Chemistry

About

Chemistry is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in October 2024 by three veteran VCs: Ethan Kurzweil (formerly 16 years at Bessemer Venture Partners), Kristina Shen (formerly General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and 7 years at Bessemer), and Mark Goldberg (formerly Partner at Index Ventures for nearly a decade) ¹²³.

The firm launched with a significantly oversubscribed $350 million debut fund focused on leading seed and Series A rounds ¹². Chemistry is headquartered in San Francisco ⁴.

Prior to founding Chemistry, the three partners collectively led investments in over a dozen unicorns at the early stage, served on 50+ boards, and led nearly 100 investments ¹. Notable investments from their prior roles include PagerDuty, Intercom, Twitch, Plaid, Persona, LaunchDarkly, and ServiceTitan ³⁵⁶.

The founding team brings complementary backgrounds: Kurzweil’s expertise spans developer platforms, data infrastructure, and gaming from his Bessemer tenure ³; Shen led B2B software investing at a16z ⁵; and Goldberg focused on early-stage software and fintech at Index, having previously been among Dropbox’s first business hires ⁶.

Stated Thesis

Chemistry publicly states that the firm was built around the question: “What would a venture firm look like if its success was fully aligned with its founders’ success?” ¹.

The firm describes its approach as “stripping away the excess” of large venture platforms and focusing on “going all in with our founders from the earliest stages” ¹. Chemistry targets two to three investments per year per partner, emphasizing depth of involvement over breadth ¹.

Mark Goldberg has described Chemistry’s philosophy as “conviction-based investing rather than consensus-driven decisions,” optimizing for “outliers, not averages” ⁷. He has stated that the firm focuses on “non-obvious bets that appear contrarian initially” ⁷.

Ethan Kurzweil has said that Chemistry writes $3-30M checks with an average of $10-12M for Series A investments ⁸.

Inferred Thesis

Based on a limited sample of verified Chemistry investments (the firm launched in late 2024), analysis is preliminary:

Known Chemistry portfolio companies: Decagon (Series D participant), Assort Health, Serval, Datacurve ⁴⁹¹⁰¹¹. With only 4 verified investments, the sample is too small for reliable sector percentages.

Qualitative patterns from verified investments: - Enterprise software and AI applications appear dominant (Decagon in AI customer support, Assort Health in healthcare AI, Datacurve in AI training data) ⁴⁹¹⁰ - Serval reached unicorn status ($1B valuation) within months of its Series A, suggesting Chemistry targets high-growth trajectories ⁴ - The firm appears to lead rounds rather than participate, consistent with its stated approach ¹

Patterns from partners’ prior portfolios (pre-Chemistry): The partners’ combined prior investments at Bessemer, a16z, and Index skew heavily toward fintech (Plaid, Bridge, Anrok, Lithic), developer tools (PagerDuty, LaunchDarkly, Intercom), and enterprise infrastructure (Persona, Pilot, ServiceTitan) ³⁵⁶. This track record suggests Chemistry will continue targeting these sectors.

Check size: $3-30M, averaging $10-12M at Series A ⁸.

Portfolio

Note: This table represents Chemistry’s investments since its October 2024 launch. The partners’ extensive pre-Chemistry portfolios at Bessemer, a16z, and Index (including PagerDuty, Intercom, Plaid, Persona, Twitch, LaunchDarkly, ServiceTitan, and others) are attributed to their prior firms.

In Their Own Words

“We named it ‘Chemistry,’ a word we consistently used to describe the connection we shared with each other and with the founders we back.” — Chemistry founding team, Chemistry blog, October 2024 ¹.

“A plus people want to work with A plus people.” — Mark Goldberg, Managing Partner, GTMnow Podcast, 2026 ⁷.

“The hardest lesson I’ve learned has probably been around managing co-founder relationships and co-founder dynamics.” — Mark Goldberg, GTMnow Podcast, 2026 ⁷.

“I think oftentimes they [founders] want somebody to listen to them.” — Mark Goldberg, GTMnow Podcast, 2026 ⁷.

What Founders Say

“Get a thoughtful, clear-eyed, and prescient response on demand.” — Esteban Castano, CEO of TRM Labs, on working with Ethan Kurzweil, Chemistry website ³.

“Low ego, high hustle; a no BS partner who gives us the right pushes at the right time.” — Rick Song, CEO & Founder of Persona, on working with Mark Goldberg, Chemistry website ⁶.

“Kristina has an ability to look past the consensus view.” — Vahe Kuzoyan, President & Founder of ServiceTitan, on Kristina Shen, Chemistry website ⁵.

Note: The above founder quotes are sourced from Chemistry’s own website and should be considered firm-curated testimonials.

Sources