Venture Guides is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Boston that invests in and actively guides founders of infrastructure software, cloud, data, and security technology startups. The firm was founded by the former infrastructure software team at Bain Capital Ventures and employs a team-based, hands-on investing approach.
Founded 2023
Type Venture capital 2 Venture Guides Fund II 2025-04-22 2025-04-22 $262M Closed single oversubscribed USD262.5m FundII announced2025-04-22; not AUM; expected deploymentQ32025.
Venture Guides Fund I 2023 2023 $216M Prior closed FundI preciseUSD216.5m retrospective comparator in2025release; exact original close unknown, olderUSD215m rounded reporting retained.
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$7M $1 – $20M Boston, Massachusetts $6M $1M – $13M Boston, Massachusetts $2M $100K – $5M Mexico City, Mexico $1M $100K – $5M Boston, Massachusetts $1M $100K – $5M Cambridge, Massachusetts $1M $100K – $5M Massachusetts $1M $100K – $5M Utah $25K $1K – $50K Seattle, Washington — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – —
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$22M 2026-08-10 VibeIQ Venture Guides $— 2026-04-21 SpartanX Venture Guides $8M 2026-03-11 Zymtrace Venture Guides , Fly Ventures , 6 Degrees Capital $— 2026-01-28 Memcyco Venture Guides $— 2026-01-14 IO River Venture Guides $11M 2025-09-16 Ray Security Ibex Investors , Venture Guides , Ben Holzman $6M 2024-06-04 VibeIQ Venture Guides , Benjamin Nye $18M 2023-06-14 Elastio Venture Guides , Bain Capital , Alumni Ventures , Capri Ventures , Uncorrelated Ventures $10M 2023-05-24 Memcyco Venture Guides , Benjamin Nye $— Unknown date ElastiFlow Venture Guides $— Unknown date AppMap Venture Guides $— 2024-09-08 Odigos Venture Guides , Y Combinator , Salesforce Ventures , Mango Capital , Firestreak Ventures , Mo Garad $— Unknown date Clarity Security Venture Guides
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team@apexlogos.ai · 9 hours ago
Investment-fund research reviewed 2026-10-06. Publicly identified funds, dates, amounts and fundraising status are below. Undisclosed commitments remain unknown; this is not a complete register of private SPVs or parallel entities.
Funds and investment stages
| Vehicle / amount | Status and date | Evidence and limits |
|---|---|---|
| Fund I — USD 216.5 million | Prior closed fund, associated with the firm's 2023 inception; precise original close date not independently established here | [Firm Fund II release](https://www.ventureguides.com/news/venture-guides-raises-fund-ii ), 2025-04-22, explicitly gives the comparator amount. Older coverage summarized in the firm's [news archive](https://www.ventureguides.com/news ), undated, describes USD 215 million. Prefer the later precise official figure while retaining the historical discrepancy. |
| Venture Guides Fund II — USD 262.5 million | Closed, not merely a target; announcement 2025-04-22; single oversubscribed close; investing expected from Q3 2025 | Same official release. [Cooley transaction announcement](https://www.cooley.com/news/coverage/2025/2025-04-22-venture-guides-announces-close-of-262-5-million-fund-ii ), page dated 2025-04-24 with Boston dateline 2025-04-22, independently confirms its legal work on the close. [Law360 report, firm-hosted PDF](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62e401790584200f7f586fe2/t/680ab6bcf2aede2e244e1ac6/1745532604764/Venture%2BGuides%2BClinches%2BSecond%2BFund%2BWith%2B%24262.5M%2BIn%2BTow%2B-%2BLaw360.pdf ), 2025-04-22, corroborates the commitments. |
A search for newer vehicles including “Venture Guides Fund III” did not establish a subsequent announced close or target. Fund II is **latest-known verified**, not a guarantee that no other vehicle exists. A social-media comment mentioning future Fund III allocations is insufficient fund evidence. Neither fund amount is AUM or remaining deployable capital; adding Fund I and II does not establish current AUM. Current official homepage supports early-stage investing. Actual verified seed and Series A transactions below reinforce that positioning; occasional growth participation does not alone establish a new broad growth mandate.
Funds recorded in Adex after this review:
| Fund | Disclosed amount | Announcement / filing date |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Venture Guides Fund I | USD 216500000 | 2023 |
| Venture Guides Fund II | USD 262500000 | 2025-04-22 | SHOW MORE
team@apexlogos.ai · 10 hours ago
Match research 2026-10-06 / GoldiVentureGuides / sha256:2ad6dc7094326d0085229bb9bb32235a2d793636968a74ecefa93acab1be04c2 / part 2 of 2
Imported completed research. Baseline Adex/Signal statements describe prior state, not independent verification. Retain cited attribution, date, currency and classification caveats.
