Why Indie exists
The game has changed.
ZIRP-era playbooks of VC treadmills, pump and dump schemes, and growth at all costs have aged like milk. The future belongs to real builders, building real businesses.
There’s a time tested playbook for building generational companies — less time fundraising, more time building, with a focus on the fundamentals. Most of the iconic companies of the past, think Amazon, Microsoft and Google as well as emerging leaders like Midjourney, Vanta, and Zapier, have followed a similar playbook.
We’ve built our firm from the ground up with this playbook in mind. At indie, we aim to be the last round of funding founders need to raise — giving them maximum leverage in any future funding or acquisition conversations.
INVESTMENT Size
We’re typically the first investor on a startup’s cap table. Whether you’re pre-product, pre-revenue or multiple millions in revenue, we want to meet as early as possible. Our check size ranges from $250k to $2M. We prefer to lead or co-lead rounds, but can also participate as an angel in rounds with an existing lead.
If you’ve managed to reach profitability and are looking to sell secondary, we have a separate product (indieXL), to buy common shares from founders of fast growing, profitable businesses.
INVESTMENT Structure
We keep it simple — SAFEs or equity. No fancy terms, paybacks, or earn outs. We’re open to alternative structures given founder preference or the form factor of the opportunity (i.e. crypto), but have found standard and simple to be best.
INVESTMENT Process
We move fast. We are an investment committee of one. Think hours or days, not weeks.
post-INVESTMENT engagement
Board seat not required.
We optimize for accountability over advice. We can help you see around corners and open doors when needed. We’re happy to organize monthly 1-on-1s or keep it ad hoc. We’re irrationally available and chronically online. We want to see you win on your terms.
INVESTMENT THEME
Indie is decidedly generalist and founder-focused. We’ve had success across sectors as wide-ranging as internet infrastructure and security to consumer hardware and services.
We pinch ourselves that we live in a day and time where we have all the raw materials available to build any number of possible futures. From programmable money, to LLMs changing how we create, to computational biology, to new computer interfaces.
We’re obsessed with the idea that someone is going to build a business doing $100M in revenue with less than 10 employees and see it as this generation of founders’ 4 min mile. Once someone shows it can be done, many more will follow. We want to partner with the one that does to help define a repeatable playbook for those that follow.
If you have a unique take on an emergent technology or opportunity, we should talk.
Indie is the brainchild of Bryce Roberts
Bryce’s venture capital career began in 2001.
In 2005 he founded OATV, one of the first institutional seed funds, with Tim O’Reilly and Mark Jacobsen. OATV was an early backer of many breakout companies including Codecademy, CTRL-Labs, Devoted Health, Expanse, Fastly, Fetch Robotics, Figma, Fitnesskeeper, Foursquare, Hipcamp, Misfit Wearables, Planet, and Signal Sciences.
Indie was hatched inside of OATV — first as an experiment in 2016 and, ultimately, as a stand-alone fund in 2023.
Self-described as more A24 than a16z, indie represents a vibrant future for fiercely independent founders and builders.