About | Team | Portfolio | Working with Humba Ventures
ABOUT
Humba Ventures is a pre-seed and seed fund in the Susa Ventures family. While Susa Ventures is focused on leading early stage rounds in traditional sectors like enterprise SaaS, fintech, healthcare, and logistics, Humba Ventures is mainly focused on smaller, emerging sectors and technologies like robotics and manufacturing, climate and energy, and defense and security. Humba also occasionally invests as a supportive, non-lead investor in traditional sectors.
Humba typically writes $250k-$500k core checks with a high engagement model, and occasionally writes $50k-$100k scout checks.
We bring over a decade of institutional VC experience developed through supporting companies like Robinhood, Flexport, and Mux at their earliest stages, and apply that experience to founders building companies at the frontiers of technology.
TEAM
Humba is principally run by Leo Polovets and Pratyush Buddiga, with support from the larger Susa team.
Leo (
blog)
- Numerous Top 100 finishes in national math, programming, and science competitions in high school and college.
- 10 years of software eng experience: 2nd engineering hire at LinkedIn, 3 years at Google working on payment fraud detection, 4 years at Factual working on data cleaning and deduping software.
- Co-founded Susa Ventures ($500m+ AUM, seed investor in companies like Robinhood, Flexport, Mux, Expanse, Mashgin, and Andela)
Pratyush ( blog)
- Won US Spelling Bee.
- Professional poker player for 6 years, reaching #2 in the world for tournament play.
- Early employee at a crypto gaming company and Chief of Staff at Volley (YC-backed voice gaming startup)
Team’s previous fund and angel investments: CloudTrucks ($850m), Dusty Robotics (🤫), Hightouch ($615m), Mashgin ($1.5b), Placer ($1b), Scalyr (acquired), Veho ($1.5b), Vetcove (🤫).
PORTFOLIO
Categories:
🧬Biotech
🔋Climate/Energy
💰Crypto/Web3
🛡️Defense/Security
🤖Robotics/Manufacturing
🤝Supportive Check
Most of the companies below are in stealth mode, unless their homepage links are included.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| 🤖 | Adaptable ASRS (automated storage and retrieval system) for warehouses. |
| 🤖🛡️ | Autonomous drone swarms for military applications. |
| 🛡️ | Compliance and collaboration software for government primes and subcontractors. (GovForce) |
| 🤖 | Comprehensive marketplace for industrial parts. (Volition) |
| 🔋 | Distributed network of balloon-based weather sensors. |
| 🔋🤖 | Forest monitoring and inventory management using drones and robots. (Treeswift) |
| 🤖 | Hardware-based precision crop load management. |
| 💰 | Highly efficient decentralized exchange. (Ambient Finance) |
| 🤝 | K-12 math practice software. |
| 🤝 | Next gen property management platform. |
| 🔋🛡️ | Nuclear microreactors for defense applications. (Antares) |
| 🧬 | Organoids for drug testing and drug development. |
| 🧬 | Protein design using generative AI. |
| 🛡️ | Search engine for geospatial data that targets defense & government use cases. (Danti) |
| 🛡️ | Security middleware platform that gives users control and visibility over their security posture. (LimaCharlie) |
| 🔋 | Site selection and permitting software for large cleantech projects. |
| 🛡️ | Software platform that makes it easier for the US to share info with its allies in a faster, more secure way. |
| 🤝 | Super app for solopreneurs that helps with payments, scheduling, marketing, and more. |
| 🤝 | System of record for account managers. |
| 🤝 | Telehealth dietician platform. (Nourish) |
WORKING WITH HUMBA VENTURES
We try to do monthly syncs with every core check founder, and of course we’re always available ad hoc whenever anything urgent comes up.
Our approach is to be actively helpful and supportive without being meddlesome or getting in the way. We’re laid back and nonjudgmental – whether things are going well or not, we’re not going to add to your stress; we’re just going to roll up our sleeves to help wherever we can.
Areas where we can help:
FUNDRAISING SUPPORT
- We’ll iterate on the deck content together, then introduce you to designers when the deck is ready for final touches.
- We’ll do pitch practice sessions together until you’re comfortable with the pitch.
- We’ll introduce you to the best investors for you – both the well known ones that everyone wants to talk to, and the under the radar investors that have deep experience in the category you’re focused on.
STRATEGIC SUPPORT
- We’ll provide feedback on your product, website, marketing copy, etc. whenever you want.
- We can help with GTM design and strategy.
- We’ll help you level up your product’s pricing.
- We’re good thought partners for general company strategy: thinking about product roadmaps, moat development, navigating against key competitors, etc.
HIRING SUPPORT
- We help with sourcing whenever we meet a great candidate that could be a fit for your company.
- We can help with recruiting process design, job spec reviews, and comp planning.
- We’ll also help you close candidates by getting on the phone with them and sharing why investors like us are excited about your company.
NETWORK
- We’ll make intros to other founders, domain experts, functional experts, investors, and anyone else in our network that you want to talk to.
- For b2b companies, we will help you reach early customers through our 1st and 2nd degree network.
DISCOUNTS
- We have discounts with lots of service providers, and for commonly used tools (public clouds, ATS and CRM software, productivity tools, etc.)