Cue Ball focuses on pioneering start-up and early growth opportunities. What's important to us are the team behind the idea and a rational business model. Our businesses are based on a recurring revenue and fixed cost leverage model (subscriptions, licensing, and franchising) with intellectual property slants through content, technology and branding. Business information services, branded consumer services, Internet media and e-commerce represent our key investment sectors. Our past experience in these spaces has provided us with a deep understanding of their dynamics and what it takes to succeed in them; put simply, they are the sectors we understand best.

We operate with three old-school venture investment tenets: people before concept; the business model before the financial plan; and market niche dominance over market size potential.

Our firm is built with a distinct, people centric philosophy and investment approach. We work with people who share our belief that innovation and pragmatic business building aren't mutually exclusive. More than sector and stage, we care about business models that are based on sound fundamentals and cash flow. We also don't get hung up on theoretical market sizes and hypothetical exit strategies. Our experience tells us that strategizing first about the entry strategy and focusing on customers within a realistic, addressable market will lead to greater future opportunities. This is part of our "think big, start small, scale fast" approach to early stage companies.

Our General Partners are self-made entrepreneurs and operators with proven track records, including running the world's largest information media company and founding groundbreaking Internet and consumer businesses. We have had deep and first-hand experience taking ideas to market and proof-of-concepts to scale. Cue Ball extends these capabilities through its tightly linked brain trust, The Cue Ball Collective -- twenty-five venerable business leaders who are all significant investors in our fund and serve as active advisors of portfolio companies. Look at the names of our Collective and you'll see why we are humbled to have them as part of our team.

It is with our "human capital first" philosophy that we seek to partner with founders and managers. As all of our Partners have been founders, we empathize and don't take lightly the decision and choices that great entrepreneurs face in selecting a venture capital partner. The question that any founding team should ask us is, not how much financial capital we can bring to the table, but if our cultures, experiences, and relationships can be mutually accretive towards the goal of creating long-term value.

Learn more about our History and The Story Behind Our Name.