Rugged Ventures
VC Fund
New York, United States
Rugged Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in seed-stage companies. Founded by Dave Lerner, Rugged Ventures has been making seed stage investments since 2001.
- Total investments:
- 26
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 0%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Rugged Ventures invests in
Stages Rugged Ventures invests in
Countries Rugged Ventures invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Round size
- Seed
- $800k–$3.5M
- Series A
- $6.4M–$8.8M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 7 (27%)
- Artificial Intelligence 6 (23%)
- Logistics 5 (19%)
- Machine Learning 5 (19%)
- Mobile 4 (15%)
Stage
- Seed 21 (81%)
- Series A 4 (15%)
- Venture - Series Unknown 1 (4%)
Country
- United States 24 (92%)
- Canada 1 (4%)
Team
| Name | Title | Investments | Links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Dave Lerner
Founder
|
Founder | Total investments: 13 | Find email |
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zinier’s low-code field service automation platform empowers field service organizations with the combined power of humans and technology to keep our world up and running. Powered by AI, Zinier transforms how teams coordinate and execute work, so they can solve problems faster, fix things before they break, and maintain an agile infrastructure thatevolves with their needs. Enterprises around the world use Zinier to reach their full potential, delivering always-on service now, while future-proofing for the unexpected. We are a global team headquartered in Silicon Valley with leading investors including Accel, ICONIQ Capital, Founders Fund, Newfund Capital, NGP Capital, Tiger Global Management and Qualcomm Ventures LLC. | $8M / Series A / Jan 15, 2018 | ||
| Homer uses technology and operations to make local, final-mile deliveries more efficient. Through the use of mobile tracking, routing, and communication, Homer delivers more orders in fewer miles traveled. With optimization algorithms for routing a controlled fleet of delivery personnel, Homer reduces the cost of delivery and provides a scalablesolution to the local delivery ecosystem. | $8.5M / Series A / Jun 26, 2017 | ||
| Viro Media helps mobile developers to easily add VR to their apps using familiar tools and code bases. | $2.5M / Seed / Mar 22, 2017 | ||
| KidPass is the leading destination for parents to discover and book amazing children’s activities. | $800K / Seed / Sep 28, 2016 | ||
| Don't let fraud erode your bottom line, damage your reputation, or stall your growth. FraudNet's AI-driven platform empowers enterprises to stay ahead of threats, streamline compliance, and manage risk at scale—all in real time. While fraudsters evolve their tactics, our platform is already detecting tomorrow's threats, deliveringrisk assessments through insights from billions of analyzed transactions.Imagine transforming your fraud prevention with a single, powerful platform: comprehensive screening for smoother onboarding and reduced risk exposure, continuous monitoring to proactively identify and block new threats, and precision fraud detection across channels and payment types with real-time, AI-powered risk scoring. Our proprietary machine learning models continuously learn and improve, identifying patterns invisible to traditional systems. Paired with our Data Hub of dozens of third-party data integrations, you'll gain unprecedented fraud and risk protection while slashing false positives and eliminating operational inefficiencies. The impact is undeniable. Leading payment companies, financial institutions, innovative fintechs, and commerce brands trust our AI-powered solutions worldwide, and they're seeing dramatic results: 80% reduction in fraud losses and 97% fewer false positives. With our flexible no-code/low-code architecture, you can scale effortlessly as you grow. Why settle for outdated fraud and risk management systems when you could be building resilience for future opportunities? See the FraudNet difference for yourself. Request your personalized demo today and discover how we can help you strengthen your business against threats while empowering growth. | Seed / Feb 01, 2016 | ||
| Wade & Wendy offers machine intelligence personalities that aim to make hiring more human. It was launched by Josh Brandoff, Adrian von der Osten, and Drew Austin in June 2015 and is based in New York, United States. | $1.5M / Seed / Oct 28, 2015 | ||
| Mona is the first artificial intelligence based personal shopping assistant that learns customer preferences to give them their style, at their price. Founded by former Amazon.com employees, Mona provides an interactive product search experience where she asks for and analyzes customer feedback and provides better recommendations in real-time. Thisis their first step towards creating a mobile shopping experience that is similar to an in-store dialogue between a customer and assistant. | $120K / Seed / Sep 21, 2015 | ||
| Source3 is the world’s first platform for end-to-end management of intellectual property in user-generated content (UGC). We provide IP recognition, licensing and rights administration services to connect creators, marketplaces and brands and enable monetization of user content across physical and digital products. Our team has built successfullicensing platforms powering digital music, user-generated videos and 3D printing. Source3 offers scalable, turn-key solutions for today’s global licensing challenges. | $4M / Seed / Sep 15, 2015 | ||
| Homer uses technology and operations to make local, final-mile deliveries more efficient. Through the use of mobile tracking, routing, and communication, Homer delivers more orders in fewer miles traveled. With optimization algorithms for routing a controlled fleet of delivery personnel, Homer reduces the cost of delivery and provides a scalablesolution to the local delivery ecosystem. | $2M / Seed / Jul 21, 2015 | ||
| Spoon University is the everyday food resource that makes food make sense. Their site has the simplest recipes, and the best restaurants around campus that haven’t found yet. Spoon University was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in New York. | $2M / Seed / Jul 14, 2015 | ||
| See all 26 investments → | |||
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FAQ
What does Rugged Ventures invest in?
Rugged Ventures invests primarily in Software, Artificial Intelligence and Logistics startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 26 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What round sizes does Rugged Ventures invest in?
Rugged Ventures typically joins rounds of $800k–$3.5M at Seed and $6.4M–$8.8M at Series A. These are whole funding-round sizes, not Rugged Ventures's own check, which is rarely disclosed: the 10th–90th percentile of the confirmed public funding rounds Rugged Ventures took part in.
How do I contact Rugged Ventures?
Public channels for Rugged Ventures 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 Rugged Ventures?
The team at Rugged Ventures includes Dave Lerner (Founder). 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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