Neo Ventures

Neo is a San Francisco-based pre-seed and seed investor founded by Ali Partovi, who made his reputation as an early investor in Airbnb, Dropbox, Facebook, and Uber. Since launching in 2017, Neo has developed a distinctive philosophy: find exceptional talent before anyone else, often while founders are still in college, and give them the resources to build transformative companies.

The firm's track record is remarkable. Their 2021 fund ($150M) grew to approximately $1.18 billion in gross value by end of 2025. Their initial $4M combined investment in Cursor and Kalshi is now worth an estimated $1.4B. In April 2025, Neo closed $320M Fund IV, led by Bill Gates, signaling strong LP confidence in their ability to source outlier founders at the earliest stages.

This guide covers Neo's investment thesis, portfolio highlights, check sizes, and practical advice for founders considering approaching the firm. Whether you're building your first startup or have prior founder experience, understanding Neo's specific criteria and process will dramatically improve your odds of getting funded.

Unlike investors who wait for traction before committing, Neo makes decisions based on founder quality and hypothesis strength — often before a product exists. The firm's Neo Residency accelerator, launched in early 2026, is designed for teams at an even earlier stage than traditional accelerator cohorts, with founder-friendly terms that have disrupted the accelerator model entirely.

Neo's investment thesis is built on a single conviction: exceptional founders are identifiable early, and the earlier you invest, the better your terms and the higher your upside. Partovi developed this approach after passing on an early investment in Max Levchin as he started PayPal — with an entirely different idea — and watching the outcome from the sidelines.

The firm actively recruits future founders while they are still in college through programs like Neo Scholars. The goal is systematic identification of future tech leaders before the rest of the market recognizes them. Partovi has described looking for founders with unusually high raw intelligence, deep domain expertise, and the ability to sell — both to customers and to recruit great people.

Neo's approach is people-first, not product-first. The investment committee evaluates founder quality, their hypothesis about a problem worth solving, and their ability to recruit and execute. Product, traction, and revenue are secondary — Neo has invested successfully in teams with nothing more than a compelling founder and a direction.

The firm invests $500,000 to $2 million at the pre-seed and seed stages, preferring to lead rounds and take board seats. For teams going through Neo Residency, they invest $750,000 via an uncapped SAFE with a $20 million floor valuation. The SAFE terms are founder-friendly: dilution scales inversely with the next-round valuation, meaning better terms for startups that hit strong milestones before raising.

Sector focus spans AI and machine learning, developer tools, enterprise SaaS, and consumer technology. Neo is particularly drawn to products with strong network effects, product-led growth loops, and products that become more valuable as adoption grows. The firm also actively supports founders from underrepresented backgrounds, seeing diversity as a source of insight rather than a check-box.

Neo's $320M Fund IV (April 2025), led by Bill Gates, is a testament to LP confidence in their pre-seed sourcing engine. Partners committed personal capital equal to all previous funds combined — a strong signal of conviction in the model's returns.

Neo has maintained an active investment pace through 2025 and into 2026, deploying from their $320M Fund IV across AI, developer tools, and enterprise categories. The firm led several notable rounds in 2025, continuing the thesis that early conviction in exceptional people generates asymmetric returns.

Their Neo Residency program, unveiled in February 2026, marks a deliberate shift from traditional accelerator models. The program invests $750,000 via uncapped SAFE for 12-15 startups per cohort, with a $40,000 no-strings-attached grant available for college students who want to take a semester off to build. The residency is based in San Francisco's Jackson Square and includes a 2-week mountain bootcamp in Oregon.

Partovi has been explicit that the program is designed to be harder to get into than Y Combinator. The structural advantage for Neo is sourcing the next generation of exceptional founders earlier than any other investor — and building the relationship before competitors even know the founder is building a company.

In the AI frontier, Neo has backed companies including Cognition (the AI coding assistant maker), Pika (AI video generation), and several other nascent AI companies that are not yet public. The firm continues to prioritize people who demonstrate outlier intelligence and the ability to attract other talented people to their missions.

Neo's 2026 portfolio companies benefit from direct access to Partovi's personal network, introductions to later-stage investors at follow-on rounds, and the compounding signal of the Neo brand — which has grown strong enough that their investment alone carries significant weight in subsequent fundraising conversations.

Neo's portfolio spans more than 260 companies with a combined valuation exceeding $110 billion. The track record reflects the power of pre-seed conviction: their earliest bets on Cursor and Kalshi, totaling roughly $4M, are now worth an estimated $1.4B.

Cursor, the AI-powered code editor, is among the firm's most celebrated wins. Neo backed the team before product-market fit existed. The company has grown to serve hundreds of thousands of developers and achieved a valuation that places it among the most valuable developer tool companies in the world.

Kalshi, the prediction markets platform, became the first legal sports betting exchange in the US after years of regulatory work. Neo's early investment in the team reflected belief in the founders' persistence and analytical rigor — qualities that proved essential in navigating a complex regulatory landscape.

Bluesky, the decentralized social network born out of Twitter's turbulence, is another prominent Neo portfolio company. The team built a protocol-level vision for social media that attracted millions of users and demonstrated that there is meaningful demand for alternatives to legacy social platforms.

