Cinder Grove began in 2019 as a single memo, written on a long flight by our founding partner Elena Marsh after a decade of building consumer companies. The memo argued for a firm that valued judgment over volume — a place built around six investors, not sixty.
Seven LPs read the first draft. They wired the first checks within a month. We've been building quietly ever since: forty companies across two funds, four sectors, and one very long table in a converted warehouse in Brooklyn.
We are not a platform. We are not a brand. We are a small group of people who like founders, like writing, and like the slow compounding work of building real companies.
We'd rather be the firm asking the better question than the firm with the louder answer.
We do fewer deals, write fewer memos, and read every page twice.
Honest feedback, said kindly, given early. The hardest gift to give a founder, and the most valuable.
Companies are built in decades. Hype is built in days. We pick the longer clock.
We lead or co-lead. If we're in, we're meaningfully in.
Half of every fund is held for follow-on. We back our winners.
We focus on building. The rest takes care of itself.
Elena drafts a memo titled 'A smaller, slower kind of fund.'
Closed quietly with seven LPs and a one-page deck.
Hosted our first Grove Gathering in upstate New York.
Doubled down on AI infrastructure and climate software.
Forty portfolio companies. Still six people on the team.
In twenty years, we want to look back at this fund and say: we backed the people who made things better, slower, on purpose.