The VCs betting founders need a village, not a blank check

Raj and Sunny Singh Sandhu closed Vicus Ventures’s debut fund at $55 million, turning down ‘way more’ capital to stay focused.

Raj and Sunny Singh Sandhu trace their origins to a 50-person Punjabi village. 

“We come from this multigenerational family of Indian Army and Air Force,” said Raj. “Everyone served, on one side. And then, everyone’s been farmers, in agriculture. So, when we go back it’s acres and acres of ancestral land our family’s held for generations.”

The brothers—now respectively 31 and 27—have spent most (or, in Sunny’s case, all) of their lives in the U.S. But those origins have remained influential: As the two of them looked at starting their own VC firm, Raj and Sunny believed they could compete in a viscerally competitive landscape by drawing on where they came from. There are, after all, many kinds of villages.

“There’s the actual village where our family comes from, of course,” said Sunny. “But there’s also a metaphorical village we like to point to, that’s beyond a physical community.”

Raj and Sunny started New York and San Francisco-based Vicus Ventures—the name taken from the Latin word for village— in 2024. At the time, Sunny had previously worked as a consultant at Bain, while Raj had spent three years working on wearables and AI at Alphabet’s Verily. They’ve been investing as they go for the last couple of years, backing companies like Avoca, Specter, Pallet, and Yuzu Health. Now, Vicus has closed its debut fund at $55 million, a frankly contrarian number in a mega-fund world (and even for an emerging manager). Sunny and Raj told Fortune they turned down “way more” capital. 

“Founders are getting younger than ever, getting more term sheets and blank checks thrown at them than ever,” said Raj. “So, what do they really need? It’s not capital anymore that’s differentiated. Whether we’re deploying 55 or 155, that won’t move the needle in us getting the best deals. It’s us coming in and saying: ‘We’re going to deliver minimum dilution, maximum impact.’ Our LPs can then see our returns because we’re the right-sized fund where we can actually do that.”

There was symbolism to the $55 million—Punjab is known as “the land of five rivers,” and Vicus settled on 55 LPs. The number of LPs is far less interesting than who those LPs are. Vicus’s LP roster includes General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, Amazon legend Jeff Wilke, Galaxy Digital’s Mike Novogratz, Blackstone chairman David Blitzer, Oura CEO Tom Hale, and McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown. Brown—famed as a star of Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive—isn’t necessarily a frequent backer of VC firms, but he’s been attuned to the AI boom and was struck by Sunny and Raj. 

“Obviously, what’s happening in tech around AI is insane,” said Brown. “These guys—with their profile, connections, energy, and knowledge—they can be extremely successful, and appear to have been successful in a short period of time. They’re very well-connected.”

Ultimately, Vicus’s LP base is part of its pitch, which hinges on what they call “network-as-a-service.” The idea: that Sunny and Raj, through their thoughtfully curated LP ecosystem and broader network, link founders to people and institutions that generate revenue and resilience. In its way, it is a very old-school view of venture: Definitionally small, deeply personalized, and increasingly what many would consider a dying (or at least threatened) art.

“Every VC says they’ll be helpful,” said Xerxes Libsch, who founded sought-after stealth defense startup Specter, via email. “Very few actually change the trajectory of a company drastically. Vicus has. As I was thinking of leaving Anduril, Sunny and Raj were first believers, and they’ve truly acted as “forward deployed investors” as I joke with them.”

It all goes back to a cliché that’s retained charm because it’s simply true: However much tech loves the idea of “the great founder who does it all alone,” no one does it alone. It always takes a village. 

“When you look at anyone’s life, what you’ve accomplished, what we’ve accomplished, it took a village of people supporting us in different ways,” said Sunny. “And that’s what we’re looking to do with Vicus, replicate a village.”

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com