Dream Machine

Dream Machine is a seed fund backing consumer and frontier-technology companies, typically entering at the pre-seed and seed stages, across areas such as social, creator, identity, audio, gaming and commerce. It is run by a single investor, Alexia Bonatsos, a former co-editor-in-chief at TechCrunch who reported early on WhatsApp, Uber, Instagram, Airbnb and Pinterest. In 2018 she set up the fund to invest in founders she felt deserved attention sooner rather than later. Its stated approach favours conviction in the person behind an idea over the eventual shape that idea takes, focusing on the behaviour a piece of technology unlocks rather than the technology itself. The fund carries no associate, investment committee or platform team, describing itself as one investor with one inbox, deploying capital slowly and with care. Bonatsos reads pitches herself, and says a first reply does not require a lengthy slide deck, just a few sentences.