Antecedent Ventures

Antecedent Ventures is a New York-based seed and early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2015 by Steven Berg, who serves as Founder and Managing Director. The fund focuses on enterprise software, SaaS, and cloud-based applications, backing companies founded by people with deep technical expertise who are solving large, structural problems. Target company profiles include infrastructure platforms, horizontal application layers, and vertical software businesses. Madrona Venture Group is among the firm's top co-investors. The firm invests at seed and Series A stages with checks of $100K to $1 million, deploying into a concentrated portfolio of nine companies. Sectors covered include SaaS, software, data and analytics, and AI. As a solo-GP fund, Antecedent operates lean: Steven Berg is the sole team member, which means founders engage directly with the decision-maker from first conversation through board service. Antecedent Ventures is shaped by a clear thesis: the best enterprise software companies are founded by technical experts who understand the problem at a depth that generalist founders rarely match. Berg looks for companies solving problems that are big enough to anchor a standalone business and where the founding team's domain expertise creates a durable moat. The fund's concentrated portfolio reflects deliberate selectivity — fewer bets, higher conviction, closer engagement with each founding team.