K9 Ventures

K9 Ventures is a technology-focused Pre-Seed venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, California, founded by Manu Kumar (its "Chief Firestarter"). The firm provides the first institutional capital to companies at "frighteningly early" stages, backing new core technologies, technology platforms, and new markets rather than following a fixed sector thesis. K9 makes only a handful of concentrated investments each year, favoring teams building something genuinely new. Notable past portfolio companies include Twilio, Lytro, CrowdFlower, and DNAnexus. This profile was surfaced as a portfolio company of Foundry Group and added to the API Evangelist network; K9 Ventures does not publish a public API surface.

K9 Ventures is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Venture Capital, Pre-Seed, Early Stage, and Startup Investing.

K9 Ventures’ developer surface includes engineering blog and 8 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

7.2/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

0 APIs

CompanyVenture CapitalPre-SeedEarly StageStartup InvestingDeep TechPalo Alto

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

Composite quality — 7.2/100 · minimal

Contract Quality 0.0 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 0.4 / 20

Commercial Clarity 0.0 / 20

Operational Transparency 0.0 / 13

Governance 0.0 / 12

Discoverability 6.8 / 10

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 15

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/k9-ventures: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

LLMsTxt

LLMsTxt

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Company 5

The organization behind the API

Website

About

Blog

Twitter

LinkedIn

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Team

Team

Portfolio

Portfolio

Source (apis.yml)

aid: k9-ventures
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/k9-ventures.png
name: K9 Ventures
description: K9 Ventures is a technology-focused Pre-Seed venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, California, founded by
  Manu Kumar (its "Chief Firestarter"). The firm provides the first institutional capital to companies at "frighteningly early"
  stages, backing new core technologies, technology platforms, and new markets rather than following a fixed sector thesis.
  K9 makes only a handful of concentrated investments each year, favoring teams building something genuinely new. Notable
  past portfolio companies include Twilio, Lytro, CrowdFlower, and DNAnexus. This profile was surfaced as a portfolio company
  of Foundry Group and added to the API Evangelist network; K9 Ventures does not publish a public API surface.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/k9-ventures/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- foundry-group
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-19'
tags:
- Company
- Venture Capital
- Pre-Seed
- Early Stage
- Startup Investing
- Deep Tech
- Palo Alto
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/k9-ventures-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.k9ventures.com
- type: About
  url: https://www.k9ventures.com/about/
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.k9ventures.com/blog/
- type: Team
  url: https://www.k9ventures.com/team/
- type: Portfolio
  url: https://www.k9ventures.com/startups/
- type: Twitter
  url: https://www.twitter.com/k9ventures
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/k9-ventures
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/k9-ventures-llms.txt
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence