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Include Venture Partners Management
Seth Unruh and Maren Winnick founded Include Venture Partners in 2018, structuring a venture firm deliberately designed to sit at the intersection of...
Include Venture Partners Management
Seth Unruh and Maren Winnick founded Include Venture Partners in 2018, structuring a venture firm deliberately designed to sit at the intersection of enterprise technology and the physical economy. The firm deploys capital at the early stage, targeting Series A and B companies whose software, hardware, or computational models are adopted by operating companies in sectors like manufacturing, logistics, energy, and commercial real estate. Rather than backing consumer or enterprise-SaaS in isolation, Include selects founders who sell into procurement chains and industrial balance sheets — customers that validate technology through operational deployment rather than seat licenses. The firm's portfolio splits across enterprise software, industrial automation, artificial intelligence, and energy transition, with additional exposure to fintech infrastructure, digital health logistics, and cybersecurity. Include participates as a lead or co-lead investor, reserving significant capital for follow-on rounds in breakout companies. Confirmed positions include portfolio companies sold into large-enterprise supply chains, where adoption metrics depend on unit economics visible in physical throughput data rather than purely recurring-revenue models. Include Venture Partners operates from Greenwich, Connecticut. Maren Winnick, a former operator with direct experience inside scaled industrial companies, and Seth Unruh, a career venture investor, designed the partnership to pair institutional LP relationships with sourcing access earned through Winnick's industry network. The firm does not publicly disclose total assets under management, though its capital deployment pattern suggests a concentrated portfolio of 15 to 25 active investments (Altss estimate). Include maintains no publicly announced adjacent vehicles or philanthropic entities as of mid-2025. Include's structural differentiator is its deliberate absence of generalized venture mandates. By refusing to invest in consumer internet, advertising-technology, or speculative crypto-native infrastructure, the firm forces its own sourcing funnel through a narrow gate — only technologies that require adoption by operators of physical assets. This constraint shapes everything from cap-table construction to LP reporting, where portfolio performance is benchmarked against industrial technology cohorts rather than the broader venture index.
General information
Firm type
Asset Manager
Year founded
2018
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Greenwich
Corporate office
Greenwich, CT, United States
Principals
Seth Unruh
Managing Partner
Maren Winnick
Partner
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment decisions at Include Venture Partners?
Managing Partner Seth Unruh and Partner Maren Winnick jointly lead the firm's investment committee. Unruh brought institutional venture experience to the founding, while Winnick contributed operational expertise from prior roles inside scaled industrial and commercial companies. Allocations and follow-on decisions require consensus between the two partners, a structure designed to balance pure venture judgment with practitioner insight into how technology is actually procured and deployed by large operating companies.
How does Include Venture Partners source proprietary deal flow?
Sourcing relies heavily on Maren Winnick's relationships within the executive ranks of industrial and commercial operating companies, giving the firm visibility into technologies being piloted or procured before those startups appear in generalist venture pipelines. Include supplements this with a narrower inbound channel from research universities with strong engineering programs in robotics, materials science, and energy systems. The firm does not operate a public scout network or content-marketing funnel.
Is Include Venture Partners structured as a family office or a traditional venture firm?
Include Venture Partners operates as a traditional institutional venture firm managing pooled capital from external limited partners, not as a family office. The SEC-registered entity does not manage a single-family fortune, and its partnership structure follows a standard venture carried-interest model with a management company receiving fees on committed capital.
Does Include Venture Partners participate in fund commitments or only direct deals?
The firm makes only direct equity investments into operating companies and does not operate as a fund-of-funds. Include does not publish a program for backing other venture managers. Its follow-on reserve strategy implies a concentrated direct portfolio rather than a blended direct-and-fund approach.
What investment stages does Include Venture Partners typically target?
Include targets early-stage companies, predominantly at Series A and B. The firm leads or co-leads rounds in this band and reserves meaningful allocation for follow-on investments in portfolio companies that demonstrate traction with industrial or commercial enterprise customers. Pre-seed and seed-stage checks appear only when the founding team has a verifiable commercial pilot with a named operating company.
Does Include Venture Partners maintain philanthropic structures, and how are they separated?
As of mid-2025, Include has not announced any associated philanthropic foundation, donor-advised fund, or impact-allocated vehicle. The firm appears to operate with a pure for-profit venture mandate, and its limited-partner base is not publicly connected to any family philanthropy.
What is Include Venture Partners' known posture on co-investments alongside external GPs?
Include welcomes co-investment alongside other institutional venture firms, particularly in rounds where the syndicate benefits from one partner's domain expertise in a relevant industrial sector. The firm does not publicly disclose a closed co-investor club, but its willingness to co-lead with generalist funds signals an open syndication approach for the right board composition.
Profile maintained by Altss using OSINT (open-source intelligence), regulatory filings, licensed data partners, and verified direct submissions. Read the methodology. Last updated: . Continuous refresh with full update cycles at least every 30 days.
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