Masha Bucher, Founder & General Partner at Day One Ventures
Masha Bucher, a 3x entrepreneur, investor, and art collector, founded Day One Ventures in 2018 when there were only two female general partners out of 157 new funds started in the US.
Before Day One, Masha founded a PR studio that achieved 8-figure revenue, with a third of the companies she worked with becoming unicorns. Her notable clients included PandoDoc, Gett, HotelTonight, Houzz, WeWork, and many more. Upon exiting her PR studio, Masha became an angel investor, achieving remarkable results: 11x DPI (distribution to paid-in capital), 15x MOIC (multiple on invested capital), and 113% net IRR (internal rate of return).
At just 23, Masha was VP of Communications at Acronis—a Goldman and Blackrock-backed global data protection company with 750K enterprise customers worldwide—where she managed PR activities across 18 countries. Previously, she served as Head of Communications at VC firm Runa Capital.
Recently, Masha Bucher raised a $150M Fund III, one of the two largest funds raised by a female solo GP in the past 12 months. The fund is backed by US and European institutional investors, 10 unicorn founders, 14 of Day One Ventures’ portfolio founders, several family offices, and heads of private equity firms and larger funds from nearly 20 countries. Masha said the hardest thing about closing this fund was finding female LPs, though the efforts were fruitful. “We are proud to have secured funding from nine female LPs for Fund III, a significant increase from zero in Fund II,” she said.
Day One Ventures is an early-stage VC firm that bridges the gap between technology and society through art, storytelling, and culture. They back early-stage founders with a customer-obsession DNA, accelerating the mass adoption of technologies. They focus on AI, climate, enterprise software, fintech / crypto, and deep tech. For fund III, Day One is introducing a new category called “The Future of Human” focus category as one of the key investment targets, aiming to redefine humans’ future as species through each bet they make.
Founders they back include Sam Altman (WorldCoin, formerly Y Combinator, currently OpenAI), Job van der Voort (Remote.com, $3B valuation), Suhail Doshi (PlaygroundAI, formerly Mixpanel), Marc Bell (Terran Orbital), Richard Socher (you.com, formerly Chief Scientist at Salesforce), Nolan Church (FairComp, formerly Chief People Officer at Carta), and Payal Kadakia (Legacy, formerly ClassPass). Frequent co-investors include Accel, A16Z, Sequoia, Founders Fund, YC, Index, and Khosla.
Day One Ventures believes technology entrepreneurs will solve humanity's most pressing issues and unlock significant opportunities. From profound wealth disparities to the urgent threat of climate change to the growing sense of social isolation and mental health crisis. As they unleash important technologies, society's pushback remains a critical hurdle.
According to a new Pew Research Center survey, today, 90% of Americans are more concerned than excited about the role of AI in daily life. 75% aren’t confident in crypto’s safety and reliability. This resistance, born from misunderstandings and polarization, highlights the urgent need to close this divide. The fund’s recent collaboration with OpenAI for the first-ever physical DALL-E art show exemplifies how artists enrich the understanding of AI. “From day one, we’ve believed in the transformative power of storytelling, art, and culture to bridge this gap,” Masha adds.
Numbers Speak for Themselves
“If you raise the third fund, numbers should say something”, says Masha Bucher. And they do. Masha’s an early investor in eight unicorns, and Day One Ventures has 22 exits, including one IPO. Fund I reached 1x DPI within three years. Masha invested in Truebill early, helping it grow to over $100M revenue before its acquisition by Rocket at ~$1.3B valuation, returning the fund in three years.
The current fund’s net IRR is 48%, six times higher than the median net IRR for 2020 <$250M funds in North America, according to Pitchbook. Portfolio companies are valued at $115B+ in aggregate with $2B+ raised. Day One Ventures has $450M assets under management. 80% of Fund II portfolio companies were introduced by their founders.
A Big Misperception
“I have fully raised this fund with a very female energy and approach”, Masha explains. “The problem is that women think they need to act like men to become successful. The reality is I want to be myself.” She emphasizes the power of activating her superpowers as a woman, which leads to greater success.
“A 30-year-old woman is not the typical image of a successful VC”, Masha notes, highlighting the misperception. Women’s strong intuition often aids in making successful investment decisions. Bucher is passionate about supporting women, intentionally putting effort into bringing female LPs on board to help female founders and investors grow.
“We Haven’t Done It Alone”
The power of community in fundraising is often underestimated but highly impactful. “There is a lot of support from our community”, Masha explains. “14 of our portfolio founders invested in us.” This indicates that Day One Ventures is meeting founders’ needs by picking the right founders and supporting their growth. When your community supports you and you activate all community forces, magic happens. But it’s all the result of hard work.
“We Look for Unusual People”
“63% of our founders are female or people of color, and they all came organically”, Masha says. “The goal is to find the biggest world-changing ideas possible”. Day One Ventures’ portfolio features founders with profound tech experience and notable CVs. Masha explains, “It has to be a 10 out of 10 idea. We will never back a company with a 9 out of 10 idea”. They also back young, mission-driven founders with unconventional experience but extreme dedication. With a rich pipeline, they look at 1,000 companies per month and back 1-2 every two months.
A New Focus: “Future of Human”
Fund III will focus on the 'Future of Human,' aiming to redefine humanity's essence through each investment. Technological advancements unlock unprecedented possibilities for human progress, from whole genome sequencing in embryos to brain-computer interface technology and new reproductive paradigms.
First Fund III investments include Astroforge (making space resources accessible on Earth by mining asteroids to extract valuable minerals at a lower cost and with a smaller carbon footprint than current terrestrial mining methods), Rainmaker (a cloud seeding startup using fast-response drones, radar/LiDAR, and software to enhance cloud precipitation and address the country’s water shortage problem), Cradle (introducing a new approach to cryopreservation and the revival of bodies and brains), Layer N (the first hyper-performant and horizontally scalable blockchain network designed to enable trustless computing at internet scale), and Affiniti (empowering SMBs with industry-specific credit cards featuring tailored features, rewards, and support created with industry experts and professional groups).
