Hustle Fund, a pre-seed firm, closes $30M for a new fund

Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund built by former operators and founders, has raised $30 million for a new fund, per SEC filings. Hustle Fund first filed paperwork for this fund, its second to date, in May 2019 with intention to raise $50 million. Its inaugural investment vehicle closed at $11.5 million.

Hustle Fund was unable to comment because it is still in fundraising mode.

Hustle Fund was created by Elizabeth Yin and Eric Bahn, two former 500 Startups partners, with the goal of investing in pre-seed software startups. The firm has traditionally operated by investing $25,000 in a company, usually with a minimum-viable product, and then works with the team to help them grow. It does around 50 investments per year, according to its website.

It's a small but focused investing approach, one that has gotten Hustle Fund into deals such as Webflow, NerdWallet and The Pill Club. But, as pre-seed grows and companies raise absurdly high first-check rounds, the need for bigger checks might be necessary for VCs to continue getting into deals. Thus, a bigger fund size for a fund a few years in is both practical and expected.

Still, don't expect Hustle Fund to be changing up its investment appetite just yet. Yin joined us at Extra Crunch a few months ago to detail her check appetite.

I think to a certain extent, putting money into faster experiments helps, but it only goes so far," Yin said. You can't drive speed of execution with money; it happens through the speed of learning. And I think that's something that there's an upper bound as to how much and how many resources you can put into increasing that speed of learning in the earlier stages."

Hustle Fund's Elizabeth Yin discusses 2020's fundraising landscape