Maveron, the VC firm founded by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Dan Levitan, is doubling down on seed investments. The firm, which has offices in both Seattle and San Francisco, has been making a few seed investments sporadically over the past few years, but with today’s announcement, Maveron is committing to making at least 12 seed investments per year.
And these investments are exclusively going to be in the consumer sector, which a rare commitment these days as more VC firms flock to fund enterprise startups. The firm says that it has already completed three seed investments in 2013. The range of these investments are $100,000-$250,000, says Levitan.
The areas within consumer that Maveron will primarily focus on are commerce, education and health. Maveron’s seed investments over the past few years have included Everlane, CircleUp, Julep, and CourseHero.
Levitan explains that over the past give years (the firm has been around for 15 years), Maveron has been making earlier and earlier stage investments. He says it made sense to formalize the program so the startup world would know that the firm is ready, willing and able to make seed stage investments.
We are seeing more and more VC firms expand investments across several stages, including late stage, mid level and seed. Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield and many others are now making investments across a number of stages.