Founders’ Co-op, a fixture on Seattle’s venture scene, is raising its fourth fund

Founders’ Co-op, a Seattle-based seed-stage venture firm, is looking to close its fourth and newest fund with $25 million, according to an SEC filing that shows the outfit has raised at least $10.7 million toward that end.

The firm — now a fixture on Seattle’s venture scene — was created 10 years ago and closed its last fund in 2015 with $20 million.

Its founders include Andy Sack, a serial entrepreneur whose other companies include Seattle-based Lighter Capital, a company that lends certain types of startups money; and Chris DeVore, who’d previously co-founded a social search company called Judy’s Book and who also serves as a managing director with Techstars Seattle.

One of Founders’ Co-op’s most recent (publicly disclosed) investments is LiveStories, a nearly five-year-old, Seattle-based company that works with governments, educational institutions and other public entities to structure and visualize civic data. It raised $10 million in Series A funding last year.

Another is Loftium, a Seattle-based company that provides prospective home buyers with up to $50,000 for a down payment as long as they’re willing to list an extra bedroom on Airbnb for between one and three years and share most of that rental income with Loftium. The company raised $2.5 million in the fall, led by DFJ.

Founders’ Co-op also saw an exit last year, when Baidu acquired Kitt.ai, a three-year-old, Seattle-based natural language startup that had developed a framework to build and power chatbots and voice-based applications across multiple platforms and devices.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Kitt.ai had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from the firm, along with Amazon’s Alexa Fund.

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