1. **VibeIQ conflated rounds:** Adex attaches USD 6.3 million and lead=true to 2026-08-10. The [official Venture Guides welcome post](https://www.ventureguides.com/blog/venture-guides-welcomes-vibeiq ) displays June 4, and the official news archive dates that USD 6.3 million announcement to **2024-06-04**. A different [VibeIQ company announcement](https://vibeiq.com/blog/vibeiq-raises-22-5-million-to-accelerate-ai-native-product-creation-and-market-expansion ), dateline **2026-08-10**, reports **USD 22.5 million growth financing led by Volition Capital**, with existing investor Venture Guides participating. That company page has inconsistent page metadata (published August 4; updated September 1); prefer the release dateline pending reconciliation. Review two separate transactions rather than overwriting one with merged attributes.
2. **Lead flags:** Baseline has lead=false for Odigos and Elastio; investee announcements explicitly name Venture Guides as lead. Odigos' USD 13 million headline may be cumulative. Its blog date and the firm's archive date differ by one day. Review source/date precision and stage before database changes.
3. **History attribution:** Dynatrace, SolarWinds, Rapid7, Turbonomic, LinkedIn and DocuSign appear as team history/past successes, not automatic Venture Guides investments. Signal and investee marketing sometimes blur this distinction. Preserve prior-firm attribution.
4. **Fund fields:** A later reviewer can add founding year 2023 and separate Fund I / Fund II with announcement dates and closed status. Current AUM, individual checks and exact Fund I original close remain unverified; do not equate portfolio financing totals with firm contributions.
5. **Coverage additions:** Cedana is an official portfolio lead absent from this baseline. Current roster also contains other additional companies; their financing dates, amounts and vehicles need further record-level review. Existing duplicate/variant person names (Ben Nye/Benjamin Nye; Nishkam Prabodh/Pradbodh) and dozens of role titles in the snapshot require separate team verification.
This file is research for later Adex review. No Adex/database write, MCP Patch, manifest change or commit was performed. SHOW MORE
team@apexlogos.ai · 10 hours ago
Match research 2026-10-06 / GoldiVentureGuides / sha256:2ad6dc7094326d0085229bb9bb32235a2d793636968a74ecefa93acab1be04c2 / part 1 of 2
Imported completed research. Baseline Adex/Signal statements describe prior state, not independent verification. Retain cited attribution, date, currency and classification caveats.
# Venture Guides — GoldiVentureGuides
- Exact Adex ID: `GoldiVentureGuides`; canonical Adex URL: https://adex.page/firms/GoldiVentureGuides .
- Research completed: 2026-10-06. All external sources below accessed on that date.
- Official identity: Venture Guides, Boston infrastructure software venture investor, publicly launched/founded in 2023. The `Goldi` ID prefix is preserved; it is not part of the firm's public name.
Venture Guides invests primarily in early-stage cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, AI and data businesses. Its latest-known verified closed vehicle is USD 262.5 million Fund II, announced April 2025. Advanced computing infrastructure investments are substantiated, but the evidence does not establish a hardware, life-sciences or neurotechnology mandate. No verified neurotech investment found in the sources checked.
## Starting evidence and attribution
Saved baseline: `data/research/_sources/GoldiVentureGuides.adex.json`, read-only Adex MCP Search snapshot retrieved 2026-10-06. It identifies Venture Guides, Boston, the former infrastructure software team at Bain Capital Ventures, and a hands-on team approach. No fund amount, founding year or check range appears in its structured profile. The snapshot has twelve participations across eleven companies: VibeIQ, SpartanX, Zymtrace, Memcyco (two rounds), IO River, Ray Security, Odigos, Elastio, AppMap, Clarity Security and ElastiFlow. Goldi.ai generic provenance and partner-personal Signal histories are leads requiring independent firm attribution.
[NFX Signal firm page](https://signal.nfx.com/firms/venture-guides ), undated, was directly read. It describes early-stage infrastructure software, a 2023 founding year and Massachusetts location, alongside additional locations and a broad co-investor list. The extracted page did not expose a detailed team/transaction table or usable fund-size field. Signal's claims of over 80% positive returns and 45% unicorn outcomes should not be assigned to Venture Guides' own post-2023 portfolio: the [official homepage](https://www.ventureguides.com/ ), undated, describes performance as the **team's history**, and separately promotes early-stage cloud, security, AI and data investing. Signal is directory evidence, not independent verification of historical investments.
The [OpenVC profile](https://www.openvc.app/fund/Venture%20Guides ), undated and marked verified by that platform, describes the former Bain Capital Ventures infrastructure team and a seed–Series A sweet spot. Its USD 216 million fund description predates the verified Fund II close; its USD 1–12 million first-check range is a directory claim, not a current official check-size commitment.
