Introducing Eclipse Venture Equity
Introducing Eclipse Venture Equity (VE), which formalizes Eclipse’s approach to building new businesses from the ground up
Eclipse was founded with a mission to power the Industrial Evolution. Since 2015, we’ve helped entrepreneurs build exceptional companies that make physical industries more efficient, resilient, and profitable.
We realized our operating experience wasn’t just relevant and applicable to early-stage companies, but that we could also provide critical input to later-stage companies. With that in mind, we rolled out our first Early Growth Fund late last year to help early-stage startups transition to high performance, generational companies.
Today, we continue our mission with the introduction of Eclipse Venture Equity (VE). VE formalizes our approach to building new businesses from the ground up. Through VE, we are bringing together some of the best minds in technology like Ian Arthurs, the former COO of TaskRabbit and Medium, Saleh ElHattab, the former Director of Product at Samsara, Josh Giegel, the Co-Founder and CEO of Virgin Hyperloop, Vikas Enti, the former Head of Systems and Products of Amazon Robotics, and Amrish Singh, the former GM of Metromile, to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems, including issues surrounding the supply chain, manufacturing, worker retention, health care costs and climate.
For decades, we have been close to these challenges. We’ve founded companies, built them up from the early days and scaled them through developing major production lines and supply chains. As buyers and leaders ourselves, we’ve lived through these pains and we know the technologies and solutions we wish were available. Our operating backgrounds—from world-renowned companies like Apple, Tesla, Samsara, Flex, Virgin Hyperloop, GE, and more—have been the foundation on which we have built and shaped our approach at Eclipse from day one.
This experience gives us unique insight into the changes and modernization that need to happen to turn things around for physical industries. Many times, we developed and validated theses that we knew we could build when there were no viable solutions in the market. VE allows us to expand our capabilities end-to-end and gives us the ability to exercise our operating muscle and our network of incredibly talented people on a more consistent basis.
Venture Equity isn’t completely new to Eclipse — we have been building companies to tackle complex problems for years.
Eclipse Venture Equity validates ideas borne from credible theses and then pulls from a network of extraordinary operators to help these ideas take flight.
Here are Eclipse Venture Equity’s four key differentiators:
- Thesis-driven: Founders work with an idea that is already researched, developed, vetted and ready to turn into a viable business. We derisk product-market fit, so you can hit the ground running.
- In it for the long run: Founders get access to a wide network of investment professionals, talent, and opportunities to raise capital outside of the core VE team to encourage follow-on investments and the continued growth of the business.
- Operating experience: The VE team brings vision, knows the opportunities in physical industries, understands the existing players in the market, the target customers, and the engineering and operational talent needed to accelerate time to market.
- Founder profiles: Our founders come in all different forms. We’ve invested in great business leaders with limited technical knowledge, then hired the best technical talent to support them. We’ve also invested in highly technical leaders who may have less go-to-market or commercial experience, then paired them with leaders who excel in that area. We’re looking for people who have outsized vision, the grit and talent to see things through, and who are in it for the long haul.
The founders we work with will have ultimate autonomy over the shape of the companies they are building; from establishing the workplace culture, to selecting the other members of their founding team, to setting the pace at which the company is run.
Eclipse Partner Aidan Madigan-Curtis has more on what sets Eclipse Venture Equity apart, including impactful hiring, other program milestones, and new VE companies to watch for.
Our physical industries have been grossly underinvested in for too long and are in desperate need of digital transformation. Up for the challenge? Join us as we lead the Industrial Evolution and build the future of physical industries.
