Yonder Ventures

Investing in founders and helping them shoot their shot.👇

[Yonder Ventures @yonderventures]

Startups! We would love to see what you are building and how we can help! Please submit your deck and information here:

https://t.co/wBX4rzFSPS

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

Helping to find a technical co-founder at the intersection of capital markets and AI with engi/ML/AI background.

Typically someone who would have worked at a Jump Street / Jane Street / Citadel or top tier hedge fund.

DMs are open or email me [email protected].

[Nick Tippmann @ntippmann]

Meet 50 of the world's highest-signal emerging VC firms. Nominated by investors, selected by Confluence.

Most venture lists reward what’s already obvious.

The Confluence 50 is interesting because it looks for emerging managers who may be obvious in five years, but are still early enough today that the market hasn’t fully caught up.

I’m proud to see @TipTopVC included.

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

One of the more interesting founding GTM roles I've seen in a while.

A startup is rebuilding how the U.S. military discovers and buys critical tech. They need a founding hire to own both sides of the marketplace: vendors and government buyers.

In my mind, this is a real opportunity to make a difference right now and help keep America ahead.

What you need to do:
- Run through walls
- Make relentless forward progress
- Win

What you'd own:
- Get vendors onboarded fast with real specs, data, and contracts
- Get DoD buying teams using the product for procurement 10-100x faster
- Act as matcher/deal-maker, not a traditional salesperson
- Turn messy institutional workflows into something usable

Who fits:
- Marketplace PM, BD, ex-VC, or ex-banker — "process + empathy + deals" profile
- You've worked where success = liquidity and match quality
- Comfortable as a founding GTM + product hybrid
- Willing to personally run early matches while the system scales

DM me if interested.

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

Word is getting out about @yonderventures

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

If you believe in a world of agent-to-agent interactions, they will need a way to communicate.

@agent_relay is building the open source rails to do just that.

As a marketplace guy, this is necessary infrastructure to get us closer to a world where agents can transact autonomously.

[Yonder Ventures @yonderventures]

One correction *Yonder

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

So who counts as a Tier 1 VC?

Top of mind in no particular order…

a16z
Sequoia
Benchmark
Khosla
Founders Fund
Lightspeed
General Catalyst
Accel
NEA
Kleiner Perkins
Index
Thrive
GV

Definitely rising stars not on that list.

What did I get wrong?

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

https://t.co/SHjWopYZXX

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

Marketplace Memo #18 is live! 🔥

This was one was super fun to write as I got to cover some exciting topics:

- OpenClaw Marketplaces
- Marketplaces Outperform SaaS
- eBay Acquires Depop
- OpenAI Launches Ads
- Etsy and Wayfair Now in Google Gemini
- Airbnb Q4 GBV Up 16%
- And Much More!

Also, thank you to @whop for supporting this newsletter and the killer offer for founders! Be sure to check it out.

Link to read below. 👇

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

Marketplace founder when they exit.

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

If you think about venture funds as a marketplace, connecting founders and LPs...

LPs being the supply and start-ups being the demand.

You usually start out supply constrained but as you figure out the demand side, liquidity improves across the board.

LPs want to provide more supply.

More startups want to access that supply.

Therein lies the network effect that can't be formed.

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

Q1 is shaping up to be a banger for @yonderventures.

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

https://t.co/V7z9Jz3a9R

[Yonder Ventures @yonderventures]

Huge day!

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

Big Day!

I am excited to share that @yonderventures Fund I closed at $4.64M. 🎉

The fund is highly liquid, as they say in marketplaces!

I am grateful to @RyanHibbison at @VCJournal for covering the launch and my founding story.

I am building a firm, not just a fund, that will become the go-to for founders starting early-stage marketplaces and network-effect businesses.

It is a big vision, and I believe Yonder can become the first name founders think of when they start a marketplace.

Building the brand is essential, but, as in any marketplace, creating a strong network effect is critical to its success, and that means having great LPs alongside me.

Thank you to the 91 world-class LPs from Airbnb, Uber, DoorDash, Amazon, eBay, Grubhub/Seamless, Thumbtack, StubHub, StockX, Whatnot, Mercari, OLX, OpenTable, Zillow, Trulia, ApartmentList, ACV Auctions, Reverb, Facebook Marketplace, Snapchat, Stripe, Pinterest, RetailMeNot, Turo, Outdoorsy, Peerspace, Avail, Rematter, and many more.

The LP network is the fund's secret weapon and one of its greatest strengths.

I am actively writing checks and have backed 22 companies across AI agents, robots, derivatives, construction, childcare, fuel, gold, legal, healthcare, and more.

The weirder and newer the market, the better!

If you are building the next big marketplace or network effect business, I want to meet you!

I'm writing $50-100K checks at first-check/pre-seed. Email me at [email protected].

I literally have the best job in the world.

Now back to investing and working with exceptional marketplace founders!

One last favor to ask: please like, comment, and share to help me find those up-and-coming founders! 🙏

Link to the VCJ post and my post below. 👇

[Rho @rhobusiness]

Locked In VC of the Day award goes to @ColinGardiner 🏆

Congrats on @yonderventures' Fund I!

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

Tips for Great Investor Updates

- Send monthly at pre-seed/seed, quarterly after Series A

- Lead with to the point writing and data, not overly long narrative. High data-to-word ratio when possible

- Include visuals (charts, graphs, screenshots) when possible as pictures are worth a 1,000 words

- Explain your thinking and why you did things

- Be forthright about lows. Explain what happened, what you learned, and how you're addressing it.

- Make asks easy to act on. Want intros? Create a sheet with targets mapped to each investor.

- Keep it skimmable. Investors read dozens of these so make sure they can easily digest the most important items.

- Send on a consistent schedule. Builds trust and keeps you top of mind.

What did I miss?

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

Wrapped 2025 - Marketplace Edition

I just published Marketplace Memo #17, which marks one full year of writing it.

I will share more about the results, but I first wanted to share the marketplace themes from 2025.

"2025 was a year of contrasts where many things were true at once."

[Yonder Ventures @yonderventures]

Help pls.

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

If you were going to vibe code a website for @yonderventures, what tool would you use and why?

A few things it would need:

1. CMS ability
2. Auth to certain pages

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

Austin VC is on a roll.

I won’t say the epicenter is shifting but the green shoots of something big are forming.

In particular the Austin Emerging Manager cohort that's forming right now is looking very promising.

Lots of killer first funds that I am sprinting to keep up with.

Here is who is top of mind in town but please tag other folks:

@itsdanieldart - Rockyard Ventures (also putting on Future Titans conference)

@ntippmann - TipTop Ventures (AI vSaaS with early investment in GC AI)

@Magyer - Seaplane Ventures (network effect bizs with early investment in Micro1)

@krdonnelly - Avalanche VC (early investments in Bluesky and Starbridge)

@vsodera - Supercharge VC (killer investment rap sheet)

@annieluchsinger - Breakers (heard great things from @Cashflow_Cowboy)

@jaydimonte - Grid Capital (honorable mention since not here full time; supply chain all day and great track record at previous firm)

The best part is I count many of them as friends.

Let me know who I missed.

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

The hardest part of being a VC (aside from picking winners).

Is knowing statistically most of your portfolio will fail while genuinely believing in every founder you back.

That cognitive dissonance never fully resolves.

At least for me.

[Colin Gardiner @ColinGardiner]

Let me try this again...

If you are the next Airbnb, Uber, Mercor, Whatnot, Amazon, please email me at [email protected].

Thank you for your attention to this matter.