The collapse of two banks — Bear Stearns in March 2008 and Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023 — marks the ceremonial beginning and end of the most recent cycle in startup history. If that 15-year era was defined by increasingly standardized and tracked methods of building startups, this one is being defined by the opposite: founders who are intentional in their pursuit of specific goals with high stakes. Today we are announcing Terrain, an early-stage investment firm purpose-built to back these founders. Our first investment is in Base Power which this week announced $68m in funding. We’ve made others in areas such as developer platforms, longevity, crypto, and AI infrastructure. Prior to Terrain, we invested in early-stage startups, built software products at scale, and were founders. Eric has made venture and/or personal investments in companies like Flock Safety, Figma, Lattice, Plaid, Homebase, and Check. Willem partnered to incubate companies such as The Browser Company, Cadence, and Imprint. Together we believe there is a better way to build startups for this era. We’ve started Terrain to back founders who believe the same. - Eric Stromberg and Willem Van Lancker