Introducing Renegade II
In 2020, when nearly every plane in the world was grounded, we gave the very first Renegade term sheet to a nascent aerospace startup. Since then, Air Space Intelligence (ASI) has signed customers including Alaska Airlines and the U.S. Air Force, grown their team from 17 to over 80, raised a Series B at a significant step up in valuation, and equipped operators around the globe with AI-powered tools to navigate and secure the skies. Just a few years from that first term sheet, that nascent aerospace startup is now a company, defining its category.
From day one, we’ve never looked for anyone else’s signal to believe in a founder. We’ve gone all-in on 22 startups since ASI - each led by ambitious entrepreneurs with something to prove. Renegade-backed founders are reshaping the nature of incident management (Rootly), bringing modern development tools to industrial automation (Copia Automation), building payments infrastructure to help merchants drive loyalty (Ansa), reimagining collaborative work (Coda), and revolutionizing clinical R&D trial management (Auxilius). Without exception, each startup we’ve backed is defining the leading-edge of its industry.
Today, we’re compounding that momentum with the launch of Renegade II.
We’ve secured $128 million in fresh capital from world-class Limited Partners to back another select group of extraordinary founders working on big, bold ideas. With this new fund, we’ll write checks of up to $10 million into 20 startups, mostly at the Series A.
We help founders build their legacies.
Our true north is simple: Identify a small number of exceptional founders with something to prove, then do whatever we can to help them turn their startups into wildly successful companies. We work exclusively with founders who are driven to make their mark, the ones who won’t settle for less than building generational companies that evolve entire industries.
We’ve built our investing model to maximize the chances to say "yes" to these great startups, and our Goldilocks fund size gives us flexibility. We’re structurally set up to optimize for the right amount of capital for the startup rather than check size requirements and ownership targets.
We focus on the transformational phase just after product-market fit, when startups lay the foundation to reach escape velocity. It’s the time when the real magic happens.
We invest heavily in providing access to expert guidance in people operations, so startups emerge from this stage with leveled-up teams that can go the distance. Our Chief People Officer and Operating Partner, Susan Alban actively supported all of our portfolio companies last year, with 65% of those points of support spanning beyond the CEO. With Renegade II, we’re building on this proven approach with the addition of a new Operating Partner in Finance and Business Operations (is this you?). We believe this type of support creates maximum leverage for companies, building infrastructure necessary for growth while allowing founders to focus on delivering great products and delighting customers.
Renegade is our legacy.
Renegade is an upstart, but this is not our first rodeo. More than $40B in enterprise value at exit has been created by the companies we invested in before Renegade. Between the two of us, we’ve had first-hand visibility into every aspect of the venture ecosystem. We’ve heard hundreds of pitches on Sand Hill Road, helped the founders solving humanity’s biggest problems get their earliest capital, invested from Stanford’s endowment, and deployed hundreds of millions of dollars to enterprise and consumer companies at both early and growth stages. We’ve sat on countless boards, navigated every kind of exit, and invested in category-defining companies from inception to billion dollar outcomes.
We’ve seen enough to know we wanted to do things differently. We started Renegade because we believe that venture is an active verb. It means to dare, and it also means to do. That means offering founders early, unshakable conviction and a steady commitment for the long term. Even through - especially through - the inevitable bumpy parts.
It also means we show up, work hard, and walk the talk. That’s why our founders want us on their cap tables, in their boardrooms, and on their teams. In fact, we’re invited into boardrooms far more often than we lead rounds - we’re proud to participate on 80% of our companies’ boards - because founders know they can count on us to help clear their paths and to always have their backs.
We also put our money where our values are by aligning our incentives with our founders and LPs - we only win when they do. Like our founders, we invest in our own business, from our technology team to our use of Nobel Prize winning decision science with our Special Advisor, Annie Duke. We’re fortunate to be backed by genuinely forward-thinking LPs who understand our approach to venture and believe in the high-impact collaboration we bring to founders. A full 100% of Renegade Partners’ institutional investors matched or increased their allocations for Renegade II. From Ivy League endowments and top-tier foundations to institutional family offices and public pension funds - it’s a group we’re proud to make money for.
We’re working to win the decade, not the moment. We’d rather create more wealth for more winners tomorrow than win a short-term game today.
Renegade is our legacy, and we’re all in.
If you’re a founder looking for a partner as determined as you are, let’s talk.
- Renata and Roseanne