The word /Zendä/ is derived from the Spanish word /Sendä/, meaning "pathway" that represents an imaginary route to a goal formed by the movement of people, animals, or ancestors.

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🏔 Overview

Zenda Capital invests in founders building the software layer for the new economy.

Our team started and exited companies in fintech, software, commerce, and education, and helped build the foundational team that scaled Twilio through its IPO.

We see the need for products that accelerate innovation in industries where tooling and data interoperability are deficient. While companies like Twilio, Stripe, and Okta are emblematic of how modern software building blocks can enable faster development of general-purpose applications, many industries still suffer from slow progress and workflow inefficiencies.

We look for teams who are building this new software layer and enabling technologies in specific industries in the U.S. and LATAM, investing up to $1.5M as early as the formation stage and supporting them through early-growth.

🧭 Guiding Principles

As operators who invest their own capital, we act as business owners. Our investment approach stems from three guiding principles:

  1. Developing a thesis-driven point-of-view complemented by our extensive research.
  2. Providing founders with operational support through deep networks in each of our areas of focus, which include GTM and scaling engineering teams.
  3. Being the most incentive-aligned institutional investor on the cap table as we’re the second largest LP in our fund.

♦️ Team

Esteban Reyes (General Partner)

21 years building startups and 10 years investing in them. Co-founded and successfully exited three B2B companies. Incubated 8 companies with personal capital resulting in 6.89x MOIC. Ran a business unit for a public company (NYSE: LPS). Raised and invested $30M, B2B seed fund, which is performing at top decile, and 80% of rounds led received follow on capital from top VC. Invested personally in 13 emerging VC funds, with 3 breakouts. Kauffman Fellow (Class 23).

Chetan Chaudhary (Venture Partner)

Former Chief Revenue Officer at Scale.ai. Expert on developer-led GTM. Spent 9 years at Twilio leading product distribution strategies. Built Twilio’s wireless business unit from scratch with Evan.

**Evan Cummack** (Venture Partner)

CEO of Fin.com, co-founded by Andrew Kortina & Sam Lessin, backed by Coatue, Accel, and Slow Ventures. Previously, was Twilio’s first solutions engineer, then turned into product lead. Spent 9 years at Twilio leading product teams. Built Twilio’s wireless business unit from scratch with Chetan.

Jeff Dong (Research & Investments)

Worked within the investment team at Golden Gate Ventures, a Singapore-based VC firm investing across Southeast Asia. Previously worked in corporate finance in Hong Kong and the U.S. Jeff likes to write about startups and tech in emerging markets. INSEAD and Bucknell graduate.

**Sol Franco** (Operations)