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Status
ACTIVE
Global HQ
San Francisco, United States
Countries of investment
  • United States
  • Germany
  • India
Investment stages
  • Pre-Seed
  • Seed
Industries
  • SaaS
  • Developer Tools
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Infrastructure
About
Backtrace VC is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in B2B SaaS companies at the pre-seed and seed rounds. Founded and run by operators, their mission is to provide empathetic, hands-on support to founders, drawing from their own experiences building and scaling successful companies.
Min check size
$150K
Max check size
$1M
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NPS

Investment Thesis

Backtrace VC is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture capital firm focused exclusively on B2B SaaS founders. Led by a team of experienced founders and operators, they leverage their direct experience to support portfolio companies in key areas like product-led growth, enterprise sales, and community building. Their core philosophy is to be the most helpful and empathetic investor on the cap table, providing hands-on guidance from a 'been there, done that' perspective.
Lead investor
Co Invest
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Manager's Experience

The firm is led by Frederic Kerrest, the co-founder and COO of Okta, a publicly traded enterprise identity company. The team includes partners with deep operational and investment experience, such as the founder of Rain Capital and former VP at Intel Security, and the founder of the Nike Foundation. Their collective expertise is heavily concentrated in enterprise software, security, and scaling technology companies from early stages to public markets.

Team

Frederic Kerrest - Founder

Connor Murphy - Founder

Portfolio

CommandBar

Pocus

Superb AI

Hightouch

Census

Secoda

WorkOS

Airplane

Pylon

Calixa

Evercast

Superhuman

Retool

Vercel

Supabase

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