CoFound Research
Investment Thesis
CoFound Partners is a New York-based early-stage venture firm founded in 2019 by Jordan Wan, an MIT-trained software engineer turned go-to-market expert. The firm's guiding belief is that early-stage founders face mounting pressure to show revenue legibility before Series A, yet most seed-stage cap tables lack any operating expertise in go-to-market (GTM). CoFound was built to fill that gap: a deeply immersive venture firm that works hands-on with founders to iterate on early-stage GTM, find product-market fit, and build a repeatable sales motion. The firm explicitly seeks "contrarians who envision futures that feel impossible today" and positions itself as a confidant as much as a capital source, investing as early as the "ambition stage" — the moment a founder makes the irrational decision to build.
Sector Focus
CoFound is a generalist early-stage investor with a recurring pull toward technical, sales-intensive businesses. Portfolio and public sourcing show concentration in B2B SaaS and enterprise software, digital health and healthtech, fintech and payments infrastructure, developer tools and technical GTM/QA tooling, and a growing deep-tech thread (analog chip design, robotics, materials science) driven by newer investor Libby Fidel. The firm also recently led an inception round in AI-native insurance brokerage Coverwatch, marking a new specialty-insurance thread.
Stage Focus
CoFound invests at Pre-Seed and Seed, often as the first institutional check, and is comfortable investing pre-product at the "ambition stage." It occasionally follows into Series A for existing portfolio companies.
Check Size
Typical checks run $500K–$1.5M, sized to lead or co-lead the round rather than fill it out.
Lead Tendency
CoFound leads or co-leads the large majority of its investments — confirmed both by third-party trackers and by its own language ("leading the $4.5M inception round" in Coverwatch).
Recent Activity
CoFound launched CoFound II, a $30M (targeting $40–60M) inception fund, in late December 2025 — an oversubscribed raise anchored by institutional LPs that took roughly six months from first to final close. In 2026 the firm added Libby Fidel, previously of deep-tech venture studio Roadrunner, to focus on the intersection of deep tech and AI. Fund II's most recent disclosed investment is the $4.5M inception round for Coverwatch, an AI-native specialty (E&S) insurance brokerage, co-invested alongside Restive Ventures, Manresa Ventures, Kfund, Liquid 2 Ventures, Movi Collective, and Prompt Capital.
Portfolio Highlights
Since 2019, Jordan Wan has backed roughly 30 companies. Standouts by capital raised include Grow Therapy ($313M+ raised), Pearl Health ($203M+), Garner Health ($130M+), Fora Travel ($113M+), QA Wolf ($56M+), ChartHop ($54M+), Almanac ($43M+), Arrakis ($38M+), and Reclaim.ai ($34M+). Other notable names include Knock, LimaCharlie, Thatch, SiteRx, Recapped, Tilled, CoScreen, Datapane, Butter, Bikky, and SilviaTerra. No public exits or acquisitions have been identified to date.
Team
- Jordan Wan, General Partner (Founder) — MIT-trained software engineer; began his career at Bridgewater Associates, ZocDoc, Oscar Health, and PayPerks; founded Formative, a GTM-focused executive search firm that helped 1,000+ startups scale from seed to IPO over a decade, before launching CoFound to embed that GTM operating expertise directly into early-stage cap tables. Frequent guest speaker at venture firms and incubators on pricing, design partners, and enterprise sales.
- Libby Fidel, Investor — Focuses on the intersection of deep tech and AI. Previously at Roadrunner, a deep-tech venture studio/fund spanning advanced manufacturing, compute, energy, and quantum; before that, CBRE healthcare advisory (feasibility studies, market analysis, due diligence) and Cloudmed Solutions (healthcare claims pricing). B.S. in Biology (minor in Evolutionary Medicine), UCLA, Cum Laude with College and Departmental Honors. Based in San Francisco.
Decision Process
CoFound operates as a solo-GP-led fund: Jordan Wan is the sole General Partner and final decision-maker, with Libby Fidel supporting sourcing and diligence on deep-tech/AI deals.
Founder Preferences
CoFound backs "problem-obsessed polymaths" with technical depth and a market thesis that "often distills to one deceptively simple insight." Jordan Wan has publicly emphasized valuing founders' core beliefs and long-term orientation over specific product details, prioritizing founders who actively try to invalidate their own thesis rather than confirm it, and treating generic AI-generated cold outreach as a negative signal of a founder's thoughtfulness. He also advises founders to stay in stealth as long as possible, viewing early public fundraising announcements as a strategic mistake.
Geographic Focus
Primarily United States-based, with team presence in San Francisco, New York City, and Denver; the majority of disclosed portfolio companies are US-headquartered.