EXCLUSIVE: Root Ventures Raises $190 Million Fourth Fund for Early Bets on Wonky Startups

Firm's investments are getting up-rounds from Sequoia, Benchmark, USV, and others

The crew at Root Ventures seems to think they’re living in an older version of Silicon Valley, one still ruled by hackers and tinkerers — before the MBAs and big money flooded in.

In reality, we live at a time when mega funds like Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst keep getting bigger. And many of the top AI startups are competing to show how much money they can gobble up.

Smaller venture capital firms are desperate to find ways to stand out.

Root Ventures is hosting their command-line website on an espresso machine. (They assure me there’s a cloud backup if it gets overwhelmed.)

Root Ventures is sponsoring a robot fight club. They host office hacking days.

“The reason we’re all here is because we like technology in the anthropological sense,” says Root Ventures Kane Hsieh. “If we were EV-maximizing we’d be at quant hedge funds.”

Root Ventures is announcing today in Newcomer that it has raised $190 million from the likes of University of Chicago, Adams Street, State of New Mexico, Loyola, DuPont Trust, and Brown Advisory.