Venture Guides Raises Fund II

Strong demand for a new approach to venture investing drives oversubscribed fund despite challenging economic conditions

Boston, MA — April 22, 2025 — Venture Guides, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on active guiding and team-based investing in infrastructure software companies, announced the closing of its second fund, totaling $262.5 million. This achievement comes during challenging economic times, underscoring the firm's robust strategy, strong portfolio, and the confidence investors place in its differentiated approach.  

Venture Guides Fund II was over-subscribed in a single closing in a swift eight-week timeframe. Fund II represents a 21% increase over its $216.5 million Fund I. The strong investor demand reflects support for the firm's deep domain experience and distinctive guiding that includes an in-house VG Sales training academy. Venture Guides Fund II welcomed new institutions in addition to participation from 100% of its past family offices. Once again, Venture Guides’ General Partners (GP) made a notable investment, contributing 11% of the fund’s total commitment, up from their contribution of 10% in Fund I. Venture Guides expects to begin investing its second fund in Q3 2025. 

Since its inception in 2023, Venture Guides has built a team of 21 professionals and a promising portfolio of eleven core companies in the infrastructure software market. The firm's commitment to providing capital as well as active guiding accelerates the early growth and resiliency of its portfolio companies. Ten portfolio companies have elected to co-locate within Venture Guides’ offices at 100 Causeway Street to grow their GTM teams, championing Boston as a destination for technology innovation, economic stability and venture capital funding.  

“Boston is proud to be the home of Venture Guides, a venture capital firm focused on supporting emerging tech start-ups from around the world,” said Segun Idowu, Chief of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion for the City of Boston. “By helping these innovators organize and launch their go-to-market operations, Venture Guides boosts our local economy, creates high-quality jobs, and makes our city a top destination for technological advancement." 

Venture Guides' differentiated approach is rooted in several key principles:  

• Team-Based Investing: The firm employs a collaborative investment strategy, leveraging decades of leadership experience and a proprietary analytical framework to make highly selective investments.  

• Active Guiding: Venture Guides is committed to guiding founders through every stage of their journey, offering expertise in go-to-market execution, recruiting, business strategy, finance, and budgeting. 

• Deep Domain Expertise: With decades of experience as operators and investors, the Venture Guides team is focused on the infrastructure software market with a track record of building market leading portfolio companies.  

“Venture Guides stood out to us because of its strong guiding experience and exceptional track record of +80% success rate,” said Naj Husain, 4x founder and CEO. “At Elastio, our expert ransomware scanning engine builds resiliency into customers’ data layers to stop nefarious attacks. Venture Guides helped us accelerate our go-to-market success.” 

"We are deeply grateful to our investors for enabling us to serve and build the next generation of innovative software companies,” said Benjamin Nye, Managing Partner at Venture Guides.  “With VG Fund II raised, we will continue providing the capital and guiding services great founders need to compete and win in the global infrastructure software market.” 

About Venture Guides.  Venture Guides is a venture capital firm with a team-based investing and operating approach that accelerates early-stage company growth with business management and go-to-market strategies in the infrastructure software market. The firm’s deep domain expertise and active guiding delivers entrepreneurs a strong success rate of more than 80%. Members of the Venture Guides team have appeared 6x on the Forbes’ Midas List of the world’s best venture investors and are former operators, builders, and innovators whose careers have included roles such as CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, CHROs, and GCs.  The Venture Guides teams’ portfolio performance includes market leading companies such as dynaTrace, Rapid7, Turbonomic, Solarwinds, Archer Technologies, LinkedIn, and DocuSign.   

Learn more about Venture Guides at www.ventureguides.com.