Go Human Fund
A personally financed micro-seed fund that wrote $100 first checks to founders with nothing but an idea — 20+ founders across 6 countries, several of whom went on to raise from 1517 Fund and Emergent Ventures.
Problem
The earliest stage of building is the stage nobody funds. Before a demo, before a team, before a deck, a founder has an idea and their own determination — and the entire capital stack, down to pre-seed, is structured to wait until someone else has already taken the risk. The scarce thing at that point isn't money. It's the first person willing to say the idea is worth acting on.
Solution
Go Human Fund (formerly ComputaCombinator LLC, Delaware) was a micro-seed fund that ran from 2023 to 2025 and wrote the smallest first checks I could actually write: about $100, to founders at the very beginning. Not enough to build anything with. Enough to be the first outside party on record backing them, which is what the check was really for.
How
- Check size: ~$100 initial investment per founder.
- Terms: negotiated per project rather than templated — some equity, some not, depending on what fit the founder's situation.
- Capital: personally financed. No LPs, no fundraise, no committee.
- Reach: 20+ founders across 6 countries.
- Portfolio: Sodium BMS (sodium battery science for cost-effective EV BMS networks, Vibhuti Bafna), Leapflow (AI agents for workflow automation, Suhas Sumukh), Zip Notary (remote online notarization SaaS, Ray McDonald), among others.
Results
The founders outran the fund, which was the point:
- Advik Kooper raised from Peter Thiel's 1517 Fund for Exerton, a Solana platform for young founders.
- Sur Naik received a $20,000 grant from Emergent Ventures for his electronics prototyping system.
- Emma Obadoni built Tech Family, a 50+ member community teaching technology across Africa.
- Pablo Perez and Khadija Challoey went on to machine learning and physics research respectively.
The fund closed in April 2025 after completing its initial mission. The site now points founders who are still looking toward the funds that back people at that stage — 1517, Emergent Ventures, YC, Village Global, Pioneer, Founders Fund.
Lessons
A personally financed fund has exactly one hard ceiling, and it is the person financing it. Closing was the honest move: the alternative was raising from LPs, which would have replaced the thing that made the fund work — no committee, no thesis, no minimum viable traction — with the thing every other fund already is. Some of what I learned running it was harder than that; watching what happened to a few of the people I was supporting is part of why I stopped believing several stories I'd been told about how this industry works. The conviction underneath it hasn't changed. Being the first to say "I believe in you" costs almost nothing and is worth far more than $100.
Site: gohuman.fund
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