Volition Capital by Jake Colognesi—Venture Capital Profile

What is Volition Capital?

Volition is an early growth equity firm investing in founder and management-owned technology businesses.  We typically invest in companies that have raised less than $5M of funding and yet have achieved some strong growth traction (run rate revenue ~$5M+) and are now looking to bring on an institutional investor to fund growth initiative and liquidity needs.  We are generally a minority investor so we are not looking to acquire businesses outright but instead partner with existing teams.  Ideally, we are looking to partner with founders who want to stay in the business and grow the company.  

Where do you invest?

The Volition team is based out of Boston, and we actively invest nationwide.

How big is your fund and what size checks do you write?

Our current fund is $170M, and we write checks that range from $5M to $20M, with our sweet spot in the $10M to $15M range.   We are actively looking for new investment opportunities. 

What sector do you pursue?

From a sector standpoint, Volition will pursue anything in the B2B or B2C technology realm.  We invest in mostly software rather than hardware, but we are sector agnostic within those parameters.  Our portfolio includes companies in e-commerce, marketing technology, insurance technology, and other areas.  We are  always open to looking at different opportunities.  The companies we seek tend to be ~$5M+ in run rate revenue and growing quickly, often times ~50-100%+.

Do you take board seats?

Yes. We take board seats in all our companies.

How do you handle syndication?

We lead all of our investments. We do co-invest with like-minded investors but generally aren’t actively looking to form a syndicate. 

What do you offer the portfolio company beyond funding?

There’s a myriad of ways in which we help companies.  Common to all, though, we offer access to other executives in our portfolio and see this as a key value driver.  Additionally, we’re very focused on a certain stage in the company life cycle and have developed strong pattern recognition whereby companies in different sectors can gain an appreciation for how common hurdles can be jumped over.  Our companies encounter many of the same problems, so it’s crucial to leverage learnings from past experiences for today’s partners.

Are you currently invested in Texas companies?

We don’t have any current investments in Texas but that’s not for a lack of trying.  We are looking at Austin where there is a tremendous amount of tech talent and smart early-stage investors.  We certainly want to spend more time there and believe these are the two main ingredients for a strong tech eco-system.  We look for that in selecting target markets.