Partner
About the firm
We invest in things people will need
before they realize they do.
MinimallyUseful Industries is a multi-stage venture firm founded in 2019 on a single observation: that the most valuable companies of the next half-century would not solve obvious problems, but would quietly construct the conditions under which problems became obvious. We have organized our practice around that observation ever since.
Founded
2019
Headquarters
San Francisco
Offices
SF · Zürich · Singapore
Team
34
Active funds
Fund IV
AUM
$4.2B
The partnership
Investment theses, 2026
Four convictions,
held expensively.
I.
Friction is the last addressable margin.
Every act of human deliberation is a candidate for unbundling. We invest in the unbundlers.
II.
Compliance precedes consent.
The regulatory surface will expand faster than the political will to govern it. We back the infrastructure that will adjudicate.
III.
Loneliness is the largest TAM in human history.
Solitude has always been a market. Now it is a stack.
IV.
The org chart is a prompt.
Human management is a legacy interface. The next great enterprise companies will replace not the worker, but the manager.
Firm timeline
2019
Firm founded. Fund I closes at $80M, anchored by three family offices and one mildly disillusioned monastery.
2021
Fund II ($420M). Lead investment in MiddleR.ai. Office opened in Zürich, ostensibly for tax efficiency.
2023
Fund III ($1.6B). First exit (Hydral acquisition by a beverage conglomerate that no longer exists).
2024
Launch of MUI Labs, an internal research vehicle for indexing emerging dependencies.
2026
Fund IV ($2.1B), now deploying. The firm reaches 47 active companies and one ongoing FTC inquiry.