Picks & Shovels — Pre-Seed & Seed VC Firm (Up to $100K Checks)
Picks & Shovels is a Pre-Seed, Seed venture capital firm based in Santa Monica, California investing in Other, Fintech, Developer Tools. The firm typically writes Up to $100K checks and has 14 portfolio companies in our records.
- Check size
- Up to $100K
- Portfolio
- 14 companies on record
- Partners
- 26 listed
- Stage
- Pre-Seed, Seed
- Sectors
- Other, Fintech, Developer Tools, Consumer
- HQ
- Santa Monica, California
- AUM
- Not in our records
Last verified: 2026-09-02
Pre-Seed, Seed
Up to $100K
14+ companies
26 partners
Investment Thesis
Solo-GP fund focused exclusively on infrastructure/tools for crypto and fintech, especially ‘picks & shovels’ enabling builders rather than consumer apps or speculative tokens.
How Picks & Shovels invests
Picks & Shovels is a vc firm based in Santa Monica, California. The firm invests at the Pre-Seed, Seed stages, with a focus on Other, Fintech, Developer Tools, Consumer. It does not invest in Consumer Apps, Tokens without product-market fit.
Picks & Shovels typically writes checks of Up to $100K per investment.
Picks & Shovels has backed 14 companies in our records, including Mastra, Sunbeam, Eventual.
Partners & Team
Josh Schlisserman
Solo GP
Max Abram
MA
Nichole Wischoff
NW
Brexton Pham
BP
Julia Lipton
JL
Jessica Zaltulove
JZ
Luke Girgis
LG
Joshua Schlisserman
GP, Operator-Investor
Chief of Staff at Mastra, the leading TypeScript framework for building AI agents, backed by Spark Capital, Gradient VC, SV Angel and Basecase VC. My role centers on sales, GTM, and customer support/success. Before — Series (Employee #1) Chief of Staff at Series, which builds tools for institutional allocators. I helped scale to our first $1B in AUM, ran all enterprise sales, and built the GTM organization. Backed by 776, Fin VC, Caffeinated Capital and Basis Set Ventures. Before — Preside (Co-Founder) Workflow automation for public safety and government, backed by Caffeinated Capital, Basecase VC, Banter Capital and Basis Set Ventures. We never found product-market fit — but I learned how to invest in the next generation of public-sector founders. I specialize in taking companies from $0 to $10M+ in ARR, finding problem-market fit, and intentionally scaling an organization. I plan to share those learnings with the next generation of picks-and-shovels founders.
Ray Tonsing
Caffeinated Capital
Varun Gupta
Caffeinated Capital
Sumeet Gajri
SG
Mark Ghermezian
MG
Lan Xuezhao
LX
Bobby Lo
BL
Ricky Horwitz
RH
Brendan Baker
BB
Armaan Ali
AA
Esteban Reyes
ER
Tiger Global Fund
TG
Marc Bhargava
MB
Josh Kuzon
JK
Evan Fisher
EF
Ariana Thacker
AT
Curtis Cheng
CC
Tasti
TZ
Zakarie Bridge
ZZ
Industry Focus
Invests In
Does Not Invest In
Portfolio Companies (14)
Other
Mastra
Sunbeam
Eventual
Slingshot AI
Concrete Protocol
Skip (acq)
Paxos Labs
Flux AI
Default
AIHG
- •Raising at Pre-Seed, Seed? You're squarely in their sweet spot.
- •Lead with your fit in Other, Fintech, Developer Tools — the sectors they actively back.
- •Size your ask to their typical Up to $100K check.
- •cold outreach ok
- •Address your outreach to a specific partner, such as Josh Schlisserman, Solo GP.
- •A warm introduction beats a cold email. Get matched and request an intro.
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