Cocoa Ventures Research
Investment Thesis
Cocoa Ventures describes itself as "the founders' in-house VC" — a firm built by former institutional VCs who now write angel-sized checks with the discipline and network of a fund. Founder Carmen Alfonso Rico previously worked as a partner at Blossom Capital and Samaipata and was an early investor in Hopin, giving the firm credibility with founders navigating institutional fundraising. The core pitch to founders is "we work for you, not the other way around" — Cocoa positions itself as flexible, fast, and founder-aligned, contrasting itself with slower institutional process. The firm backs what it calls "Killers with a Heart": relentless, technically excellent founders building things that are inevitable to them, paired with genuine empathy and EQ.
Sector Focus
Cocoa is a generalist early-stage investor. Its published portfolio taxonomy spans AI, Data, Hard Tech, Energy, Creators, Marketplaces, Consumer, Fintech, Industry 4.0, Professional Services, Healthtech, Science, Space Tech, and Defense. In practice the portfolio skews toward deep/hard tech and AI infrastructure (chips, data platforms, robotics, space, nuclear) alongside fintech and vertical SaaS.
Stage Focus
Cocoa invests exclusively at pre-seed and seed. Multiple third-party fund trackers confirm the firm never leads rounds, instead joining as a fast-moving, founder-friendly angel check alongside a lead investor.
Check Size
Reported check sizes range from roughly $150K to $500K, with the firm's own site citing "$500k angel checks" as the anchor ticket size. Cocoa operates as a $17M fund (per Dealroom and WaveUp fund profiles), consistent with a high-velocity, small-check strategy across a large number of portfolio companies.
Lead Tendency
Cocoa never leads. Across every financing announcement identified in this research (Condukt, Calibre, NeoCognition), Cocoa is listed as a participating investor alongside an institutional lead (Lightspeed Venture Partners, MMC Ventures, Amino Collective, Daybreak Ventures).
Recent Activity
Cocoa has remained active into 2026:
- November 2025: Participated in Condukt's $10M seed round (compliance/KYB platform for financial services), led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and MMC Ventures.
- April 2026: Joined Calibre's €2.8M ($3.3M) pre-seed round (London HealthTech, "AI teammates"), led by Amino Collective and Daybreak Ventures.
- April 2026: Participated in NeoCognition's $40M seed round (Palo Alto AI agent lab building self-learning, domain-expert agents).
This cadence indicates the fund is actively deploying capital.
Portfolio Highlights
The public portfolio ("Killers with a Heart") lists 24+ companies spanning hard tech and AI infrastructure, including Fuse (energy), Terraform Industries (synthetic fuels), Speckle (open-source 3D data infrastructure), Gladia (voice AI), Kurrent (event-native data platform, formerly EventStoreDB), Fractile (AI inference chips), Tilebox (satellite/geospatial data), Foresight Data Machines, and Cyclana (biotech). More recent, not-yet-listed additions include Condukt and NeoCognition.
Team
- Carmen Alfonso Rico — Founder & General Partner. Former partner at Blossom Capital and Samaipata; early investor in Hopin. Also active operationally at portfolio company Fractile.
- Samuel Fuentes — Venture Partner. Madrid-based; also a founder coach for scale-ups; prior 15 years as a tech entrepreneur.
- Lucie Guerra — Runs day-to-day operations of the fund.
- Alejandro Prieto Sanchez — Team member.
Decision Process
Given the firm's small, tight team and founder-led structure, Cocoa appears to run a solo-GP-style decision process centered on Carmen Alfonso Rico, with venture partner input from Samuel Fuentes.
Founder Preferences
Cocoa explicitly targets "brilliant beasts building crazy weird stuff that's hard to make, because it's inevitable to them" — technically ambitious, relentless founders — while explicitly valuing founders with a "full heart" (EQ, empathy, self-awareness), not just raw drive.
Geographic Focus
UK/Europe-headquartered (London), with the bulk of the visible portfolio based in Europe (UK, Spain, France). Recent participation in NeoCognition (Palo Alto, US) shows some willingness to invest in US-based deals as well.
Regulatory Note
Cocoa Advisor LLP is an Appointed Representative of The Fund Incubator Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 208716).