SmartForest Ventures

Co-founders Deepthi Madhava and Hugh Mackworth jointly manage investment decisions. Madhava brings an operating background leading global engineering and product organizations, while Mackworth's experience includes corporate development and investment banking. The firm does not publicize a separate investment committee structure.

SmartForest focuses on pre-seed and seed rounds, writing initial checks between $500,000 and $1.5 million. The firm reserves capital for follow-on investments in portfolio companies that demonstrate strong product-market fit and subsequent institutional interest.

The firm prioritizes the Pacific Northwest — primarily Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia — but evaluates opportunities in other North American regions that share similar structural characteristics: robust technical talent pools, active angel networks, and relatively thin institutional Series A coverage.

SmartForest makes direct equity investments into operating companies. There is no public record of the firm making fund-of-funds commitments or participating as a limited partner in other venture funds.

SmartForest has not published a formal exclusion list. Its disclosed portfolio concentrations suggest the firm avoids capital-intensive segments like traditional biotech, heavy industrial manufacturing, and consumer packaged goods, favoring software-centric and climate-hardware models with asset-light scaling paths.