Felicis is a generalist early-stage firm (founded 2006 by Aydin Senkut) that backs outlier founders 'reimagining' large markets, mostly at seed and Series A. Its operating belief is that luck can be engineered: 'luck is where preparation meets opportunity,' so it moves with conviction and speed and helps founders become 'unbreakable.' Today the thesis is overwhelmingly AI-native: Felicis believes 'dozens of $100B+ AI companies will emerge this decade' and over 70% of its active portfolio is AI-native. It is founder-first to the point of pledging to always vote its shares alongside founders and committing 1% of every check to founder development.
Founders solving a real, painful problem they have personally lived, ideally an infrastructure or workflow gap exposed by a recent technology shift. Felicis frames opportunity as the collision of technology with real-world pain.
“The AI boom is colliding with a harsh reality: the infrastructure powering modern applications wasn't built for the data fueling them.” — Felicis's Series A in Eventual: Purpose-Built Data Infrastructure for Multimodal AI
“They've lived the pain of broken systems and have assembled an incredible team of distributed systems veterans from Databricks, AWS, GitHub Copilot, and more.” — Astasia Myers
“AI is the first software wave to reach mass deployment before its infrastructure was built.” — Tobi Coker
“Cost per token was the most-cited compute bottleneck in our survey: 43.5% named it as their single biggest blocker” — Tobi Coker
A product that does something structurally different—ideally inverting how the problem is approached—so it can own a category rather than merely be a better feature. Felicis values bold solutions and the conviction to stick with them.
“What makes Eventual's approach so compelling is their inversion of execution logic: the platform natively handles calls to AI APIs, embeddings, vector stores, and the unpredictable chaos of real-world data.” — Felicis's Series A in Eventual
“The best product doesn't always win; but the best-positioned product can take you to another level.” — Viviana Faga
“We've led Corridor's Series A because we believe they're building the missing layer for this new era: a security and management system designed specifically for code generation.” — Jake Storm & Nancy Wang
“He always had an intuition for when to stick with bold ideas and how to quickly course correct when pursuing them.” — Aydin Senkut
Markets large enough to produce a category leader—ideally a $10B+ to $100B+ outcome. Felicis explicitly hunts for the spaces where the next very large companies get built, and believes the AI cycle will mint many of them.
“dozens of $100B+ AI companies will emerge this decade” — Announcing Our Largest Fund Yet: FV X $900M
“A product that owns a category can beat a great rival.” — Viviana Faga
“OpenAI projects that agent sales will eclipse ChatGPT by 2030.” — Tobi Coker
“We think agent adoption will happen in waves. The first categories involve text-based workflows, like marketing, paralegal, SDR, SRE, medical scribe, and support agents.” — Eric Flaningam & James Detweiler
Concrete evidence the product works at real scale and that the team ships—production systems handling real-world load—rather than vanity metrics. Felicis cares more about durable progress toward category leadership than a specific round.
“Since launching in 2022, Eventual has shipped a production-ready engine already processing petabytes of multimodal data daily.” — Felicis's Series A in Eventual
“It's not raising a particular round or an exit; it's building a company that could really be at the top of its field one day.” — Aydin Senkut
“The most underrated aspect of success is proper instrumentation—if you want a daring outcome, make sure to measure what truly matters.” — Aydin Senkut
Outlier founders who spike across dimensions—pairing deep technical depth with business instinct—who do the hard work and have lived the problem. Felicis backs the person early, even pre-credential, and is obsessed with founders who push boundaries.
“We look for teams that spike across dimensions, and pair technical depth and with business instinct.” — Felicis Series A in Corridor: Proactive Security for the Code Gen Era
“We are obsessed with founders who constantly push the boundaries of what's possible.” — Announcing Our Largest Fund Yet: FV X $900M
“Even in 2021 when we led their Series A, it was clear that Jan was the kind of founder who would never shy away from doing the hard work or making the tough decisions.” — Aydin Senkut
“We are incredibly excited to have partnered with Charles and Sarah before they finished their PhDs and to support the entire Letta team to provide AI agent infrastructure with memory.” — Astasia Myers
Companies positioned to capture durable value as a category owner or essential infrastructure layer, where the moat resists commoditization. As software costs fall, Felicis weighs whether value accrues to something non-aggregatable.
“trust, unlike bandwidth or compute or distribution, is structurally resistant to aggregation.” — The Great Splintering: How AI Shifts Value from Software to Trust
“When thinking was cheap, value accrues to the things that were never computational to begin with: trust, judgment, presence.” — James Detweiler
“95.7% use Anthropic, but 82.6% of those teams are open to switching, and 34.8%...switch frequently based on performance.” — Tobi Coker
Founders who understand their competitive landscape and counter-position aggressively—turning weaknesses into strengths and owning a category rather than competing feature-for-feature. The clearest sign positioning works: competitors start copying your language.
“Product positioning is a game of hardball—to win, you must be willing to directly counter-position against your competition.” — You Can't Hack Product Positioning
“Never run from your weaknesses. Understand them, and turn them into your core strengths.” — Viviana Faga
“When category creation is going well...the biggest sign it is working? When your competitors start using it too.” — Viviana Faga
“trust, unlike bandwidth or compute or distribution, is structurally resistant to aggregation.” — James Detweiler
A clear, structural reason this is the moment—usually a technology shift (AI) that has outpaced its supporting infrastructure or unlocked new behaviors, opening urgent windows. Felicis maps these 'fault lines' explicitly in its Forecast.
“AI is the first software wave to reach mass deployment before its infrastructure was built.” — The AI Stack Is Half-Built
“Agents represent the next frontier of Human-Computer Interaction, and the groundwork is being laid today for an agent-dominated web.” — Eric Flaningam & James Detweiler
“We've led Corridor's Series A because we believe they're building the missing layer for this new era: a security and management system designed specifically for code generation.” — Jake Storm & Nancy Wang
“We back what we believe in. Early, and without hesitation.” — Announcing Our Largest Fund Yet: FV X $900M
A clear plan to deploy capital against the highest-leverage levers within the founder's control, framed around becoming category leader. Felicis pairs the check with founder development (1% pledge) and a commitment to back founders unconditionally.
“Every startup is in a race against time, and we feel a great sense of urgency to help founders optimize the key levers in their control.” — Felicis Fund IX: Helping Founders Engineer Their Own Luck
“It's not raising a particular round or an exit; it's building a company that could really be at the top of its field one day.” — Aydin Senkut
“Support founders unconditionally. We always vote our shares alongside founders.” — Announcing Our Largest Fund Yet: FV X $900M
“Even in 2021 when we led their Series A, it was clear that Jan was the kind of founder who would never shy away from doing the hard work or making the tough decisions.”
“They've lived the pain of broken systems and have assembled an incredible team of distributed systems veterans from Databricks, AWS, GitHub Copilot, and more.”
“Product positioning is a game of hardball—to win, you must be willing to directly counter-position against your competition.”
“AI is the first software wave to reach mass deployment before its infrastructure was built.”
“When thinking was cheap, value accrues to the things that were never computational to begin with: trust, judgment, presence.”