Valia Ventures, an early-stage VC firm, has closed on $50 million in commitments for an oversubscribed second fund – Valia Ventures II.
Valia Ventures II is described as bringing together a strategic group of limited partners including startup founders, technology executives, international family offices, and institutional investors such as Tiger Global Management. Valia’s debut fund was launched in 2018 with performance said to be ranking in the top 5% of all funds in its vintage. The majority of the investments by the fund have been in women or BIPOC/AAPI-founded companies.
Khaled Jalanbo, Managing Partner at Valia, said their team feels privileged to be able to continue to do what they love on a larger scale.
Valia Ventures II is expected to initially invest up to $1 million at the pre-seed and seed stages, while reserving additional capital for follow-on rounds.
The firm will maintain its generalist approach, investing across sectors including; Fintech, healthcare, consumer, and enterprise software. Valia also runs a co-investment program, investing $2 million to $10 million in growth-stage rounds of its existing portfolio companies.
The four investments Valia Ventures II has made to date have already raised over $150 million in follow-on funding from the likes of Bond Capital, Forerunner Ventures, Sam Altman, SoftBank Group, and Tiger Global.
Selfbook is mentioned as a stand-out investment. The company provides a software solution for hotels to accept one-click payments and digital wallets.
Valia was also the first institutional investor in the software and hardware startup Humane, founded by ex-Apple icons Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri.
“Khaled and the team at Valia are our sounding boards, our thought partners, our guides, our motivators. They are all the things we need as founders – exactly when we need it. This to us is an invaluable partnership. One that is firmly rooted in our first and most important value, trustm,” said Bethany Bongiorno, Co-Founder and CEO of Humane.