Kindred Ventures

Founder and Managing Partner Steve Jang and Managing Partner Kanyi Maqubela lead all investment decisions. Jang brings operational experience as a founder and early advisor to Uber, while Maqubela previously invested at Collaborative Fund and teaches venture design at Stanford. The partnership structure is deliberately small, with no junior investment professionals making independent calls.

Kindred targets pre-seed and seed-stage companies, with initial checks typically between $500,000 and $2 million. The firm reserves significant capital for follow-on investments through Series A and beyond. It does not participate in growth-stage rounds or buyouts.

Kindred will lead seed rounds when the opportunity aligns with its high-conviction model, but the firm also co-invests alongside other early-stage funds and individual angels. The partnership's decision to lead or follow depends on the founding team and the syndicate composition, not a rigid policy.

Origination relies heavily on the personal networks of Jang and Maqubela, particularly Jang's relationships across the crypto, mobility, and consumer internet ecosystems developed through his advisory and angel investing work. The firm does not operate a formal scout program or accept unsolicited business plans.

Kindred Ventures is structured as a traditional venture capital firm raising committed capital from limited partners, not as a single-family office. Its second fund, Kindred Ventures II, closed at a reported $100 million in November 2022 (per Axios, November 2022).

Kindred does not publish a formal exclusion list, but its portfolio and thesis communication focus on early-stage technology companies with a defensible technical or network-effect moat. The firm has not shown interest in capital-intensive industrials, traditional retail, or biotech requiring FDA approval pathways.

Steve Jang co-founded Schematic Ventures, a separate thesis-driven early-stage fund focused on supply chain and industrial technology. While Schematic maintains its own partnership and investment committee, the two firms share a common founder in Jang, who brings overlapping operational intelligence to both vehicles.