Defy.vc
VC Fund
San Mateo, United States
Defy.vc is a VC fund in San Mateo focused on Software and Artificial Intelligence. Defy is a seed-stage venture fund focused on emerging high-potential opportunities. It is driven by a passion for working closely with entrepreneurs, especially through the transformative time after seed funding. The firm invests in people and in their conviction and talent for creating real change. Defy was founded in 2016 by Neil Sequeira and Trae Vassallo and is based in San Mateo, California, United States.
- Total investments:
- 134
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 39%
- Fund size:
- $300M
- Last fund:
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Defy.vc invests in
Stages Defy.vc invests in
Countries Defy.vc invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
| See all 8 contacts → | |||
Round size
- Seed
- $1.7M–$10M
- Series A
- $5.4M–$18M
- Series B
- $12M–$70M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 32 (24%)
- Artificial Intelligence 18 (13%)
- SaaS 12 (9%)
- E-Commerce 10 (7%)
- Financial Services 9 (7%)
Stage
- Seed 54 (40%)
- Series A 35 (26%)
- Series B 13 (10%)
- Pre-Seed 7 (5%)
- Venture - Series Unknown 6 (4%)
Country
- United States 74 (55%)
- United Kingdom 3 (2%)
- Germany 1 (1%)
- Pakistan 1 (1%)
- Australia 1 (1%)
Team
| Name | Title | Investments | Links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Bob Rosin
Partner
|
Partner | Total investments: 17 | Find email | |
Brian Rothenberg
Partner
|
Partner | Total investments: 8 | Find email | |
Kamil Saeid
Partner
|
Partner | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
Madison McIlwain
Partner, Seed
|
Partner, Seed | Total investments: 1 | Find email | |
Medha Agarwal
General Partner
|
General Partner | Total investments: 6 | Find email | |
| See all 8 team members → | ||||
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agentiq is a sports fintech startup that enables everyday fans to purchase fractionalized equity stakes in the future professional income of athletes. | $4M / Seed / Oct 07, 2026 | ||
| Palona AI offers a range of artificial intelligence technologies that boost D2C growth. | $20M / Series A / Aug 17, 2026 | ||
| Hakimo provides a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system for physical security. The company uses computer vision to analyze camera footage corresponding to every badge event and correlates that with badging data to raise alerts in real-time. | $12M / Venture - Series Unknown / Jul 08, 2026 | ||
| Champ is your AI operations teammate that automates SOP-driven work across browsers, documents, and internal systems. | $8.5M / Seed / May 13, 2026 | ||
| Synthpop is a healthcare SaaS development company. | $15M / Series A / Feb 03, 2026 | ||
| JOLISS autonomously discovers, maps, and risk scores undocumented APIs across your enterprise, delivering a unified risk portrait so you can act before vulnerabilities materialize. | $700K / Series A / Jan 01, 2026 | ||
| Interface provides an AI-powered industrial safety platform for the energy and chemicals industries. Its AI-powered platform plugs into existing systems, cross-checks standards, and gives operators a safety copilot that cuts document review time, unplanned downtime, and regulatory exposure. | $3.5M / Seed / Nov 25, 2025 | ||
| Ava Financial is a fintech company that offers a mobile app-based credit-building platform aimed at individuals looking to establish or improve their credit history. Its main products include the Ava Credit Builder Card, which features a credit line usable at select streaming and online merchant platforms, and the Save & Build Credit Account, asmall secured loan program where users make monthly payments for 12 months and receive a cash refund at the end of the term. The company reports on-time payment history to all three major U.S. credit bureaus—and claims to help users begin seeing credit score improvements quickly, often within days after enrollment. Users link a checking account, pay a monthly subscription fee, and are encouraged to keep credit utilization low. | $15.5M / Seed / Oct 24, 2025 | ||
| JOLISS autonomously discovers, maps, and risk scores undocumented APIs across your enterprise, delivering a unified risk portrait so you can act before vulnerabilities materialize. | $200K / Seed / Oct 01, 2025 | ||
| Birches Health provides therapy and support for those struggling with behavioral and process addictions. | $10M / Series A / Sep 16, 2025 | ||
| See all 134 investments → | |||
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FAQ
What does Defy.vc invest in?
Defy.vc invests primarily in Software, Artificial Intelligence and SaaS startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 134 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What is Defy.vc's check size?
Defy.vc typically joins rounds of $1.7M–$10M at Seed, $5.4M–$18M at Series A and $12M–$70M at Series B. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Defy.vc participates in.
How do I contact Defy.vc?
Public channels for Defy.vc include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
Who are the partners at Defy.vc?
The team at Defy.vc includes Bob Rosin (Partner), Brian Rothenberg (Partner) and Kamil Saeid (Partner), among 8 team members tracked by Shizune. The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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