Ataraxia Partners

I’ve been getting some questions lately about the purpose of Ataraxia.vc and its interplay with our fund families. I’ll address those here.

Ataraxia Partners is a venture capital fund management company at the innovative edge of early-stage investment. Currently, Ataraxia manages three sets of funds: Social Starts, Joyance Partners, and SH²: The Science of Health and Happiness Fund.

We set up Ataraxia in mid-2020 because our funds have expanded and grown more complex over the past couple of years. We now have nine funds and more than 22 entities overall, including SPVs and other kinds of specialized investment activities. Two of those funds are focused on Europe and one is domiciled there. We expect even greater complexity in our fund business in 2022.

The role of a management company like Ataraxia is to simplify and direct the day-to-day operations of the funds in every way except actually making their investments. The investments are made by each fund’s General Partner for the benefit of each fund’s Limited Partners, its investors. But everything else — payroll, taxes, software, tracking, and paying out carried interest — is handled by Ataraxia for all the funds. This means, for instance, team members can get a single paycheck, each month, rather than separate paychecks from each fund.

Ataraxia can also oversee activities that contribute to the funds but aren’t actually investments. This could include research, events, information-sharing partnerships, and many other potential actions.

For all these reasons, we felt this was the time to get ourselves organized.

Right now, Ataraxia oversees these funds:

Social Starts’ 4 fully invested funds have used a unique AI system to uncover the strongest founders in the strongest investment segments. Since 2011, Social Starts has made more than 300 early-stage investments. Its portfolio includes 9 unicorns. Ataraxia is managing these funds through to completion.

Joyance Partners, currently actively investing, is a family of early-stage venture funds focused on startups that deliver delightful moments to individuals via science and technology. Joyance has four active funds in the US and Europe and has made more than 110 investments since 2016. Joyance is backed by a single corporate LP from Japan.

SH² is a new multi-LP fund focused on startups that help people live longer, live better, or both. SH² began investing in 2021.

All Ataraxia funds are data-driven, using an intensive research methodology and proprietary machine learning platform to identify startup signals pointing toward outsize investment return potential. This approach is a key differentiator for us and a major reason we can invest very early in complex areas with confidence.

In addition to fund management, Ataraxia maintains a select set of information partnerships with major corporations.

I hope this makes clearer how we have set up our company to run smoothly now and have the candle power for future growth.

By Managing Partner Mike Edelhart
@MikeEdelhart

Related posts:
Our Second Generation: Growth and Change at Our Funds
What are the Real Superpowers of Startup Success?
Why We’re A Data-Driven VC