Outdated Drivers Are Slowing You Down
One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchWindows Errors? Fix Them Before They Spread
Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallOn January 24, 2018, Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake and Jaiku co-founder Jyri Engeström announced Yes VC, a San Francisco-based venture firm targeting $50 million in commitments for pre-seed and seed investments. The planned checks were approximately $250,000 to $1 million, and the firm was designed to remain a small, focused partnership rather than become a high-volume investment platform.
The announcement formalized investing the two founders had already been doing personally and through what Fake called “fund zero.” It was not, however, proof that a $50 million fund had already closed.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
What Yes VC announced in January 2018
According to TechCrunch’s January 24, 2018 report, Fake and Engeström were moving from angel investing into a formal institutional fund called Yes VC.
The launch-era plan had several defining features:
- Target fund size: $50 million in capital commitments.
- Investment stage: Pre-seed and seed.
- Expected check size: Approximately $250,000 to $1 million.
- Structure: A two-person, deliberately focused investment partnership.
- Geography: A San Francisco base, with European opportunities supported by Engeström’s network.
Fake said the fund was expected to close the following month. The source reported a target, not a verified final close, so it is more accurate to say Yes VC was targeting $50 million than to describe it as a completed $50 million fund.
#1 Best Overall
The founders behind Yes VC
Caterina Fake
Fake co-founded Flickr, which was later sold to Yahoo, and Hunch, which was later sold to eBay. She also served as Etsy’s board chair and was an early investor in the company.
Her investing history included companies such as Kickstarter, Etsy, Cloudera, Blue Bottle Coffee, Hipcamp and Lovevery. Before Yes VC, she was also a founder-partner at Founder Collective. Her background gave the new firm both operating experience and a record of identifying young companies before they were established businesses.
The Yes VC team page provides the firm’s current public biographies, while the 2018 launch report explains how that experience shaped the original fund.
Jyri Engeström
Engeström co-founded Jaiku, which was acquired by Google, and Ditto, which was acquired by Groupon. He later worked on the investing team at True Ventures and invested early in companies including Unity, Oura and ICEYE.
His Finnish background and European relationships were important to Yes VC’s geographic reach. The firm was based in San Francisco, but Engeström was expected to help identify opportunities beyond the traditional Silicon Valley network.
From angel checks to “fund zero”
Yes VC was new as an institution, but Fake and Engeström were not new investors. Fake said they had already made roughly 30 to 40 investments through what she called “fund zero.” These were earlier investments made before the formal Yes VC structure.
The founders also planned to roll three or four recent investments into Yes VC, including Spell and Orchid. That wording matters: the launch report described intended transfers, not a confirmed final list of companies held by the fund.
The announcement also mentioned investments associated with the founders’ broader investing histories, including Kickstarter, Etsy, Typekit, 1000memories, DailyBooth, Wavii, Superfeedr and Maya’s Mom. Those companies should not all be treated as Yes VC portfolio companies from day one. The launch interview mixed personal angel investments, investments made through earlier affiliations, fund-zero activity and planned Yes VC investments.
Why launch a fund in 2018?
Fake’s explanation for the timing was broader than a single technology category. She pointed to dissatisfaction with centralized internet platforms and “walled gardens,” along with renewed interest in open culture, distributed systems and new forms of online participation.
Blockchain and the emerging idea of “web 3.0” were part of that discussion. So were transportation and other industries undergoing structural change. The common thread was an interest in companies that could build communities, movements and alternative ways for people to participate.
That does not make Yes VC a pure blockchain fund. Blockchain was prominent in the launch-era discussion, but the firm’s later public portfolio became considerably broader.
What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
How Yes VC planned to invest
Very early-stage companies
Yes VC focused on pre-seed and seed companies, where products may still be changing and conventional financial metrics may be limited. The planned $250,000-to-$1-million checks were consistent with initial rounds in which founders often need capital to validate a product, recruit an early team or find evidence of demand.
Rank #3
Fake also said the partnership was on track for roughly 30 investments and did not want to pursue substantially greater volume. The choice was intentional: a small portfolio could allow the founders to spend more time on individual companies, while limiting the number of investments the two-person team could support.
Judgment over a rigid formula
The founders described an evaluation process centered on:
- Founder quality and founder-market fit.
- Intuition and intangible qualities.