Other notable names in the portfolio include Notion (productivity software), Figma (design collaboration, acquired by Adobe for $20B), and Gorgias (customer support automation). Among newer AI-native companies, Cognition (AI coding), Pika (AI video), and Chai Discovery represent Neo's continued thesis that the next category-defining companies will be AI-native from the ground up.

Neo's endorsement network is a compounding advantage. Portfolio founders publicly vouch for Neo as investors, creating a network effect where successful founders attract talent and subsequent founders to the Neo ecosystem. This social proof generates deal flow that would be difficult to replicate through cold outreach alone.

Neo evaluates founders on four primary dimensions: raw intelligence, domain expertise, ability to sell, and founder-market fit. Partovi has described looking for entrepreneurs who demonstrate unusual insight into a problem worth solving — ideally because they've lived the problem personally — and the determination to pursue it over years, not months.

Intelligence, in Neo's framework, means more than academic credentials. It means the ability to process complex information quickly, form strong hypotheses, and update those hypotheses as new data arrives. Partovi looks for founders who can hold nuance and reason through trade-offs without collapsing into false dichotomies.

Domain expertise means the founder has deep, verifiable knowledge of the problem space. This can come from prior work experience, academic research, or personal experience as a user of existing solutions. Neo is particularly drawn to technical founders who have built things in the space before and understand the full stack of what it takes to compete.

Sales ability is non-negotiable. In Partovi's view, every founder is a salesperson — to customers, recruits, investors, and partners. Neo looks for founders who can articulate a compelling vision, build credibility quickly, and close agreements with counterparties who have options.

Founder-market fit means the founder is the right person to solve this specific problem, in this specific market, at this specific time. Neo prefers to see deep roots in the problem space — whether that's direct industry experience, personal usage of existing tools, or a unique relationship to the customer segment.

Beyond these four dimensions, Neo looks for evidence of the ability to recruit exceptional people. The best founders attract other talented people not through manipulation but through the clarity of their vision and the integrity of their leadership. Teams with prior experience working together, even in non-startup contexts, receive meaningful credit.

The most effective path to Neo is through warm introductions from founders in their portfolio or from trusted investors who know Partovi directly. Neo receives thousands of pitch decks annually, and a personal referral from a founder who has worked with Partovi dramatically increases the probability of a meeting.

For founders without existing connections to the Neo ecosystem, there are two primary paths: the open application for Neo Residency (at neo.com/residency) and direct outreach through the firm's website for companies that are already further along. Neo Residency accepts applications on a rolling basis but has cohort deadlines.

If you are pursuing a cold outreach approach, your pitch deck should lead with the founder — not the product. Since Neo invests primarily in people, lead with who you are, why you are the right person to solve this problem, and what specific insight you have that others lack. The problem, solution, and market should follow after establishing founder credibility.

When preparing for a meeting with Neo, expect to defend every assumption in your pitch. Partovi and the team will push on your hypothesis about the problem, your theory of the solution, your understanding of the competitive landscape, and your plan for reaching customers. Founders should demonstrate that they have thought deeply and are not relying on surface-level reasoning.

Following up after an initial meeting is appropriate, but maintain patience. Neo's process moves quickly for strong deals — sometimes from initial meeting to term sheet in one to two weeks — but can take longer when diligence requires additional research or reference checks.

Building a relationship with Neo before you need capital is genuinely valuable. Even if your current round does not result in an investment, the firm may be interested in future rounds and can introduce you to other investors who may be a better fit for your current stage.

Because Neo invests at the earliest possible stages — often before a product exists — financial expectations differ from later-stage investors. That said, the firm still expects founders to demonstrate financial fluency and a realistic understanding of how capital will be deployed to reach meaningful milestones.

Neo's diligence focuses more on the founder's reasoning and vision than on historical metrics. However, founders should be able to articulate their business model, expected unit economics at scale, and what specific metrics will signal progress toward product-market fit. Having a clear financial roadmap — even if projections are inherently uncertain at pre-seed — signals intellectual honesty.

Understanding your burn and runway is essential even at Neo's stage. The firm will want to know that you have thought carefully about how your pre-seed or seed capital gets you to the next meaningful inflection point — whether that's a functional prototype, first customers, or key metric traction that would support a Series A.

Working with a fractional CFO can help founders translate vision into financial structures that will satisfy later-stage investors who will evaluate your company after Neo's seed investment. This preparation is particularly valuable for technical founders who may be strong on product but less experienced on financial modeling.

Financial projections at the pre-seed stage should be grounded in realistic assumptions about customer acquisition and your path to initial revenue. Neo has seen enough pitches to quickly identify founders who have not thought carefully about their unit economics, even at this early stage. Having a credible answer to "what does a dollar of revenue look like at scale?" will differentiate you from founders who present top-down TAM slides without grounding in the business model.

Whether you are preparing to pitch Neo Ventures or other top pre-seed investors, having professional financials can set you apart from the competition. Our team has helped companies build investor-ready financial narratives that communicate clarity, rigor, and conviction — the qualities that distinguish the founders who get funded.

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