WndrCo Enters Venture Capital Arena with $460M Investment Across Two New Funds

WndrCo, a holding company and technology investment firm co-founded by Sujay Jaswa and Jeffrey Katzenberg, has successfully raised its inaugural venture capital fund, garnering over $460 million in capital commitments.

Katzenberg, renowned for his tenure as the former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and co-founder of DreamWorks SKG, pairs his experience with Jaswa, who previously served as a principal at New Enterprise Associates and was one of the early employees at Dropbox.

In 2022, we highlighted the eight-year-old firm after noticing its growing presence in numerous venture capital deals. "The common thread across everything is that we’re really looking for founders who can tackle significant challenges," Jaswa remarked in an earlier interview.

This commitment to supporting visionary founders remains unchanged. Alongside general partners ChenLi Wang, Anthony Saleh, and Jeffrey Nykun, Katzenberg and Jaswa now oversee $1.3 billion in assets through their Build, Venture, and Seed investment strategies.

The Build strategy focuses on acquiring controlling stakes in undervalued tech companies to elevate them to category leaders, as seen with digital security firms such as Aura and Pango. The Venture strategy emphasizes partnering with founders who are redefining industries, with a strong emphasis on serving as the lead institutional investor. WndrCo’s impressive venture portfolio features notable names like 1Password, Airtable, Databricks, Deel, and Figma. Their Seed fund prioritizes early-stage investment in emerging entrepreneurs and has backed companies like Yassir, Material Security, Pilot, Quince, Socket, and Twelve Labs.

Katzenberg and Jaswa initiated fundraising for these new funds a year and a half ago. "We timed it perfectly," Jaswa noted, referring to their strategy of raising capital between a major recession and a period of perceived venture excess. "It was a unique moment to raise our first classic venture funds," he added. "While we've had the fortune to work with remarkable entrepreneurs and companies, forming new relationships takes time."

The new capital will be allocated across Seed and Venture funds aimed at startups innovating in the future of work, consumer technology, cybersecurity, and developer infrastructure. WndrCo plans to execute about 15 seed investments annually, with an average check size of $500,000. According to Katzenberg, the Seed fund will engage in "more venture capital investing than we had done before," with the aim of launching one or two new companies each year.

So far, WndrCo has made investments in three companies from the new funds, including Writer, a generative AI platform tailored for businesses, and Alembic, which helps chief marketing officers analyze their return on investment related to brand spending. One of their Build companies, established merely 10 months ago, is currently operating in stealth mode.

The firm seeks innovative technologies that can resolve previously unsolved societal issues. If they identify entrepreneurs developing such solutions, WndrCo steps in with financial support. Recently, this focus has included advancements in artificial intelligence.

"Over the past five months, we've witnessed a substantial surge in both the quality and quantity of opportunities," Katzenberg commented. "This starkly contrasts with the scenario in 2023. Such shifts typically occur during transformative platform changes, and for us, AI appears to represent the next major evolution in technology."