- The potential of the product, service or marketplace.
- The possibility that the company might change direction after investment.
This was a philosophy, not a published scoring system. Yes VC did not present its process as algorithmic or standardized. The approach reflected the realities of early-stage investing, where the original pitch may evolve substantially before a company finds its durable market.
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →The movement and community thesis
Engeström later described a related preference for startups connected to larger social movements. In a Yes VC interview, he discussed companies capable of growing a small community into a global movement.
That idea connects the partners’ operating histories with their investment thesis. Flickr, Hunch, Jaiku and other social or community-oriented products gave them experience with networks, participation and user behavior. The thesis was not simply that a company should have a large audience; it was that a product could help organize people around a new habit, identity or form of collaboration.
Engeström also described a preference for smaller early-stage investments in companies that could grow organically without requiring enormous amounts of capital. That creates an important distinction between a promising early product and a capital-intensive business whose path to scale depends on repeated, very large funding rounds.
Rank #4
Who backed the planned fund?
TechCrunch identified three named sources of limited-partner backing:
The Tool Desk
Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →- Ilkka Paananen, founder of Supercell.
- Chad Dickerson, former CEO of Etsy.
- The family office of Risto Siilasmaa, identified at the time as Nokia’s chairman.
These names came from the launch reporting and should not be treated as a complete LP roster. The article did not disclose the amount committed by each investor, and the public announcement did not establish that every possible backer had been identified.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What Yes VC became
The firm’s current public materials describe Yes VC as an investor in category-defining companies at the pre-seed and seed stages. The homepage and portfolio page emphasize companies that build communities and movements.
The current portfolio is much broader than the blockchain-and-web-3 themes that featured in the 2018 announcement. It includes companies across areas such as:
- Artificial intelligence.
- Climate, energy and carbon removal.
- Aviation and space.
- Consumer products and brands.
- Healthcare and fintech.
- Digital infrastructure.
- Decentralized technology.
Examples listed in the firm’s public portfolio include Adept, Boom Supersonic, Lovevery, Steady Energy, Tau, Heirloom, Elroy Air, Hubble Network, Hipcamp, Orchid and Public Goods. Portfolio categories and company status can change, so these should be understood as a time-sensitive snapshot of the firm’s public website rather than a fixed historical list.
Yes VC’s portfolio page says the firm invests in an average of 10 companies per year. That pace is consistent with the original emphasis on selectivity, although it should not be confused with the launch-era estimate of roughly 30 investments or used to infer a precise portfolio total.
Best Value
Why the two-person model mattered
A small partnership offered potential advantages for founders. Fake and Engeström could make decisions without the layers of a large investment committee, draw on direct experience building companies and provide pattern recognition in consumer, community and network-driven businesses.
The trade-off was capacity. A two-person firm has less bandwidth for diligence, recruiting, portfolio support and follow-on management than a large multi-stage platform. Reliance on intuition can also introduce personal-network bias or cause investors to overvalue familiar founder and product patterns.
The check range had a similar trade-off. It suited pre-seed and seed companies, but companies in hardware, biotechnology, infrastructure or other capital-intensive sectors could need substantially more funding than an initial $250,000-to-$1-million investment.
Recommended Free Tools
What the 2018 announcement does—and does not—prove
The announcement establishes that Fake and Engeström were formalizing their earlier investing activity through a planned early-stage fund. It does not, by itself, establish:
- That the fund ultimately closed at exactly $50 million.
- The final closing date.
- The complete LP roster.
- The amount invested in any individual company.
- That every investment mentioned in the interview became a Yes VC portfolio company.
Those distinctions are important because venture-fund announcements often combine a target, expected plans and historical accomplishments. A target is not the same as a close, and a founder’s prior angel portfolio is not automatically the portfolio of a newly formed institutional fund.
Bottom line
Yes VC represented the institutionalization of Caterina Fake and Jyri Engeström’s early-stage investing, not the beginning of their investing careers. The launch plan paired a $50 million target with $250,000-to-$1-million pre-seed and seed checks, a deliberately small partnership and a thesis centered on strong founders, communities, movements and structural change.
Its later public portfolio suggests a broader strategy than the 2018 blockchain and web-3 conversation alone: Yes VC has presented itself as a category-defining, pre-seed and seed investor across technology, climate, energy, space, consumer and other sectors.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
