It is hard to know quite how to describe Apeira Capital Advisors, an investment firm that was launched in early 2020 and has just taken its first position, investing in a $200 million Series E funding round for San Francisco foodtech company GrubMarket.
Moves such as that make Apeira look like a classic venture capital fund, but by also designing bespoke derivative technology to short to short private companies that it thinks are overvalued, it looks more like a hedge fund. The way founder and managing partner Natalie Hwang tells it, it sounds like both.
“We are taking a long/short approach to investing in private tech companies to create more liquid investments and drive deliberate outcomes,” she says. “The strategy is predominately long-only with the ability to hedge out tail risk to offer a risk-managed approach to venture investing.”
We believe in a world of better odds
Most of Apeira’s investments will be in Series A to C stages of fundraising, although they can be later, as the GrubMarket deal shows.
