DVC is a Bay Area-based venture capital firm backing early-stage AI startups. In just four years, seven companies in its portfolio have reached unicorn status. DVC was an early backer of Perplexity, Etched, Thinking Machines Lab, Rhoda AI, and Higgsfield. Pulse 2.0 sat down with DVC co-founders and managing partners Marina Davidova and Nick Davidov to learn more about their distinctive approach to venture capital.
Marina Davidova And Nick Davidov’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background?
Marina and Nick: We’ve been building things together for most of our adult lives. We met when we were young, started a relationship early, and have since spent many years raising our children and working on different ventures side by side.
Professionally, we previously co-founded Cherry Labs, an AI camera startup, and invested in early-stage AI companies at Gagarin Capital. Nick also co-founded iTech Capital, which achieved a 6x TVPI on its $120 million fund and was responsible for growth at MSQRD, which reached 30 million monthly active users in three months and was acquired by Meta.
For the past four years, our main focus has been building DVC and the large, highly engaged community around it.
Evolution Of The Firm’s Thesis
What is your firm’s thesis, and how has it evolved over time?
Marina: Our thesis begins with a simple premise: AI is rebuilding every industry, from search, commerce, and finance to healthcare, video, code, and robotics. Incumbents have enormous resources, but organizational drag, legacy architectures, and cannibalization risk create openings for focused startups that can move faster and commit fully to a single wedge.
Our thesis is centered on backing repeat founders building early-stage US companies in AI, machine learning, robotics, fintech, enterprise software, and biotech. We typically invest $50,000–$200,000 at the pre-seed and seed stages, and our new fund extends this strategy into Series A and B follow-on rounds. Our broader view of the market is reflected in DVC’s State of AI report (https://state-of-ai.dvc.ai/), which is based on a framework we have developed over more than a decade of investing in AI.
Nick: What has evolved most significantly is how we believe a venture firm should operate. We started DVC in 2021 as a community-driven fund backed by founders, engineers, and angel investors who could contribute expertise far beyond capital. As the community and portfolio grew, we built AI-enabled infrastructure to make that model scalable. Our agents now support screening, due diligence, portfolio monitoring, introductions, hiring, and the conversion of founder updates into actionable tasks for relevant community members.
We describe this model as Augmented VC: AI automates routine data processing and coordination, while people focus on strategic guidance, judgment, and relationships. We are trying to scale the firm horizontally through technology and community, rather than simply scaling vertically by increasing assets under management.
Favorite Moments
What have been some of your favorite moments in DVC’s four-year history?
Marina and Nick: Many of our favorite moments are connected to the community events we organize. We put a great deal of thought into every one of them and try to execute each event to the highest standard, from the overall concept and program down to details such as the décor and catering. This helps us create a genuinely warm atmosphere where high-quality connections can happen. Over the years, we’ve organized everything from ugly-sweater Christmas parties to yoga sessions and quests across Silicon Valley. Today, one of the highlights is AI Rabbit Hole, our annual conference, which brings together the world’s brightest minds shaping the future of AI.
Significant Milestones
What have been some of your firm’s most significant milestones?
Marina: In just 4 years, 7 companies in our portfolio have reached unicorn status, which is a pretty impressive track record for a fund investing at the pre-seed and seed stages. At the same time, our community has grown to more than 200 LPs.
Nick: We’ve also undergone a transformation in how the firm operates. We have embedded AI throughout DVC’s internal workflows, eliminating traditional analyst roles and automating many processes that previously required significant manual work. We don’t just invest in AI companies; we are turning DVC itself into a genuinely AI-enabled venture firm.
Investment Success Stories
Would you like to share any specific investment success stories?
Nick: Most of our investors are founders and engineers who are early users and adopters of AI technologies. When they become obsessed with something, they bring it into our community. That is exactly how we ended up investing in Perplexity, and it’s a good example of how our system works.
Industry Focus
What industries does DVC focus on?
Nick: Our portfolio spans the full AI stack, from silicon and developer infrastructure to enterprise software, healthcare, robotics, frontier research, and consumer applications. We do not expect the biggest winners to cluster in a single layer. They will emerge wherever a startup can claim territory faster than an incumbent can defend it.
Marina: Today, our portfolio includes companies across 6 categories and 16 sub-verticals: enterprise and vertical SaaS companies, AI infrastructure and developer-tool startups, consumer applications, health and biotech companies, frontier research companies, physical AI and robotics startups.
Differentiation
What differentiates DVC from other firms?
Marina: We combine AI-enabled workflows with community intelligence. Our LPs actively support portfolio companies with hiring, sales, product, and connections — and can earn a share of carried interest for contributing to startup growth. To inspire it, we built an internal social ladder for LPs. And our AI agents act as super connectors, remembering the details of LPs’ expertise and networks and suggesting relevant introductions. That makes the community truly scalable.
Future Firm Goals
What are some of your firm’s future goals?
Nick: We want to democratize access to venture capital and empower angels — often the investors who are most helpful to founders — and give them the technology to perform on par with the mega-funds.
Marina: We treat the fund, its community, and workflows as a software company rather than a financial firm. In the next decade, the biggest competitive advantage in venture will not come only from the size of a fund’s balance sheet; it will come from its codebase. Traditional VC infrastructure was designed for scarce information, access, and tools. AI makes information abundant and access instantaneous, so the advantage shifts from what you know to how fast your system can act on what you know.
What AI Cannot Replace
As AI reshapes venture capital, what can algorithms never replace?
Nick: AI agents already outperform us at deal memos, research, and preparation. What they cannot replace is the human-to-human connection between a founder and an investor. That relationship often lasts longer than an average marriage.
Marina: The founder’s path is complex, high-pressure, and often lonely. Having a human partner is crucial — that is what an investor is really for, and no algorithm can substitute it.
