Mu Ventures

Mu Ventures (stylized as mu ventures) is a New York-based pre-seed and seed-stage venture capital firm founded in 2022 by General Partner Gary Benerofe, a former Lehman Brothers investment banker with more than 20 years of investing experience. The firm's thesis is to reduce friction in how commerce transactions happen — to 'lower the mu' — investing in commerce infrastructure, vertical software and AI, marketplaces, and consumer brands and applications. The firm deliberately avoids deep tech and biotech. First checks run $200,000 to $500,000, with 25% of the fund reserved for follow-ons and a broader range of up to $5 million when opportunity warrants. Anchor LPs include the Managing Partner of L Catterton, the former Shopify CMO, the former Shutterstock CMO, a General Partner of Flex Capital, the CEO of Pipedream, and the founder of BrightRoll, which sold to Yahoo! for $640 million. As of November 2025 Mu has 17 active portfolio companies and invests before and alongside top-tier funds including Forerunner, Bessemer, Lightspeed, a16z, Accel, FirstMark, Redpoint, and Y Combinator. Named portfolio companies include Balance, Alloy Automation, TAIV (video commerce), Firmly (AI for real estate), RepRally (wholesale), Mayple (cross-border commerce), Buncha (neighborhood delivery), Nilus (cash management), Sunbound (senior-living payments), Ingest (restaurant data), ChatLabs ($3.2 million seed in December 2024), Kingpin ($3.5 million seed in November 2025), and Consio (invested January 2026). Mu Ventures' LP roster of commerce operators gives portfolio founders direct access to a network of customer, distribution, and co-investor relationships that are difficult to assemble through traditional institutional fund channels.