Former NEA Partner Vanessa Larco Launches Premise Fund

Vanessa Larco left a nearly decade-long Partner role at NEA to co-found Premise, a new venture fund that backs technical founding teams building category-defining companies.

Investment record at NEA

At NEA she backed Robinhood through its 2021 IPO and led the firm's investment in Greenlight. She held board seats at Mejuri, Assembled and Cleo. Earlier she worked as a product leader at Box, Microsoft and Twilio and founded and sold her own startup.

Thesis centered on OpenAI gaps

Premise uses an "OpenAI won't kill it" framework. The approach notes that OpenAI deprecated Sora and removed checkout inside ChatGPT within months of launch. The fund targets teams that maintain product velocity after initial features appear, citing Perplexity and ElevenLabs as examples of companies that out-shipped competitors.

Technical founders only

Premise invests solely in teams with at least one highly technical co-founder. The requirement stems from the need to stay current on AI frameworks and adjust roadmaps when new capabilities emerge.

Fund operations modeled on startups

The firm applies conviction-based investment decisions rather than consensus processes. It treats fundraising, product development and customer success as core fund activities and builds internal automation tools to support them. according to Sales Hacker.

Distribution playbooks receive explicit attention, especially for DevTools, because older go-to-market motions no longer hold. The fund also examines how teams rewrite GTM approaches when no established playbook exists.

according to Sales Hacker.