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:
- 16
- 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–$4M
- Series A
- $8M–$8.8M
Investment Focus
Industry
- E-Commerce 3 (19%)
- Artificial Intelligence 3 (19%)
- Content 2 (13%)
- Internet 2 (13%)
- Software 2 (13%)
Stage
- Seed 13 (81%)
- Series A 3 (19%)
Country
- United States 14 (88%)
- Canada 1 (6%)
Team
| Name | Title | Investments | Links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Dave Lerner
Founder
|
Founder | Total investments: 12 | 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 | ||
| 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 | ||
| Astro specializes in developing an automated home system of devices. It requires no installation, no new infrastructure, and no new wireless networks making it the simplest platform on the market. | $3M / Seed / Jun 24, 2015 | ||
| Firstleaf is America's most personalized wine company that uses millions of data points to produce and curate each shipment of award-winning wine from around the world so that members can explore new bottles and discover new favorites tailored to their tastes. The company, which was founded by Philip James, a wine industry veteran andOxford-educated chemist, offers a subscription service that unites the art and science of wine.Firstleaf brings together proprietary technology, expert winemakers and a WSET-certified concierge team, to build a unique Wine Profile for each member and curate each shipment individually. With no preset packs or boxes, Firstleaf has over 82 million combinations of wines possible and 98% of its monthly boxes are unique. Its team of winemakers sample over 10,000 wines each year across 5 continents and 12 countries to select only the finest bottles. With more than 700,000 12-bottle cases sold last year, Firstleaf is the #1 trusted wine brand in consumer rankings. Nearly one million people have tried Firstleaf since the brand's inception.Its wines have won over 2,800 awards, including over 300 90+ point scores, and 92% of its wines are award-winning. This year, Firstleaf was named one of Fast Company's World's Most Innovative Companies in the data science category and recognized as one of Wine Business Monthly's 50 Largest Wineries. This came on the heels of being named Wine Company of the Year in Winemaker Challenge International's 2021 wine competition, one of the only U.S. wine competitions judged exclusively by professional winemakers. | Seed / Jan 01, 2015 | ||
| Knock is an online home selling platform that makes buying or selling a home simple and certain. Launched by founding team members from Trulia.com, the company uses data science to price homes accurately, technology to sell homes quickly and a dedicated team of professionals to guide homeowners through the selling process. | Seed / Jan 01, 2015 | ||
| See all 16 investments → | |||
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FAQ
What does Rugged Ventures invest in?
Rugged Ventures invests primarily in E-Commerce, Artificial Intelligence and Content startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 16 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 Rugged Ventures's check size?
Rugged Ventures typically joins rounds of $800k–$4M at Seed and $8M–$8.8M at Series A. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Rugged Ventures participates 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 Sep 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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