Laude Ventures

Andy Konwinski and Pete Sonsini serve as the firm's general partners and make all investment decisions. Konwinski brings technical and academic roots as a Databricks co-creator and former UC Berkeley researcher. Sonsini was a general partner at NEA for nearly two decades before co-founding Laude. The two-partner structure means no investment committee layers exist beyond them, which is typical for a debut micro-fund.

Konwinski's position in the computer science research community — particularly his tenure at UC Berkeley's AMPLab, which produced Apache Spark and Databricks — creates a direct pipeline to university spinouts and graduate-founded startups. Founders from top CS programs often approach the firm before engaging broader institutional venture. Sonsini's network from NEA provides additional inbound from experienced operators spinning out of larger companies.

Laude is a conventional venture capital firm, not a family office. It raised a committed fund of $30 million from external limited partners, per Axios reporting in January 2023. The firm invests third-party capital into portfolio companies and charges management fees and carried interest on the standard venture model.

Laude focuses exclusively on pre-seed and seed rounds. The firm leads or co-leads priced equity rounds at the earliest stages of company formation, often before a startup has significant revenue. The $30 million fund size is calibrated to make approximately 20–25 initial investments with reserves for follow-on, consistent with a concentrated seed-stage strategy.

The firm invests in artificial intelligence and machine learning, developer tools and infrastructure, enterprise software, and industrial technology. Konwinski's Databricks background gives the firm particular depth in data infrastructure and systems-level startups. The partnership does not invest in consumer internet, biotech, or hard tech outside the software layer.