Vertex Ventures US Partner Dom Perri on the Firm’s New Fund Focused on DevOps and Infrastructure

Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast. Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of $100M+ Shift.com, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google. Minnie studied Computer Science at Stanford and has an MBA from HBS. She recently moved back to L.A. after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California. In her space time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.
Vertex Ventures US partner Dom Perri
Image courtesy of Vertex Ventures

Vertex Ventures U.S. has a new $200 million fund devoted to early-stage business-to-business startups, with a focus on digital infrastructure. L.A.-based partner Dom Perri joined this episode of LA Venture to talk about the new fund, and offer insights from his career in corporate and business development.


Vertex is a multibillion-dollar family of funds spanning Singapore, Israel and China, among other countries. Bay Area-based Vertex US writes checks from anywhere from $500,000 to $10 million, and is focused on seed and Series A funding rounds, Perri said. The Bay Area-based firm is looking to help startups working on cloud developer systems, DevOps and cybersecurity.

"At the end of the day, Vertex US is an independent VC firm," said Perri.

He added that two-thirds of his time is spent on infrastructure broadly, while the rest is spent exploring new verticals like fintech, supply chain robotics and automation.

Speaking of cybersecurity for early companies Perri said, “The majority of attacks are still largely a result of human error. All the more reason to prioritize compliance and governance and not just when you hit a certain scale as a company.”

Perri cut his teeth working in business development, including mergers and acquisitions, where he worked at Dropbox, Juniper and Tesla. When the electric automaker acquired a company in Germany, Perri flew to the country to help with the acquisition. He had to convince the employees who were already skeptical of Tesla.

"Merging companies is always going to be nasty and really impact the culture," said Perri. He added that communication is key to getting to understand the rationale behind a merger.

In his negotiation workshops at Stanford, Perri talked about avoiding a situation where you approach someone as an adversary. He said if you're restricting information or hiding information, those are all things that will complicate the conversation.

Despite tough negotiations, the reason Perri said he gets out of bed to be a venture capitalist is because he loves working with founders.

"It's a real privilege for us to be working with them,” he said. “And just also being able to help them and drive some of the outcomes and hearing them in board meetings or quarterly reviews talk about how we've been able to help them."

dot.LA Engagement Fellow Joshua Letona contributed to this post.

Hear the full episode by clicking on the playhead above, and listen to LA Venture on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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LA Tech ‘Moves’: Mapp Gains New CPO and CTO, Prodoscore Taps Boeing Exec

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

LA Tech ‘Moves’: Mapp Gains New CPO and CTO, Prodoscore Taps Boeing Exec
LA Tech ‘Moves’:

“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.

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Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Raises
Image by Joshua Letona

A local space robotics startup raised fresh funding to expand the flight model manufacturing facilities throughout the U.S. and increase employment, while a remote litigation platform raised more funding to continue growing its footprint in new markets across the country, develop service channels for its clients and continue expanding its tech team.

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Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

Gitai Raises $30 Million to Expand Manufacturing Footprint in Los Angeles
\u200bPhoto: Gitai

Space robotics company Gitai raised a $30 million Series B extension this week, bringing the total value of the round to roughly $47 million.

The funding will be used to further develop Gitai’s suite of space robots as well as build out its manufacturing footprint in Torrance. Previously Gitai announced it raised a $17.1 million Series B in March 2021; this additional raise is still part of that round.

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