A couple of days ago, I was immensely proud to announce Shadow Ventures as the Cerulean Labs Seed Round lead.
This process started before my previous post, when I first pitched Matt at Shadow in May 2022. At the time, I wasn’t too sure how it had been received, but I was delighted to hear back from Matt and arrange another pitch with KP Reddy, the founder of Shadow Ventures.
But let’s back up the truck a little—why Shadow Ventures? As we started looking to raise our Seed round, I was focused on finding a VC that understood the AEC Market. This was critical in my mind in order for them to have a deep understanding of the market we operated in. It escapes me exactly how I found Shadow Ventures, but somehow, I landed on their website, and everything I read clicked with me.
Since May, we have diligently worked through the traditional process of receiving a Term Sheet and then set about making it happen, ensuring a thorough and confident decision-making process.
This was a little less straightforward as Cerulean Labs is a New Zealand-based company with a few handfuls of New Zealand Investors (Friends, Family, and Angel Groups). Shadow Ventures required Cerulean Labs to incorporate in the United States, so we formed Cerulean Labs US, Inc. as the overall company, which in turn owns our New Zealand (and via NZ, our United Kingdom) operations.
While it may sound straightforward, this process, commonly called a “flip,” took much time and discussion to get over the line. We worked through challenges across tax, accounting, and legal aspects.
Having completed that part of the process, we can use Shadow’s funds and some minor (but valuable and vital) contributors to fuel our Spaces journey.
I’ve really enjoyed the discussions to date with KP [Reddy], Matt [Ohlmam] and Nick [Durham] and look forward to many more.