K9 Ventures Closes Its First Microfund

Last night, serial entrepreneur-turned-investor Manu Kumar let us know he has closed his first seed-stage fund, a $6.25 million pool to be invested over the next three to four years, in slugs of $100,000 to $250,000 per company, with some reserved capital to participate in follow-on rounds. The money comes from individual investors, including folks who’ve backed Kumar’s startups in the past, including SneakerLabs and iMeet.

Kumar began raising the fund, and deploying what he’d raised, last summer; so far, K9 has stakes in five companies, including CrowdFlower, which organizes labor on demand for its customers; Twilio, whose technology helps developers incorporate telephony functionality into their apps; DNAnexus, whose software helps manage data gathered from the DNA sequencing process; and the Webcam video service HighlightCam.

I first talked with Kumar about K9 Ventures last spring. You can read the entire interview here.