Standard Capital
San Francisco Β· Series A Β· 3 people tracked
Investment thesis
Standard Capital serves top-tier founders by streamlining the Series A process and maintaining founder control. The firm requires only 10% equity ownership, provides standardized pre-disclosed terms, avoids taking board seats, and instead offers structured support through quarterly in-person founder cohorts and office hours. The approach prioritizes founders retaining equity and valuation autonomy while connecting them with peer networks of similarly-scaled founders, rejecting traditional VC dynamics in favor of founder-friendly terms and peer-based mentorship.
Source: firm website, verified Jul 19, 2026.
Team Β· 3 people
from the firm's websiteEarly infrastructure and security engineer at Stripe who brings technical expertise to the investment partnership.
Dalton Caldwell spent more than a decade at Y Combinator as a managing director and group partner, running admissions and advising thousands of founders across 25 batches. A founder himself (imeem, App.net), he stepped back to emeritus status in 2025 to launch Standard Capital, an AI-native Series A firm, with Gmail creator Paul Buchheit and Bryan Berg. His YC office-hours videos on pivots and 'tarpit ideas' have become standard viewing for early-stage founders.
Paul Buchheit created Gmail as Google employee number 23 and coined the company's 'Don't be evil' motto before becoming an angel investor in over 200 startups and a longtime Y Combinator partner. In 2025 he left YC to co-found Standard Capital with Dalton Caldwell, a Series A firm that closed a $425 million debut fund and invests on standardized, founder-friendly terms.
What they invest in
from 3 of 4 portfolio companiesEnterprise Software Γ3Developer Tools Γ2AI & Machine Learning Γ1Data & Infrastructure Γ1SaaS Γ1
HQs:United StatesΓ2United KingdomΓ1
Investments Β· 4 tracked
founders shown can be your intro pathArtie is a real-time data streaming platform that enables teams to replicate data from databases to data warehouses with sub-minute latency and enterprise-grade reliability, eliminating the need for complex infrastructure like Kafka or custom consumer code.
Data & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSan Francisco, US
A real-time data streaming platform that enables companies to move data across systems in real-time for AI applications.
Trigger.dev is an open source platform for building and running AI agents and workflows using TypeScript, with built-in support for long-running tasks, automatic retries, job queues, monitoring, and auto-scaling infrastructure.
Developer ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSaaSLondon, GB
Matt Aitken(Founder)inEric Allam(Founder)inDan Patel(Founder)inJames Ritchie(Founder)in
Frequently asked questions
- What stage does Standard Capital invest at?
- Standard Capital invests at the Series A stage.
- What sectors does Standard Capital focus on?
- Standard Capital focuses on Sector Agnostic.
- Where is Standard Capital located?
- Standard Capital is headquartered in San Francisco, US.
- Does Standard Capital lead rounds?
- Yes, Standard Capital leads investment rounds.
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