Off the Grid Ventures

Off the Grid Ventures (OTG) is a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture capital firm founded in 2016 by Christopher Haire, David Mes, Mat Peyron, and Olivier Poissonnier. The firm built its thesis around a persistent funding gap in venture: women and foreign or immigrant founders receive a disproportionately small share of venture dollars despite data showing comparable or superior returns. OTG exists to back 'off the grid' entrepreneurs — underrepresented founders with cross-border perspectives — at the pre-seed and seed stages, with a particular focus on enterprise tech, specifically B2B SaaS and enterprise applications, and fintech. OTG operates Off-The-Grid Ventures Fund 1 and typically writes small pre-seed and seed checks alongside other investors rather than leading. Across 22 investments, the portfolio has produced one unicorn, Flexport, the digital freight forwarding platform, and two acquisitions: Voxeet and Presence. The most recent disclosed exit was Tribal Credit in December 2024. Other notable names include Jasper and Tribal, a specialized finance platform. The firm made its most recent disclosed new investment in Jasper in July 2021; new-investment activity has been quiet since, suggesting the fund is in portfolio-management and harvest mode. OTG's four founding partners bring a deliberately cross-border perspective — European entrepreneurs operating in the San Francisco market — giving the firm firsthand understanding of the challenges immigrant founders face in accessing US venture capital. The fund's mission is to expand the definition of who receives institutional backing at the earliest and most consequential stage of company formation.