Talis Capital recently announced the first closing of its third and largest $175 million early-stage fund, focused on helping founders build disruptive, category-defining, and enduring businesses. Led by equal partners Matus Maar, Thomas Williams, and Kirill Tashilov, Talis was established on the belief that venture capital is a service business. Talis partners with just a handful of founders each year, committing substantial time to support every aspect of company building.
These new funds have allowed Talis to partner with three founding teams, including London-based credit security platform Bondaval and San Francisco-based carbon-negative textile company, Rubi Laboratories. And it will continue to lead Seed & Series A rounds in Tech Infrastructure, Climate & Synbio, and Consumer Internet companies across UK, Europe, and US.
Two-thirds of the partnership joined the firm as analysts, including Kirill Tashilov – who led Talis investments in firms including PortalOne, Seqera Labs, IMMO, and Laced, and has been made General Partner for the new fund. And the investment team also includes Cecilia Manduca, recently promoted to Principal, Andre Libeaux as Associate, and Ayman Fadil as Analyst.
KEY QUOTES:
“The tech industry is undergoing a moment of transformation, yet history’s proven well-supported visionaries and entrepreneurs flourish in such disruptive times as discontinuity drives opportunity. Talis’ latest fund – plus our absolute dedication to building deep relationships with those we invest in from the earliest stages – marks an important moment in finding the next generation of companies who’ll be category-definers of the future.”
— Matus Maar, Managing Partner at Talis
“At Talis, we invest when we see the outlines of sustainable competitive advantage and potential for path dependence. As a result, we think more like biologists than physicists – we think of economic webs and complex adaptive systems more than we do of simple value chains. It enables us to identify the potential dominant teams and companies early in their journeys and help them build enduring businesses.”
— Kirill Tashilov, General Partner at Talis
“At Talis, we take a different approach to the fiscal recklessness and linear thinking that’s caused many in the last decade to ignore the core principles of company building and value creation. We know progress is cumulative in science and engineering but cyclical in finance and this time is no different – there is no such thing as a good time or a bad time to start a company, there are trade-offs. We are extremely excited to announce our new fund as we continue to partner with founders at the earliest stages of company building.”
— Thomas Williams, General Partner at Talis
