Vanessa Larco

Who they are

Vanessa Larco is Co-Founder and General Partner at Premise VC — a CS grad from Georgia Tech who led Speech Recognition Experience on Xbox Kinect before spending eight years as a partner at NEA, and co-founded a kids mobile gaming startup that was later acquired.

Person

Vanessa launched Premise VC in early 2025 with co-founder Mercedes Bent when the fund was a newly minted 2-person seed operation — stepping off an eight-year run at NEA to do it herself. She studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech (class of 2008), then cut her teeth as a product manager in gaming: Studio Lead at Disney Social/Playdom, then Lead for Speech Recognition Experience on Xbox Kinect at Microsoft. From gaming she moved into enterprise product roles at Twilio and Box before founding a kids mobile gaming startup that was acquired. That exit is what opened the VC door at NEA, where she rose from Partner to Senior Partner and backed companies including Robinhood and Greenlight. The through-line is builder-turned-backer: every move, from Kinect to gaming startup to seed fund, has been about getting closer to the founding moment. She publishes on TechCrunch and Built In on VC dynamics, AI investing, and founder advice, and is a regular on the conference circuit — TechCrunch Disrupt, FinovateFall, HumanX 2026 — with recurring themes around what technical founders need to survive a world where frontier AI labs are potential competitors.

Company

Premise VC launched in 2025 as a pre-seed and seed fund co-founded by Vanessa Larco and Mercedes Bent, writing checks of $500K to $3M into AI-native technical founders. The thesis is explicit: back teams building companies that OpenAI won't simply kill — prioritizing product velocity and durable technical differentiation. Larco spoke on the fund's approach at VC Mastermind in 2025 under the framing 'The New Rules of Seed Investing.' The fund reflects a broader trend of smaller, founder-focused vehicles spinning out of large multi-stage firms as seed dynamics shift.

Market

Premise VC competes in a crowded early-stage venture market where a wave of sub-$100M, thesis-driven seed funds has emerged alongside traditional multi-stage firms. The fund's AI-native consumer and B2B2C focus puts it in the same conversation as other technically-oriented seed operators, at a moment when geopolitical dynamics and regulatory scrutiny are reshaping where capital flows and how sovereign and institutional LPs think about fund access.

Network

Vanessa's most immediate collaborator is Mercedes Bent, her co-GP at Premise VC. Her broader network was shaped by eight years at NEA, where she was co-elevated to senior investing roles alongside Aaron Jacobson. She has been active in All Raise as an investor mentor and appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020 alongside Laura Deming, Frederik Groce, Amish Jani, and Jessica Verrilli.

Mercedes Bent· Co-Founder and General Partner, Premise VC
Aaron Jacobson· Partner, NEA (former co-elevated senior investing colleague)
Laura Deming· Investor / Longevity Fund

How they likely show up

Eight-year tenure at NEA followed by co-founding Premise rather than joining another established firm → high agency; she builds rather than joins when she has conviction.
Career moved from engineering (Georgia Tech CS) → product management → gaming founder → VC → GP, each step operationally closer to the founding moment → likely evaluates founders with unusual product and technical empathy, not just pattern-matching on metrics.
Active public writing across TechCrunch, Built In, and LinkedIn on VC dynamics and founder advice → comfortable being a visible point of view, expects intellectual engagement in return.
Founded and sold a mobile gaming startup before entering VC → she has been on the cap table as a founder; she'll notice when someone hasn't thought through the operator experience.
Thesis explicitly frames Premise around companies 'OpenAI won't kill' → she thinks in competitive scenarios and wants founders who do too.

Conversation tips

→ Come with a specific view on where AI-native consumer products are defensible — she's built the fund thesis around this question and will engage hard if you have a sharp take.
→ Reference her operator background, not just her VC track record — the Xbox Kinect and gaming startup chapters are central to how she sees founder potential.
→ She wrote about 'The New Rules of Seed Investing' at VC Mastermind in 2025 — asking what's actually changed at the seed stage (versus what hasn't) is a live question for her.
→ Don't pitch her on a company the way you'd pitch a traditional multi-stage fund — she co-founded Premise specifically to operate differently from NEA at the pre-seed/seed level.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the Premise launch thesis — she built the fund around backing technical founders that frontier AI labs won't simply absorb, which is a pointed and debatable bet worth unpacking with her directly.
Reference her Xbox Kinect chapter — she led Speech Recognition Experience at a moment when gesture and voice interfaces were genuinely unproven; that's a specific technical product bet that shapes how she reads founders today.
She spoke at HumanX in April 2026 — asking what the room got wrong about AI investing is a good opener, because she'll have a fresh read from the most recent conference cycle.

Discovery questions

You framed Premise around companies OpenAI won't kill — what does product velocity actually look like in practice for the founders you're backing at pre-seed?
You went from product roles at Twilio and Box to VC — how did the enterprise PM lens change how you evaluated consumer deals at NEA, and does it still shape how you underwrite at Premise?
Eight years is a long run at one firm before co-founding your own — what did you learn at NEA about seed-stage investing that you specifically wanted to do differently with Premise?

Avoid

Don't ask generic questions about 'what she looks for in founders' — she writes publicly about this at length on TechCrunch and LinkedIn, and arriving without having read her actual thesis will signal you haven't done the work.

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