01Thesis
Never exit.
The case for building and backing companies that stay in Ventura County, from Luke Erickson's book Never Exit.
02What it means
Most venture capital is built around the exit. A company is funded so that it can be sold or taken public, and the sale is the point. The people who built it, and the place they built it in, are incidental to the return.
Never exit turns that around. The fund backs companies whose value compounds where they are: headquarters, hiring and ownership that stay in Ventura County. A company can still be sold. What the fund measures, and what it reports every quarter, is whether the jobs stay here.
Luke Erickson's working definition.
03The case
Jobs are the return
A fund can measure itself by the people its companies employ. In Ventura County that number is the point, and the fund publishes it every quarter.
Working manuscript
Stay and compound
A company that keeps its headquarters and its hiring in the county compounds value for the place that backed it. Leaving resets that to zero.
Working manuscript
Capital that stays
Local capital that reinvests in local companies does not need an exit to pay off. It needs the companies to keep building here.
Working manuscript
04The headcount test
A company qualifies if, at the time of investment, it meets one of these:
1
It is headquartered in Ventura County.
2
It has five or more people working in the county.
3
It commits to hiring in the county within 24 months, written into the investment terms.
Thresholds are interim and will be set in the fund's investment policy before it invests.
05What we back
- Stage
- pre-seed and seed
- Sectors
- early-stage B2B SaaS, biotech and defense
06Why now
Ventura County sits between two of the largest technology and defense labor markets in the country, and for decades its graduates and its strongest companies have left for them. The county has universities, a naval base, biotech campuses and the coast, and it has not had an early-stage fund of its own.
That is changing. Startup Ventura is building the county's first accelerator cohort, the county's cities are looking for ways to keep the companies they already have, and remote work has made a headquarters in Ventura County a choice a founder can make. Sourced figures on the county's companies, talent and capital will be published here as they are confirmed.
07The book
Never Exit: A Venture Thesis for Ventura County, by Luke Erickson, makes the case for building and backing companies that stay in the county.