Category Ventures

I am so excited to welcome Çağla Kaymaz to the Category Ventures team. I have known Cagla for several years and this is the third time I have tried to convince her join me. Cagla will be an amazing partner to technical founders building infra software. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with her.

Thrilled to share that I’ve joined Villi Iltchev as a Partner at Category Ventures, a new $160M pre-seed and seed fund backing founders building category-defining enterprise software — across AI, infrastructure, applications, and developer tools. I’ve known and admired Villi for years, and I’m excited to partner with him to build the kind of firm founders deserve: high-conviction, deeply technical, and founder-first. As someone who started my career as a software engineer and later a product manager, I’m especially energized to support early-stage founders turning complex ideas into lasting companies. To the teammates, founders and partners I worked with during my time at Citi Ventures — thank you. I’m grateful for the chance to have worked with you, and am excited that in venture we get to build on relationships across chapters. Villi Iltchev Patty Smith (she/her) Ruta Savickaite

Did you know GitLab lost customer data—and livestreamed their recovery on YouTube?!? Instead of hiding their mistake, they showed everything. Their transparency built MORE trust with customers. On our next episode of Tank Talks, we welcome back Villi Iltchev, Founder and Managing Partner of his new firm, Category Ventures. On this episode, Villi shares his journey being at the forefront of venture investing for decades—spending time at Salesforce in its earliest days of corporate VC, working closely with GitLab in their early stage, and cutting his teeth at August Capital and Two Sigma before striking out to launch Category VC. He’s seen firsthand how trust can make or break deals, and how founders and VCs can foster genuine, long-term partnerships. Subscribe to get notified when the episode drops: tanktalks.substack.com

A fantastic article on the launch of Category Ventures. https://lnkd.in/gGjXh2Tx