Clear Ventures

Investment decisions are made by the two General Partners: Chris Rust and Rajeev Madhavan. Both partners participate directly in technical due diligence, drawing on Rust's 15-year venture track record at US Venture Partners and Madhavan's experience founding and taking public an EDA software company. There is no investment committee beyond the two GPs, which the firm presents as a structural advantage for speed in competitive early-stage rounds.

Clear relies on the engineering backgrounds of its General Partners rather than outsourced technical diligence. Madhavan's semiconductor and EDA experience provides direct fluency in hardware architecture and manufacturing readiness, while Rust's decades evaluating enterprise infrastructure deals inform software defensibility assessment. The firm invests almost exclusively in companies where technology differentiation — not go-to-market execution — is the primary moat. This filters out most consumer and pure-SaaS deals before the pipeline stage.

Clear targets seed and Series A rounds, with initial checks typically between $2 million and $8 million. The firm reserves meaningfully for follow-on across subsequent rounds, particularly for capital-intensive deep tech companies that require bridge financing between technical milestones and commercial revenue. Clear does not operate a growth-stage vehicle or participate as a passive LP in other venture funds.

Clear Ventures is a traditional venture capital firm raising institutional limited partner capital through closed-end funds. It is not a family office. The firm filed Form D for Clear Ventures II with a target of $200 million in 2019, conducting fundraising through standard LP channels rather than a single-wealth source.

Clear's thesis is built around hardware-software convergence in enterprise and industrial markets, which implicitly excludes consumer internet, mobile apps, ad-tech, and most pure-play SaaS lacking an embedded hardware or physical-world component. The firm does not invest in biotech, pharmaceuticals, or life sciences, and has no publicly disclosed interest in fintech or crypto infrastructure.

Clear regularly co-invests alongside other early-stage firms and has participated in syndicated rounds such as Machina Labs' Series B. The firm leads or co-leads seed and Series A rounds where it can set board terms and governance structure. For later-stage rounds, Clear prefers pro-rata participation rather than passive co-investment alongside larger generalist firms.

As of the latest available information, Clear operates as a two-GP partnership with no publicly disclosed succession plan, junior partner track, or next-generation leadership. This structure is common in expertise-driven technical venture firms but concentrates key-person risk. Neither Rust nor Madhavan has announced a timeline for adding partners or transitioning investment authority.