Caerus Ventures

Caerus Ventures was a West Palm Beach, Florida-based early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2011 by Brodi Jackson and Gregory Borchardt. The firm invested in companies operating at the convergence of hardware and software — spanning IoT, computer vision, industrial automation, health and wellness, robotics, transportation, smart home, manufacturing, retail, logistics, agritech, insurance tech, construction, and smart cities. Caerus focused on seed and early growth-stage startups with demonstrated traction in connected hardware and software solutions, deploying $100,000 to $2 million per investment. The firm is now permanently closed. The portfolio of 13 investments included Dash (automotive IoT), Socure (identity verification, which subsequently became a major fintech company with widespread adoption across financial institutions), and Kairos (facial recognition AI). Partner Sarah Hassan rounded out the founding team. Caerus operated at a time when the hardware-software convergence was transitioning from early adopter curiosity to enterprise-grade production deployment. Caerus Ventures built its thesis around the observation that the most defensible technology companies in the IoT era would be those combining purpose-built hardware with proprietary software — creating data advantages and switching costs that pure software competitors could not replicate. The firm's portfolio reflected a disciplined application of that framework across multiple vertical markets.