Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

what are companies that Lerer Hippeau Managing Partner Ben Lerer wishes he invested more in?

27 Mar 2024 · 1 min

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In a brief interview, Ben Lerer, Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau, reflects on the performance of the firm’s early funds and expresses a wish that those funds had been larger, allowing for bigger investments and greater ownership stakes. He cites specific early portfolio companies from Fund 1 that he would have liked to invest more in if the fund size permitted: Venmo, MakerBot, Warby (the first check into Warby Parker), and BuzzFeed. Lerer notes that the small size of the early fund limited the size of the checks and consequently the influence and equity position his firm holds today, but he remains proud of the relationships and learnings from those early investments.

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What are the companies that you wish you could have invested more in from that first fund?
Well, I think if you generally look back at like the performance of our earlier funds, like you would've said you'd like to just invest more in all of them. Yeah. They were all pretty good funds and, you know, I wish that they were bigger than they were. Yeah. You know, we had, we were the first investors in, in our first fund and, you know, probably the most pronounced, you know, early company that we backed in Fund 1 was, we were in Venmo and we were in MakerBot and we were in Warby and we were in BuzzFeed. But like, we were really first check into Warby. And I remember being there with those guys in the earliest days and like, we just had this little bitty fund. And so we wrote a little bitty check and, you know, if this was today, we would've owned a, we would've had a different seat at the table and that's okay. And like amazing learnings and, you know, those are my guys and I love them.