## Funds and investment stages
| Vehicle / amount | Status and date | Evidence and limits |
|---|---|---|
| Fund I — USD 216.5 million | Prior closed fund, associated with the firm's 2023 inception; precise original close date not independently established here | [Firm Fund II release](https://www.ventureguides.com/news/venture-guides-raises-fund-ii ), 2025-04-22, explicitly gives the comparator amount. Older coverage summarized in the firm's [news archive](https://www.ventureguides.com/news ), undated, describes USD 215 million. Prefer the later precise official figure while retaining the historical discrepancy. |
| Venture Guides Fund II — USD 262.5 million | Closed, not merely a target; announcement 2025-04-22; single oversubscribed close; investing expected from Q3 2025 | Same official release. [Cooley transaction announcement](https://www.cooley.com/news/coverage/2025/2025-04-22-venture-guides-announces-close-of-262-5-million-fund-ii ), page dated 2025-04-24 with Boston dateline 2025-04-22, independently confirms its legal work on the close. [Law360 report, firm-hosted PDF](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62e401790584200f7f586fe2/t/680ab6bcf2aede2e244e1ac6/1745532604764/Venture%2BGuides%2BClinches%2BSecond%2BFund%2BWith%2B%24262.5M%2BIn%2BTow%2B-%2BLaw360.pdf ), 2025-04-22, corroborates the commitments. |
A search for newer vehicles including “Venture Guides Fund III” did not establish a subsequent announced close or target. Fund II is **latest-known verified**, not a guarantee that no other vehicle exists. A social-media comment mentioning future Fund III allocations is insufficient fund evidence. Neither fund amount is AUM or remaining deployable capital; adding Fund I and II does not establish current AUM. Current official homepage supports early-stage investing. Actual verified seed and Series A transactions below reinforce that positioning; occasional growth participation does not alone establish a new broad growth mandate.
## Named advanced technology investments
Deep-tech classifications here are analytical judgments based on the technology described, not claims that the firm labels every company deep tech. These are advanced software/infrastructure examples, not verified semiconductor or physical hardware investments. Round totals are not Venture Guides' individual checks.
| Company | Technology rationale and qualification | Firm attribution, round and date | Supporting source |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Zymtrace** | Low-level CPU/GPU profiling and AI workload optimization; a strong advanced computing infrastructure case rather than ordinary workflow SaaS | Venture Guides led USD 8.5 million seed, announced 2026-03-11. USD 12.2 million is cumulative funding including earlier pre-seed, not this seed round or the firm's check. | [Company funding announcement](https://zymtrace.com/article/zymtrace-funding/ ), 2026-03-11. |
| **Odigos** | Kernel-level eBPF instrumentation for distributed tracing with OpenTelemetry integration; substantial systems-engineering rationale, although observability software is not automatically deep tech under every definition | Company explicitly identifies Venture Guides as latest-round lead. Announcement says over USD 13 million raised overall and does not isolate the latest-round amount/stage. Blog date is 2024-09-08; Adex date is 2024-09-09. | [Company funding blog](https://odigos.io/blog/fundraising-announcement ), 2024-09-08. |
| **SpartanX** | Autonomous offensive security/red teaming coordinating AI agents and exploit validation; plausible advanced AI-security example, with technical efficacy still a company claim | Venture Guides led a closed seed round, 2026-04-21; amount undisclosed in checked primary evidence | [Company seed announcement](https://www.spartanx.ai/news/spartanx-closes-seed-round-venture-guides ), 2026-04-21. |
| **Elastio** | Cloud-native cyber recovery and data-integrity/ransomware scanning; technology-intensive cybersecurity, but less clearly science-based deep tech | Company release says USD 18 million Series A led by Venture Guides with new investors Capri Ventures and Alumni Ventures; Bain Capital Ventures and Uncorrelated also participated. This verifies current-firm attribution separately from Bain history. | [Company-issued PR Newswire release](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elastio-closes-18m-in-series-a-funding-to-revolutionize-cloud-cyber-recovery-301851506.html ), 2023-06-14. |
| **Cedana** | GPU workload migration/checkpointing infrastructure allowing AI jobs to move across GPUs; credible systems deep-tech lead | Explicitly listed among current guided companies; round amount/date and precise investment stage not established here | [Official guided companies](https://www.ventureguides.com/guided-companies ), undated. Portfolio listing verifies relationship, not a particular financing. |
The official current-company page also lists Blitzy (growth), EON, Assail and others beyond the baseline. Blitzy's agentic code-generation description is a further AI lead requiring transaction verification. Retail collaboration company VibeIQ and identity/governance workflow businesses should not be assigned deep-tech labels solely because they use AI or software.
## Neurotechnology coverage
**No verified neurotech investment found in the sources checked.** Checked the saved eleven-company baseline, directly readable Signal firm page, official current-company descriptions and web queries combining Venture Guides with neuro/neurotech. No identified investment involves brain-computer interfaces, neural implants, neural recording/stimulation or direct neuroscience-device development. AI agents, GPU inference and cybersecurity are not neurotechnology. This is a bounded finding, not proof of absence; inaccessible individual histories and undisclosed investments remain possible.
## Conflicts, missing information and later Adex review SHOW MORE
team@apexlogos.ai · 22 days ago
MATCH 
6 Degrees Capital
Zymtrace$8M · 2026-03-11
Alumni Ventures
Elastio$18M · 2023-06-14
Bain Capital
Ben Holzman
Ray Security$11M · 2025-09-16
Fly Ventures
Ibex Investors
Y Combinator
VibeIQ
SpartanX
Memcyco
IO River
ElastiFlow
AppMap