We believe we are seeing profound changes in the way business works. Our investor, Bloomberg L.P., wants to support and understand these changes. Backing and building startups is a wonderful way to do that, so we created Bloomberg Beta. Below is a snapshot of how we think, including a link to our previously-internal operating manual — with many details on how we work.
Bloomberg Beta is an early-stage venture firm backed by Bloomberg L.P., investing out of a $75M fund focused broadly on the future of work. (We are now investing out of our third fund, which is the same size and focus as the first two funds, so we now have $225M in total under management.) While we focus on general areas of interest to Bloomberg, we choose our investments independently, without preference for companies who have or want a relationship with Bloomberg. We invest for financial return. We do see Bloomberg as a template for startups — founded on a powerful idea, bringing transparency to markets, achieving global scale, with a strong and open culture that embraces technology, led by its founders for decades. To serve our founders, we seek — like the rest of Bloomberg — to bring different worlds together (business, technology, culture, the public sector, among others).
In treating our founders as our customers, we often think about how to build as much trust as possible with them. We believe transparency — in how we think, what we believe and why — is the first step to that trust.
So, a few months after we started our fund, when we were writing an operating manual for ourselves (covering everything from check sizes, to diligence questions, core beliefs, etc.), we decided to take a chance and open source it. Founders told us, again and again, how much time it saved to have facts out in the open, how it helped them decide whether to work with us. (The ones who want to skip talking to us also save a step, which is terrific. Founder time is precious.) We started seeing stars and forks, and decided to go even further.
We've moved our entire web presence to GitHub to become even more transparent. Here, you can see how things have changed over time, propose improvements, or even take our ideas and make them your own (the investments are ours, though). You can also see the things you'd usually find on a venture investor's website, like a list of our founders and the questions we ask ourselves when evaluating startups. We're grateful you're taking the time to learn about us.
So here you are. When in doubt, as they say, read the (ahem) manual. :)
James Cham — Twitter // LinkedIn
Karin Klein — Twitter // LinkedIn // Blog
Roy Bahat — Twitter // LinkedIn // Blog
Harley Sugarman — Twitter // LinkedIn
Minn Kim — Twitter // LinkedIn
Angela Martin — LinkedIn
Lisa Wehden — LinkedIn
Shivon Zilis — Twitter // LinkedIn
San Francisco — 140 New Montgomery St., 22nd fl
New York — 731 Lexington Ave.
Our founders requested an anonymous way to ask us questions, so we're providing it for you, too. Right here.
(If we've already answered the question in our manual, e.g., "how should I get in touch with you?" then we will respectfully ignore the question.)
This manual is open sourced under a Creative Commons license.