LiveOak Venture Partners Research
Investment Thesis
LiveOak Venture Partners is an Austin-based early-stage venture capital firm that is exclusively and explicitly focused on Texas. Founded in December 2012 by Krishna Srinivasan and Venu Shamapant — both former General Partners at Austin Ventures who had already been investing in Texas founders since the late 1990s — the firm's founding conviction was that Texas had all the ingredients (talent, universities, capital formation, cost of living) to build a durable, self-sustaining venture ecosystem, and that a fund maniacally focused on that thesis could be the catalyst. The firm brands itself as "all-in on Texas" and states plainly on its site: "Founder/CEO Based in Texas" is a hard geographic requirement, not a preference. LiveOak targets tech and tech-enabled services companies and positions itself as a full-lifecycle partner: it wants to be the first institutional check and continue engaging actively (board seats, follow-on capital, operational help) all the way to exit.
Stage Focus
LiveOak's stated stage focus is Seed and Series A, with opportunistic activity at Pre-Seed and Growth. In practice the portfolio skews heavily toward Seed: the large majority of named investments across partner bios are first partnered at Seed, with a meaningful cohort of Series A follow-ons and a small number of Series B/Growth checks into existing portfolio companies (e.g., a 2026 growth round into MedScout).
Check Size
The firm publishes an initial check size range of $500K–$10M. Actual amounts vary widely by stage: recent Seed rounds it has led are in the $7M–$7.3M range (Artis, Receipts Depositary Corporation), consistent with the firm typically writing a meaningful lead check rather than a small participation ticket at Seed.
Lead Tendency
LiveOak states its preferred role explicitly as "Lead/Co-Lead," and its most recent disclosed activity backs this up — it led both the Artis and Receipts Depositary Corporation Seed rounds announced in June 2026. It does also participate in syndicates alongside other lead investors (e.g., participating rather than leading in UPTIQ's 2025 round and MedScout's 2026 growth round), so it is best described as leads-with-selective-participation rather than pure-follow.
Recent Activity
LiveOak has been actively deploying through at least mid-2026:
- June 2026: Led a $7.3M Seed round in Artis, an Austin-based AI-driven branding/marketing platform for residential architects, designers, and builders.
- June 2026: Led a $7M Seed round in Receipts Depositary Corporation (RDC), a Houston fintech modernizing depositary receipts for digital and alternative assets.
- March 2026: Participated (as an existing investor) in a $10M growth round for MedScout, a healthcare sales-intelligence platform, alongside lead Fulcrum Equity Partners and Stage 2 Capital.
- October 2025: Participated in a $12M round for Uptiq.ai, an AI-agent infrastructure platform for financial services, led by Silverton Partners.
The firm's last publicly reported fund close is Fund III at $210M (announced November 2021), aimed at doubling down on Texas's four largest tech hubs — Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Public sources (LinkedIn) describe the firm as managing "nearly $500M" in total assets, implying meaningful deployment across Funds I–III plus follow-on reserves. No newer fund announcement was found as of this research.
Portfolio Highlights
LiveOak's portfolio page lists 40+ active and exited companies. Notable outcomes:
- CS Disco (DISCO) — IPO on NYSE (LAW); Krishna Srinivasan served as non-executive Chairman at the time of IPO.
- data.world — acquired by ServiceNow.
- Mavenir Systems — IPO (NYSE: MVNR), later acquired by Mitel.
- 1Password's acquisition of Passage — LiveOak-backed biometric-auth startup Passage was acquired by 1Password.
- StackEngine — acquired by Oracle.
- Infocyte — acquired by Datto.
- Iris Plans — acquired by Aledade.
- Opcity — acquired by Realtor.com/News Corp.
- TrustRadius, Digital Pharmacist, Hive9, Narrative Dx — additional exits (acquired by HG Insights, K1 Investment Management, BrandMaker, and Press Ganey respectively).
Currently active names span fintech (Method, Nada, Setpoint, RDC), security (Chainguard, Keep Aware, Passage, Intrigue), healthcare (MedScout, Take Command Health), proptech (Homeward, FloorFound, ClosingLock), and enterprise/martech (LitLingo, Perigon, TalentGuard, LoudCrowd, ConverseNow).
Team
- Venu Shamapant, Founding Partner — Co-founder; investing in Texas since 1999; previously General Partner at Austin Ventures, McKinsey, and Mentor Graphics; MBA Harvard, MS UT Austin.
- Krishna Srinivasan, Founding Partner — Co-founder; investing in Texas since 2000; previously Partner at Austin Ventures and Motorola; serves/served on boards of DISCO (non-exec Chairman at IPO), Homeward, Eventus, Flueid, Rollick, SchooLinks; MBA Wharton (Palmer Scholar).
- Creighton Hicks, Partner — Focused heavily on security/dev-tools deals (Chainguard, DryRun Security, Spektion, Passage, Keep Aware, Fastn); previously Partner at Dell Technologies Capital, and earlier at Kleiner Perkins and VMware; MBA Harvard.
- Mike Marcantonio, Partner — Focused on fintech/healthcare/proptech (Method, Nada, ClosingLock, FloorFound, MedScout, Greenlite); previously Principal at Blue Heron Capital, American Capital, Harris Williams, PwC; MBA Duke Fuqua.
- Paola Retes, Vice President — Joined post-Stanford GSB; previously early employee at Ironspring Ventures; CFA charterholder.
- Kathryn Moore, Senior Associate — Joined post-UT McCombs MBA; previously scaled sales at Darktrace (Series C through IPO) and was an early Toptal employee.
- MaryMcCall Leland — Director of Marketing and Community.
- Lauranne Jarrett — Finance.
- Wafae Owen — Office Manager.
- Ben Scott — Partner Emeritus.
Decision Process
LiveOak is a small partnership (two founding partners plus two additional partners actively sourcing and leading deals), consistent with a "partnership" decision process rather than a solo-GP or large-committee structure. Deal leads (Creighton on security, Mike on fintech/healthcare/proptech) publish individual "why we invested" rationale posts on LinkedIn, suggesting partners have real autonomy to originate and champion deals within the partnership.
Founder Preferences
LiveOak's public materials ("Entrepreneur's Bill of Rights," "true partners," "transparent & empathetic") emphasize a hands-on, company-building relationship with founders rather than a passive-capital posture. The one hard, explicit founder filter is geography: the founder/CEO must be based in Texas. Beyond that, the firm has backed both first-time and repeat/serial founders (e.g., repeat founder Jonathan Cran across Infocyte and Intrigue) across enterprise software, fintech, security, healthcare, and proptech.
Geographic Focus
Exclusively Texas-based founders, with explicit emphasis on the state's four largest tech hubs: Austin (where LiveOak itself is headquartered, at 805 Las Cimas Pkwy, Suite 125, Austin, TX 78746), Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.