Venture Capital

Slow Ventures

Slow Ventures is a generalist early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, with additional offices in Boston and New York. The firm leads pre-seed and seed rounds, writing typical checks of roughly $500K to $3M (averaging around $1.75M), and explicitly rejects thematic investing in favor of backing experienced founders with deep, hard-won domain expertise and genuine conviction. Slow's thesis funds rapid, high-stakes experimentation: capital that tests a novel risk or hypothesis whose validation dramatically increases a company's value and that cannot easily be funded another way. As a generalist, Slow invests across consumer and social, fintech, SaaS and enterprise/developer tools, healthcare, crypto/web3, the creator economy, and real-world operations (SMB acceleration, buyouts/rollups, franchising). The firm runs a dedicated Creator Fund backing creator-led businesses, and has deployed roughly $800M+ across multiple fund vintages since inception. Notable investments include Pinterest, Slack, Robinhood, Nextdoor, Postmates, Opendoor, Wealthfront, Casper, PillPack, Airtable, Gusto, and Solana.

143 portfolio companies 143 publish APIs here 13 properties
Venture CapitalPre-SeedSeedEarly StageConsumerFintechSoftware-as-a-ServiceDeveloper ToolsCryptoHealthcareCreator EconomyGeneralistSan FranciscoNorth America
Portfolio Strength across 140 profiled portfolio companies on the network
4 top-rated API companies 0 exemplar · 4 strong
13 agent-ready companies 0 agent-native · 13 agent-ready
Average quality of the book:
Composite emerging 16.0
Agent-Readiness human-only 7.4

Firms are ranked by cumulative portfolio strength — how many highly-rated API companies they've backed, weighted by tier across composite quality and agent-readiness. The averages below are a secondary read on the typical company in the book.

Slow Ventures has 143 portfolio companies tracked on the APIs.io network, of which 143 (100%) publish APIs indexed here.

Its highest-rated API providers on the network are simondata, slack, giphy, amplitude, nationbuilder.

Portfolio on the Network

Portfolio companies that publish APIs indexed on APIs.io, grouped by their API Evangelist rating. Exemplar and Strong are expanded by default.

Strong 4 Solid coverage with minor gaps
Developing 15 Usable, with meaningful gaps to close
Thin 17 Limited public surface area
Emerging 23 Early or largely undocumented
Minimal 81 Almost no public developer surface
Unrated 3 Not yet scored

Properties

Portfolio

Where the firm publishes its investments

Team

Partners and investing staff

Content

Blog, podcast, newsletter, and research

Firm

The firm itself

Cohort brief

Auto-generated

The 140 portfolio companies with APIs in the catalog, backed by Slow Ventures, scored on the Kin Score. Every figure below is computed from the catalog — nothing here is written.

Providers
140
of 143 on the roster
Mean Kin Score
15.6
-5.1 vs catalog 20.7
Mean Agent Readiness
7.1
-2.6 vs catalog 9.7
Spread
3.2–67
median 6.3 · σ 15.9
How the 140 split by band
Exemplar 1Strong 2Developing 15Thin 14Emerging 27Minimal 81
Facet averages, against the whole catalog
FacetThis cohortCatalogDifferenceScored
Contract Governance 3.4 6.4 -3 140
Operational Transparency 7.7 11.3 -3.6 140
Contract Quality 12.7 17.5 -4.8 140
Developer Ergonomics 12.3 17.9 -5.6 140
Discoverability 54 60.4 -6.4 140
Access Clarity 15.9 22.3 -6.4 140

A facet is averaged over the members that carry it, not over the whole cohort — the “Scored” column is that count. Averaging an absent facet as zero would score our own coverage gaps as the providers’ posture.

What this cohort publishes
ArtifactThis cohortCatalogDifference
MCP server (any) 15% 16% -1
MCP server (first-party) 4% 7% -3
Agent Skills 0% 0% 0
OAuth scopes 9% 9% 0
Security 74% 88% -14
Arazzo workflows 2% 2% 0
Governance rules 5% 13% -8

mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.

