True Ventures

True Ventures operates with a full-team underwriting model where all investment professionals evaluate and commit to deals together. The founding partners Jon Callaghan, Phil Black, and Tony Conrad remain actively involved, alongside Puneet Agarwal, Adam D'Augelli, Toni Schneider, and Rohit Sharma. The firm states there is no attribution of individual deals to specific partners — when True invests, the entire team invests.

True Ventures invests directly into companies, writing the inaugural check at the pre-seed and seed stages. The firm does not publicly operate a fund-of-funds program or commit capital to external venture firms. True positions itself as a 'first-check' investor that maintains the board relationship through subsequent funding rounds and eventual liquidity.

True Ventures targets pre-seed, seed, and Series A rounds. The firm was explicitly founded to write the first institutional check into technology companies and then remain the primary venture partner through all subsequent stages — a deliberate departure from firms that pass portfolio assets to separate growth equity teams as they mature.

The firm's partnership committee evaluates every investment from pre-seed to Series A without segmenting decision-making by stage. True does not operate separate early-stage and growth vehicles, nor does it have a 'crossover' fund. This structure means the same partners who approve a $1 million pre-seed round make subsequent decisions on later-stage follow-ons, avoiding the internal hand-offs that are standard at multi-fund venture platforms.

True Ventures wrote the first check into Fitbit, the wearable fitness tracker that went public in 2015. The firm also led seed rounds for Duo Security (acquired by Cisco in 2018 for $2.35 billion per regulatory filings), Ring (acquired by Amazon in 2018), Blue River Technology (acquired by John Deere in 2017), and MakerBot (acquired by Stratasys in 2013). True identifies each of these as companies they financed at the earliest stage.

In May 2025, True Ventures launched trueventures.ai, a dedicated AI/ML initiative led by partner Puneet Agarwal, to invest in early-stage artificial intelligence companies. The firm's existing portfolio already includes AI-native infrastructure and application-layer companies, and the new effort formalizes its commitment to identifying and funding founders building in the AI/ML domain from inception.

True Ventures maintains a roster of advisors that includes Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg and a general partner at GV; Om Malik, the founder of Gigaom and a technology journalist; Gus Coldebella, former general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security; and Jim Stewart, former CEO of True portfolio company 2U. The advisory group supports portfolio founders on product strategy, media, legal, and operational scaling.