The Lewis and Clark name is rooted in the explorers’ journey bound by mission, passion, ambition, and courage.
Great companies are built by founders bound by a mission.
Founding
Lewis & Clark Ventures was formed by former founder and serial entrepreneur Tom Hillman with the embodiment of the American explorer spirit.
The firm was founded and built on becoming a partner to passionate and bold entrepreneurs building iconic companies in the central U.S.
Partnership
We were founded to partner with exceptional technology entrepreneurs that have the courage, vision, and passion to improve the world in a big way.
Expedition
Our founding belief is rooted in the first Lewis & Clark Expedition; President Thomas Jefferson commissioned two ex-U.S. army commanders and friends to explore the west for the new America.
Met with great adversity and challenges over their journey, the pair of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark navigated the west to return with new geographic, scientific, and social information that created the bedrock for America as we know it today.
Philosophy
Our philosophy is rooted in the embodiment of such a journey — where people are bound together by mission and courage to face adversity for a greater world.
We seek to join founders on this important and defining journey of their lifetimes.
Our GP Letter To Founders.
The Founder’s Journey
This is a phrase often used to describe the experience of starting and growing a startup. That journey is one of the most challenging, exhilarating, terrifying and hopefully rewarding things you can do in a lifetime. It takes vision, courage, and perseverance with an element of luck.
In our journeys as former founders we’ve navigated the long and challenging road from having an idea to developing products, taking them to market, fundraising and scaling our companies for venture-backed growth.
Empirically, the path to success is never a straight line — that’s why it’s a journey. Having a starting point and an end in mind is all you have when you begin. The steps in between are rarely obvious and often have a lot of risky moments you have to navigate through. Sometimes you end up with a lucky ending, but it’s rarely where you thought at the beginning.
Partnering with founders that are daring, courageous and bent on a mission to achieve something great is who we exits to partner with.
As founders, we had great partners. They made a difference and shortened our paths to success. Helping us avoid known potholes and mistakes and nudging us along more quickly than we thought possible. Helping us dream bigger dreams. We hope to do the same for our founders in their journeys ahead.
The spirit of partnership is a core ethos that affects everything we do.
Partnering has many forms. We join with our founders for the long-term, building strong and enduring relationships. We work as a team, share recognition, and hold each other accountable. We align ourselves with our LPs by investing a meaningful amount of our own capital in each fund.
That partnership spirit guides how we communicate and interact. We push to have the courage to have hard conversations while never losing sight of the respect that our founders command in our books. It’s not a one way street. We take feedback in the same light to improve as partners for our founders.
To our founder partners, we aspire to deliver unmatched value and constantly raise the bar on how we can help them shorten the path, avoid potholes and accelerate growth. We hold each other accountable, take initiative, make the extra effort, and practice continuous improvement.
We seek those who share our partnership spirit to join them on their journey from the series A and beyond.