SAN FRANCISCO –– Liquid 2 Ventures says it has raised $80 million for their third core fund, Liquid 2 Ventures Fund III, L.P. that closed in December 2021, exceeding their $75 million target.
Liquid 2 Ventures is an early-stage venture firm founded by former San Francisco legendary QB Joe Montana, Michael Ma, and Mike Miller in 2015. Their first two core funds, Liquid 2 Ventures, L.P. (vintage 2016, “Fund I”) and Liquid 2 Ventures Fund II, L.P. (Vintage 2018, “Fund II”) are both over 3x and include between them 25 companies valued at over $1B.
[Photo above: Staff of Liquid Ventures from left to right: Mike Miller, Joe Montana, son Nate Montana, and Michael Ma.]
Joe Montana, Founding & Managing Partner
Since Montana’s retirement from the NFL in 1994, the Hall-of-Fame quarterback has been emersed in the venture capital industry. In 1998, he co-founded HRJ capital and helped to grow the fund of funds’ AUM to over $900MM before his 2004 departure. From 2005 to 2010, Montana co-founded Modern Bank, a commercial bank based in NYC, for which he served as a board member. Shortly thereafter, he began angel investing under the guidance of his mentor Ron Conway and a thriving portfolio ensued. On the heels of several profitable, investments from this period including Pinterest, DropBox, Weave, CoreOS, ShipBob, OpenListings (acquired by OpenDoor), Caliva and House Spirits, Montana opened his own shop in 2015. Along with his core partners Michael Ma and Mike Miller, Liquid2 Ventures was founded. His son, Nate, joined shortly thereafter and is currently a general partner.
Michael Ma, Founding & General Partner
Shortly after completing Yale undergrad, Ma co-founded TalkBin, where he served as COO and successfully took the company through the YC Winter 2011 class. Ma stayed on as Project Manager at Google to ensure the continued success of TalkBin. In 2015 he graduated from Harvard Business School and that same year became a founding partner of Liquid 2 Ventures.
Mike Miller, Founding & General Partner
A trained particle physicist, Miller thrives at long term fundamental research and introducing innovative technologies to market. He was an early leader in the cloud computing, no-sql and big data markets, helping create, evangelize, and ultimately bringing these technologies to both hyper-growth startups and Fortune 500 enterprises. Miller was co-founder and Chief Scientist at Cloudant (acquired by IBM) and a graduate of the YC Spring 08 class. As a founding partner at Liquid 2 Ventures, Miller’s areas of expertise include machine learning/AI, cloud services, infrastructure, enterprise software, IoT, science, and space. He is also an author/co-author of over one hundred scientific publications.
Nate Montana, General Partner
Montana has over 9 years of experience in angel investing and is currently a General Partner at Liquid 2 Ventures. A graduate of the University of Montana, he took a role early-on at Niche, a start-up focused on connecting social media influencers with advertisers. Niche was acquired by Twitter, where Montana continued to work until 2016 when he joined Liquid 2 Ventures as an Associate. He was promoted to Principal in 2017 and made General Partner in 2021.
