Indie.vc

About

Indie.vc is a Salt Lake City-based venture fund founded by Bryce Roberts that provides an alternative to traditional venture capital, investing in founders focused on profitability and sustainable growth rather than the conventional fundraise-scale-exit playbook ¹². The firm describes itself as “more A24 than a16z” ¹.

Indie.vc originated as an experiment inside OATV (O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures), the institutional seed fund Roberts co-founded in 2005 with Tim O’Reilly and Mark Jacobsen ¹³. OATV was one of the first approximately five institutionalized seed funds and pioneered what came to be known as institutional seed investing ³. OATV’s notable early investments through its traditional strategy included Codecademy, CTRL-Labs, Figma, Fastly, Foursquare, and Planet ¹.

Roberts launched the first Indie.vc cohort in 2015 as a 12-month program investing $100,000 in each of 8 companies ⁴. The program evolved through multiple versions: v1 (2015) used a batch format with quarterly retreats; v2 shifted to rolling investments; v3 (2019) returned to a batch format with quarterly retreats across multiple cities ⁵⁶. The v4 cohort included companies such as Billiyo, Curie, and Unboxt ⁷.

In March 2021, Roberts announced that Indie.vc was winding down after OATV launched a fourth fund dedicated entirely to the Indie model but lost approximately 80% of its LP base — dropping from $85 million to roughly $25 million ⁸⁹. Roberts attributed the LP exodus to discomfort with the blended equity-and-revenue-share structure and the slower mark-up cadence compared to traditional VC portfolios ⁸⁹. At the time of shutdown, the program had backed nearly 40 startups with a portfolio mortality rate of only 10%, compared to 44% across venture capital broadly ⁹.

In December 2022, Roberts announced the fund’s resurrection, noting that in a year where liquidity dried up across startups and venture, the indie-focused portfolio had returned or recycled nearly 20% of the fund via equity redemptions and acquisitions, posting a 45% net IRR ¹⁰. One portfolio company had crossed $50 million in revenue having raised only $1 million total ¹⁰. INDIE Fund I officially closed in January 2024 as a standalone fund, no longer nested within OATV, with a target of up to $50 million ¹⁰¹¹. The fund is backed by friends, family offices, and institutional investors ¹. As of early 2026, the firm’s website advertises v5 applications ².

Indie.vc invests between $250,000 and $2 million via SAFEs or equity preferred, from pre-product through companies doing multiple millions in revenue ¹. The firm positions itself as “typically the first investor on a startup’s cap table” and operates with a single-person investment committee, emphasizing speed: “Think hours or days, not weeks” ¹. Board seats are not required; the firm offers monthly one-on-ones or ad-hoc support, emphasizing “accountability over advice” ¹.

In addition to primary investments, Indie.vc operates indieXL, a product that buys common shares from founders of profitable, fast-growing businesses who want secondary liquidity ¹.

Stated Thesis

Indie.vc publicly positions itself as the alternative to the traditional venture capital model. The firm states it focuses on “customers, revenue, and profitability not investors, valuations, and the next fundable milestone” ¹.

Roberts has described the firm’s aspiration as being “the last round of funding founders need to raise — giving them maximum leverage in any future funding or acquisition conversations” ¹. He has stated that profitability “isn’t this crazy, elusive thing. It’s literally more achievable than a Series A round” and “way more achievable than a Series B round” ¹².

The firm describes itself as generalist and founder-focused, with interests spanning “internet infrastructure, security, consumer hardware, programmable money, LLMs, computational biology, new computer interfaces” ¹. Roberts and the team have stated they are “obsessed with the idea that someone is going to build a business doing $100M in revenue with less than 10 employees” and see this as “this generation of founders’ 4 min mile” ¹¹².

Roberts has promoted what he calls “permission-less entrepreneurship,” arguing that founders should minimize dependency on external capital: “If you have to ask people for permission to exist, and the more you rely on those people for yourself to exist, the more risk and exposure you have” ¹².

The firm’s earlier versions used a distinctive revenue-share structure: if a portfolio company never raised additional funding or sold, Indie.vc would receive 3-7% of monthly gross revenue until the fund earned a return of 3x to 5x its investment, with each payment reducing the investor’s ownership stake and increasing the founders’ ⁴⁶¹³. More recently, the firm has shifted to standard SAFEs and equity preferred with “no fancy terms, paybacks, or earn outs” ¹.

Inferred Thesis

Based on 11 verified investments, the portfolio sample is too small for reliable sector percentages. Qualitative patterns observed:

Sector focus: The portfolio is genuinely generalist, spanning healthcare (Nice Healthcare), consumer/DTC (Curie, The Shade Room), developer tools (Linear), cybersecurity/AI (Dreadnode), HR tech (Unboxt), and business software (Billiyo). No single sector dominates.

