Stage 1 Ventures

Stage 1 Ventures

David Baum launched Stage 1 Ventures in 2006 alongside co-founders with operating backgrounds in media and technology. The Miami-based firm emerged during the post-dot-com rebuild, targeting founders before institutional Series A rounds became the norm. Its earliest funds backed companies at formation, a commitment to seed-stage investing that pre-dated the micro-VC wave. Stage 1 commits initial checks typically below $2 million into enterprise software, AI/ML applications, and digital media platforms. The firm has historically maintained a concentrated portfolio of 15–25 positions per fund, taking board seats or active observer roles. Known past investments include Swrve, the mobile marketing platform acquired by MessageGears, the streaming analytics provider Conviva, and the autonomous vehicle sensor developer Ouster prior to its NYSE listing via SPAC in 2021. Co-investors have included Accel, Foundation Capital, and Lightspeed across overlapping rounds. The firm invests primarily across North America with selective exposure in Europe. Stage 1 Ventures operates from Miami, with a lean team structure typical of seed-stage managers. In January 2023, Conviva named its new CEO amid a broader CTV measurement push, reflecting Stage 1's continued exposure to the streaming infrastructure sector. The firm has not publicly disclosed current assets under management, consistent with its historical practice of opacity on fund-level metrics. Stage 1's structural distinction lies in its longevity at a single stage — two decades of pure seed focus spanning three fund cycles. Few seed-stage firms active in 2006 still invest from their first institutional capital pool without migrating up-market or expanding into growth equity. That fixed aperture has produced a repeatable playbook for pre-revenue enterprise and infrastructure software, though it also limits the firm's capacity to follow portfolio companies into later rounds without syndicating heavily.