Top by Kin Score
  1. 1 Simon Data 67
  2. 2 Slack 62.3
  3. 3 Amplitude 57.1
  4. 4 NationBuilder 53.7
  5. 5 FullContact 52.3
  6. 6 Button 52.3
  7. 7 Giphy 51.4
  8. 8 evernote 50
  9. 9 Shippo 49.1
  10. 10 Mattermark 48.2
Top by Agent Readiness
  1. 1 Simon Data 49
  2. 2 Visa 41.7
  3. 3 handy 36.9
  4. 4 NationBuilder 35.8
  5. 5 Pinterest 33.8
  6. 6 Amplitude 32.9
  7. 7 silvercar 32.4
  8. 8 FullContact 31.3
  9. 9 Robinhood 30.7
  10. 10 Slack 29.4
This roster declares 143 members; 140 resolve to a provider in the catalog and 140 carry a score (100%). The figures above describe the scored members only.Generated from the catalog build of 25 August 2026, across 26891 providers, using the same computation served by the APIs.io cohort API. Briefs are published for rosters of 5 or more scored providers; below that a distribution is not meaningful.

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑
aid: slow-ventures
name: Slow Ventures
description: >-
  Slow Ventures is a generalist early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2011 and headquartered in
  San Francisco, with additional offices in Boston and New York. The firm leads pre-seed and seed rounds,
  writing typical checks of roughly $500K to $3M (averaging around $1.75M), and explicitly rejects
  thematic investing in favor of backing experienced founders with deep, hard-won domain expertise and
  genuine conviction. Slow's thesis funds rapid, high-stakes experimentation: capital that tests a novel
  risk or hypothesis whose validation dramatically increases a company's value and that cannot easily be
  funded another way. As a generalist, Slow invests across consumer and social, fintech, SaaS and
  enterprise/developer tools, healthcare, crypto/web3, the creator economy, and real-world operations
  (SMB acceleration, buyouts/rollups, franchising). The firm runs a dedicated Creator Fund backing
  creator-led businesses, and has deployed roughly $800M+ across multiple fund vintages since inception.
  Notable investments include Pinterest, Slack, Robinhood, Nextdoor, Postmates, Opendoor, Wealthfront,
  Casper, PillPack, Airtable, Gusto, and Solana.
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - none
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
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://slow.co/favicon.ico
x-type: venture-capital
x-category: Venture Capital
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-17'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
tags:
  - Venture Capital
  - Pre-Seed
  - Seed
  - Early Stage
  - Consumer
  - Fintech
  - Software-as-a-Service
  - Developer Tools
  - Crypto
  - Healthcare
  - Creator Economy
  - Generalist
  - San Francisco
  - North America
tags_raw:
  - Venture Capital
  - Pre-Seed
  - Seed
  - Early Stage
  - Consumer
  - Fintech
  - SaaS
  - Developer Tools
  - Crypto
  - Healthcare
  - Creator Economy
  - Generalist
  - San Francisco
  - North America
apis: []
common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://slow.co/
  - type: Portfolio
    url: https://slow.co/portfolio/
  - type: Portfolio
    url: portfolio/slow-ventures-portfolio.yml
  - type: Team
    url: https://slow.co/about/
  - type: Team
    url: team/slow-ventures-team.yml
  - type: InvestmentThesis
    url: https://slow.co/about/
  - type: Newsletter
    url: https://snailmail.slow.co/
  - type: Podcast
    url: https://slow.co/about/
  - type: Jobs
    url: https://slow.co/jobs/
  - type: Contact
    url: https://slow.co/contact/
  - type: Crunchbase
    url: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/slow-ventures
  - type: LinkedIn
    url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/slow-ventures/
  - type: Twitter
    url: https://twitter.com/slow
  - type: Features
    data:
      - "Stage: Pre-Seed, Seed (early stage, typically leads)"
      - "Typical check: ~$500K-$3M seed checks (average ~$1.75M)"
      - "Sectors: consumer/social, fintech, SaaS/enterprise, developer tools, healthcare, crypto/web3, creator economy, buyouts/rollups"
      - "Geography: Primarily United States (offices in San Francisco, Boston, New York)"
      - "AUM: ~$800M+ deployed across multiple fund vintages (self-reported estimates)"
      - "Founded: 2011"
      - "HQ: San Francisco, California, USA"
    sources:
      - https://slow.co/about/
      - https://www.vcsheet.com/fund/slow-ventures
    updated: '2026-07-17'
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: info@apievangelist.com
    url: https://apievangelist.com
  - FN: APIs.json
    url: http://apisjson.org
  - FN: Slow Ventures
    url: https://slow.co/

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