Stage distribution: Predominantly pre-seed and seed investments, consistent with stated focus. The firm enters early — often as the first institutional investor — with initial check sizes around $100,000 to $350,000 in earlier cohorts. The current stated range of $250,000 to $2 million and participation in Linear’s $82M Series C (June 2025) suggest the fund now also makes selective later-stage investments in existing portfolio companies ¹¹⁴.

Founder profile patterns: The portfolio skews toward underrepresented founders. Roberts reported that 50% of portfolio companies in the v3 cohort were led by female founders and 20% by Black founders ⁵. Portfolio companies include The Shade Room (founded by Angelica Nwandu) and Nice Healthcare (founded by Thompson Aderinkomi). The firm appears to favor founders with existing revenue and demonstrated product-market fit over pre-revenue startups.

Revenue orientation: The defining characteristic is revenue at or near time of investment. Average revenue at investment was approximately $250,000 in the v3 cohort ⁵. Portfolio companies increased revenues an average of 100% within 12 months and 300% within 24 months of investment ⁵⁷.

Geographic distribution: Based on verified companies, the portfolio is geographically distributed across the U.S. — Salt Lake City (headquarters), New York (Fohr, The Shade Room), Minneapolis (Nice Healthcare), San Francisco (Rocketable) — consistent with Roberts’ stated interest in backing founders outside traditional Silicon Valley hubs.

Notable gap from stated thesis: Despite describing interests in “programmable money” and “computational biology,” no verified portfolio companies in those sectors were identified. The firm’s recent investment in Linear’s Series C also represents a notable departure from the stated positioning as a first check — suggesting the fund is willing to participate in growth rounds for companies aligned with its ethos.

Portfolio

This table represents approximately 9 of an estimated 40+ investments across all cohorts. The firm’s earlier cohort-based investments (v1 through v4) included approximately 8-10 companies per cohort, but the specific company names for most v1 and v2 cohort members are not publicly available. Roberts reported the portfolio had “nearly 40 startups” at the time of the 2021 wind-down ⁹.

In Their Own Words

“I wanted to be right. I was more interested in being right than being good… I’ve got nothing to prove.” — Bryce Roberts, on the evolution from the first Indie.vc iteration to the current approach, The Leverage interview ²²

“I want more than Marc Andreessen or Sequoia or anybody else dictating what future we get to live in.” — Bryce Roberts, The Leverage interview ²²

“With each round of funding, you die a little bit more.” — Bryce Roberts, Indie.vc v3 info session in New York City, 2019 ⁵

“You pour yourself into something so completely for so long and then it doesn’t work out how you’d hoped and have to lay bare your failure while bracing for the worst.” — Bryce Roberts, on the 2021 wind-down, Business of Business ⁹

“Without the institutional support to scale the Indie Economy we envision, it’s time to take our learnings and refocus.” — Bryce Roberts, announcing the 2021 wind-down ⁹

“In a year where liquidity dried up for startups, our indie-focused fund returned/recycled nearly 20% via equity redemptions and acquisitions” with a 45% net IRR. — Bryce Roberts, December 2022 relaunch announcement ¹⁰

What Founders Say

“I can honestly say that I wish every founder would get the chance to take money from Indie.vc. Bryce does not ever make you feel like he knows more than the founder. But he somehow is able to make you understand that he has a different perspective that is worth listening to.” — Thompson Aderinkomi, Founder & CEO of Nice Healthcare, in a Medium post about his experience with Indie.vc ¹⁷

“The diligence was fast, a testament to how Indie.vc operates… The questions he asked me were so different than the questions I was asked when raising and closing the $1,000,000 seed or the $7 million Series A for the previous company. He asked me all the things that I would ask a founder if I was an investor regardless the size of the check. He did not ask a single question that made me roll my eyes.” — Thompson Aderinkomi, Founder & CEO of Nice Healthcare ¹⁷

“5. They took a chance on an industry venture had no interest in” and “a founder that had no prior experience… the community and everything we’ve gotten from that has been huge.” — James Nord, Founder & CEO of Fohr, giving a “Yelp review” of Indie.vc at the v3 info session, 2019 ⁵

“I would have done anything in those early days to raise a traditional round of VC… focusing on sales was huge for us.” — James Nord, Founder & CEO of Fohr, on his experience after taking Indie.vc funding ⁵

Sarah Moret, founder of Curie (DTC body care brand), has said she chose Indie.vc over traditional VC because she “didn’t want that lifestyle,” having worked at a venture firm prior to founding Curie and seeing “the pressure they’re under” ¹⁸.

Sources