Rhapsody Venture Partners

Rhapsody Venture Partners invests in early-stage companies working in the hard sciences, including new materials, engineering, chemistry and food technology, helping bring such technologies from university laboratories to market. The firm typically leads seed rounds and often leads larger syndicates in follow-on rounds. Its team, drawn from entrepreneurial and business-development backgrounds, works alongside portfolio companies on customer introductions and market development once a technology is ready to be demonstrated. It says it favours hard-science startups that can form early partnerships with established industrial companies, believing this helps confirm market fit and can bring in financing that avoids further dilution. The firm also works with university technology-transfer offices and reviews thousands of startups each year across physics, chemistry and applied sciences.