Top Seed VC Ian Rountree Started With $120,000 of His Savings

• Ian Rountree started his career in nonprofits but realized he could have more influence in finance.
• So he took $120,000 of his savings and invested in startups, then he launched his own venture firm.
• Today, Rountree is No. 6 on Insider’s 2022 Seed 100 list of the best early-stage investors.

At 5 years old, Ian Rountree started questioning the fleeting nature of life after his father died from lung cancer.

“It just imprinted mortality on my psyche,” Rountree, the founder of Cantos Ventures, told Insider. “I imagine myself regularly on my deathbed and ask myself what I want to be true when that day comes. One of the answers is having played a small role in something that changed the world.”

These days that means he’s trying to solve some of the world’s existential dilemmas through investing. Through his two funds, a total of $27 million raised, Rountree has backed startups such as Solugen, an environmentally friendly chemical manufacturer; Astranis, a satellite manufacturer that provides internet access to remote areas; and Public.com, a stock and crypto investment platform. All three have been valued at over $1 billion. 

Such successes are examples of why Rountree is No. 6 on Insider’s 2022 Seed 100 list. 

Since 2016, his firm has invested in a total of 75 startups and tallied four exits, two this year: the clinical-trial platform Clara Health, which M&B Sciences acquired, and the blockchain lending platform Dharma Labs, which OpenSea bought. The other two occurred last year: the 3D printing company Collider Tech, which Essentium bought, and the natural-language-processing startup Legit.ai, which Clora bought. All were for undisclosed sums.

Rountree started his career in nonprofits as a program director at the Manna Project International, where he led its efforts for child nutrition and small-business development in Nicaragua. 

But he came to realize that “nothing has the speed, scale, and positive feedback of solving problems with cash flow,” he said.

He eventually joined the financial tech company SoFi. His role was to sign on banks and institutional investors as partners, and he noticed something common happening in his conversations. These investors were interested in learning about backing Silicon Valley startups, but they were hesitant to take on the risk of young ones that hadn’t yet proved their businesses, Rountree said.

Fast-forward a couple of years and many of the startups that the institutional investors were wary of were doing well and growing fast. And Rountree realized that he, too, could be investing in such companies and reaping returns.

So he earmarked $120,000 of his savings for investing in startups over the next four years. He believed that even if he ended up in the worst-case scenario, losing all of his money from investments, it would still be cheaper than being in debt for grad school. It would also give him real-life experience, something a school setting couldn’t teach, he said. 

When he launched Cantos, he dedicated it to technologies that would improve the planet’s future in areas such as biotechnology, healthcare, artificial intelligence, and finance.

For example, its portfolio company Radiant makes portable nuclear power for remote communities and disaster areas, and Twelve wants to replace fossil fuels with a device that recycles CO2, water, and renewable energy.

Successful venture investing also runs in Rountree’s family. Dick Kramlich, his uncle, is a renowned cofounder of the firm New Enterprise Associates.