Celebrating 13 years of Eniac Ventures
by Nihal Mehta
Birthdays have a way of sneaking up on you, especially as you get older. So I was amazed to realize it’s been 13 years (and three days) since we incorporated Eniac on November 19, 2009.
Of course, that’s not the only date you can point to as Eniac’s beginning. You could go back more than 25 years, to those early days when Hadley, Tim, Vic, and I — Eniac’s co-founders and general partners — first met as engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania.
Or you could fast forward a bit, past a decade of individual ups and downs as startup founders, to those early conversations when we wondered … could we start a VC firm of our own?
And even after we incorporated, it was nearly another full year before we announced the closing of our first fund, with a whopping $1.6 million ready to invest in the most exciting startups.
Obviously, we’ve grown a bit since then: Our most recent fund, Eniac V, totaled $125 million. There are now 12 people on the Eniac team — plus, we’re hoping to hire another soon!
And then there’s the number we’re proudest of: The fact that we’ve backed more than 200 startups. Some of those companies have gone public, raised funding at unicorn valuations, or been acquired by industry-leading firms. Others aren’t quite at that level yet, but their founders have shown tremendous grit on the long journey to a Series A and beyond.
Despite a broader VC slowdown, we remain deeply committed to backing the most exciting founders before they’ve found product-market fit. We’ve brought smart people together to discuss how startups can survive and thrive in a downturn, and we’ve continued to make new investments at a steady pace.
We’re more excited about the startup ecosystem than ever, and we can’t wait to see what happens over Eniac’s next 13 years!
