we're really reaping the reward on that," Krut said. "I feel like we have a narrow window of maybe 18 to 24 months where we can get in as the deck is reshuffling in this economy and get those next set of outliers. It's really an exceptional time; I could not be happier right now."
