Zal Bilimoria has been the sole general partner since 2018 and has no plans to stop. And he credited the decision to his former colleague David Lee, who started Refactor Capital with him in 2016.
He said he wouldn’t have been able to start the Burlingame-based company without Lee, a former Google executive who ran Ron Conway’s early-stage venture fund SV Angel for many years. Together they raised an initial $50 million in funding. When Lee decided to retire in 2018, he wanted Bilimoria to be with him. Refactoring As a solo GP.
Being a solo GP means taking full responsibility for things like fundraising, while also having full authority to make investment decisions on your own. And while that level of freedom may sound great, it also means that VCs have no vested partners to consult and force them to scrutinize investment decisions in ways that haven’t occurred to them. While angel investors are doing this, they are spending their own money. The individual investor is investing on behalf of a limited partner who delegates this person to grow his or her money.
“He convinced me to stay solo, and that was at a time when solo GPs weren’t a thing,” Bilimoria told TechCrunch. “He told me I should be left alone because I love independence and authority and I love spending time with founders. I was very nervous, but as I thought about it more and talked to other people, I realized it would be what I wanted to do and I never looked back. I will be a solo GP for the rest of my career if I can help it.”
Bilimoria is not without its own unique pedigree. Before joining Refactor, Bilimoria spent nearly three years as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he helped successfully raise the company’s $200 million biotech fund. Prior to a16z, Bilimoria spent a decade building technology products at tech giants including Google, Netflix, LinkedIn, and Microsoft. He was also the founder of consumer mobile startup Sniply.
He said that through Refactor, he is investing in companies that are “solving the biggest challenges facing society.” In fact, the term “refactoring” comes from computer science and means making code more efficient.
And being a solo GP didn’t slow down Bilimoria one bit. He went on to raise three additional funds and has now closed his fourth fund with $50 million with capital commitments to invest in the biotech, climate and hardtech startup sectors.
Since launching in 2016, Refactor has invested in more than 100 companies, four of which have become unicorns, including Solugen, which uses synthetic biology to remove hydrocarbons from the chemical industry, and Astranis, which builds microsatellites.
Last week Solugen $214 million loan The Energy Loan Program Office built the next Solugen Bioforge in Minnesota, which makes chemicals from corn sugar rather than petroleum. DOE awarded to a small number of startups It provided a similar loan to Tesla in 2010..
Bilimoria was able to raise new funds within 90 days, he said. 90% of the fund was raised by existing limited partners, including firms such as Knollwood Investment Advisory. The majority of LPs are institutional investors, and the entire LP group is US investors.
“I feel really lucky to have this group of LPs,” he said. “I was chasing an institutional investor for the last four funds and I finally got them into this fund and they became part of my new 10%.”
Bilimoria has closed its third fund, but has already committed some capital to its fourth fund.
The new fund will continue to lead pre-seed and seed investments in startups active in areas including new battery technologies, cancer treatments, IVF advancements and chemicals. The checks are typically $1 million to $2 million in size and will be split among 20 to 25 companies over the next three years, Bilimoria said.
