How Nick Moran Built New Stack Ventures Around Backing Silicon Valley Outsiders

Three separate filings from the same firm on the same day usually point to a fund actively in the middle of closing. That is exactly the story behind today's $21.99 million combined filing from a firm built specifically around founders the rest of the venture industry tends to overlook.

New Stack III Q, L.P. ($14.25 million), New Stack Opportunity I, L.P. ($4.86 million) and New Stack III, L.P. ($2.88 million) all filed today, tying back to New Stack Ventures, the firm Nick Moran founded in 2015. New Stack's stated thesis is to invest in what it calls "the Outsiders," mission-driven founders with non-traditional profiles, off-coast locations and contrarian business models in hardware, deep tech, logistics and manufacturing, deliberately avoiding the Stanford-and-Bay-Area pattern many generalist funds default toward. The firm's second fund closed at $42.6 million in 2022, a significant step up from its $6 million debut fund, and the three vehicles filing today, a main fund closing alongside a smaller opportunity vehicle for follow-on concentration, point to New Stack III moving through an active closing process right now.

Why "The Outsiders" Thesis Requires a Different Sourcing Process

Before founding New Stack, Moran worked in M&A and product management at Danaher, where he developed an analytical device for testing compounds in drinking water, an operating background outside the standard venture-to-venture career path. He also founded The Full Ratchet, widely regarded as one of the first dedicated venture capital podcasts, now reaching more than 90,000 active subscribers. New Stack screens roughly 10,000 startup pitches a year, a volume that reflects the sourcing challenge inherent in its own thesis: founders who do not fit the traditional Bay Area profile are less likely to already be inside the standard venture network, so a fund built around finding them has to cast a wider net and build trust through channels, like a long-running podcast, that reach founders outside the usual warm-introduction pipeline.

What a Main Fund Plus Opportunity Vehicle Signals

Filing New Stack Opportunity I alongside the main New Stack III vehicle on the same day is a structure this desk has seen before from other managers actively closing a flagship fund: the opportunity vehicle exists specifically to let the firm concentrate additional capital behind its strongest-performing existing portfolio companies at the point they raise a follow-on round, without diluting the broader fund's diversified early-stage mandate across new, unrelated deals. For a firm whose entire thesis depends on backing founders before they have the traditional signals a Bay Area-networked fund would rely on, having a dedicated mechanism to double down once those signals do appear is a meaningful piece of portfolio construction. The jump from a $6 million debut fund to a $42.6 million second fund in 2022 already showed LPs were willing to scale up their commitment to the Outsiders thesis once it had a track record behind it; today's three-vehicle filing suggests that same LP base is continuing to back Moran's model as New Stack moves into its third fund cycle.

What This Means for Founders

New Stack is a genuinely relevant name for a founder who does not fit the standard venture-network profile, whether that means building outside a major coastal tech hub, coming from a non-traditional professional background, or working in hardware, deep tech or a legacy industry venture capital tends to underweight. A founder in that position should know that New Stack's sourcing model depends heavily on inbound and podcast-driven discovery precisely because it is built to reach outside the standard warm-introduction network, so a direct, well-prepared outreach may carry more weight here than it would at a fund that relies primarily on its own portfolio and co-investor referrals. A founder who lands an initial check from New Stack's main fund should also understand the Opportunity vehicle exists specifically for follow-on concentration, meaning strong execution against a Series A-ready thesis is likely to be rewarded with real follow-on capacity rather than a fund that has already committed its full reserve elsewhere.

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