1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Evan Zimmerman, Chairman of Jovono (Part 1)

Evan Zimmerman, Chairman of Jovono, discusses his fund’s investment philosophy, especially around pre-seed and seed.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about yourself and Jovono. Let’s get acquainted.

Evan Zimmerman: I started my first company when I was a teenager. It was a consumer product company called Mighty Mug. I was successful and sold millions of units. From there, I went on to start Jovono which is a venture capital firm that invests in paradigm-shifting founders. They’re solving hard problems and building delightful products.

We’ve invested in successful companies like Aspiration, Notarize, Paragon, and more. We invest both early and late. Mostly primary but a little bit of secondary as well. We’re interested in people who are going to change the world for the better on real problems.

Sramana Mitra: What is the size of the fund?

Evan Zimmerman: We’ve deployed a nine-figure amount. The deals that we’ve done range anywhere from five to seven figures.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get a little bit specific. The early stage investment ecosystem, which is our focus area, has become quite fragmented at this point. Before, it was seed and Series A. Now, you have pre-seed, seed, post-seed, small Series A, large Series A, etc. Where in that spectrum do you position your activity?

Evan Zimmerman: We’ve done deals at all stages. We participate in Series D and even in crossover rounds. The majority of our deals cluster around pre-seed and Series A. We had two or three companies where we were the absolute first check. Most of our investments are not at that point. Most of them are when the company does exist. It may still be in a state of development. By the time you talk to us, you usually have, at least, one kind of proof point even if it’s technical or early in the market.

Sramana Mitra: Talk about sectors. Where do you like to invest?

Evan Zimmerman: When people talk about a sector, they’ve talked about a vertical or B2B vs B2C. We are looking for something different in terms of the type of strategies. We’re looking for people who are leveraging long industry or technological tailwinds. That doesn’t necessarily mean the market has to be huge at the time. YouTube is a great example. When YouTube started, the video market was big, but the online video market was very small.

We also look for things that commoditize or complement a lot of the time. If you think about peanut butter and jelly, those are complements. Sometimes you have complements that are less obvious. Apple’s complement is actually software developers. The app ecosystem is the complement to the iPhone and macOS. With a lot of the things that came out within WWDC, they’re commoditizing their complements. They’re taking a lot of things that developers do and turning that into the operating system level making software developers a little less valuable in their ecosystem.

People who are doing that kind of thing are people who are pursuing a strategy that we’re excited about. A lot of people have a prohibition on biotech. We’ve done a biotech deal and are looking at one right now. We are open to almost anything.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Evan Zimmerman, Chairman of Jovono
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