RedBlue Capital Raises Second Fund as First-Time Managers Hit Decade Low

First-time venture funds captured just 4.5% of U.S. VC fundraising dollars through the first three quarters of this year, according to PitchBook data. Firms raising their fourth fund or later took 88.2%. Only 81 first-time funds closed in the first nine months of 2026. PitchBook estimates the year will be the worst for first-time managers in at least a decade.

Olaf Sakkers has spent five years proving difficult does not mean impossible. He founded RedBlue Capital in 2021 and closed a first fund with roughly $5 million in commitments in 2023. He has now held a first close on a second fund he says will total at least $50 million.

Who is Olaf Sakkers?

Raised in South Africa, Sakkers studied anthropology at Princeton, focusing on global health and health policy. He wrote his thesis on HIV in his home country. After graduating he moved to Israel and was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces, where he says he held a desk job liaising with the U.S. military and became interested in autonomous vehicles.

An introduction led him to Michael Granoff, founder of Maniv Mobility and an early backer of electric-vehicle startup Better Place. Granoff hired him on the spot, Sakkers says. Neither had been a venture investor, so they built a fund "almost by accident." Sakkers ran the investment process day to day, backing Israeli founders who brought cybersecurity skills into the automotive world, later expanding to the U.S. and other markets.

By 2021, Sakkers says, he was an equal partner in Maniv's economics. He wanted something more formal and scalable, so he left to start RedBlue. The firm now backs what he calls the "real economy": robotics, logistics, manufacturing and energy.

Why do institutional investors resist first-time managers?

Sakkers says institutional limited partners — endowments and pension funds — have been the toughest to win over. His checks are small and theirs are huge. Their risk model is built to "avoid getting a zero," he says, so they gravitate toward established brands.

The dynamic mirrors the founder market. Sakkers says repeat founders come to be seen as "inevitable," while first-time founders battle the "gravity of perception," meaning a dominant brand can bend how people perceive a newer one.

His answer is to let results speak. "It's a long-term game of building trust, demonstrating performance over time," Sakkers said.

The first fund was a proof of concept, backed by family offices he had known for years. The second draws on family offices and institutions.

How does RedBlue invest?

RedBlue writes small checks, $50,000 to $100,000, mostly joining deals led by other investors rather than leading them. The approach lets the firm do more deals and be "the last investor that they take," Sakkers says, by promising practical help:

• Introductions to lead investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital
• Introductions to customers
• Support that overdelivers on what founders expect from VCs

By his account, the results are strong. Of 28 investments, 15 have been marked up. He cites a net internal rate of return of "significantly above 50%." There has been one exit, an acqui-hire, so most gains remain on paper and unrealized.

Public records support part of the story:

• HappyRobot, backed early by RedBlue, raised a $150 million Series C at a $1.2 billion valuation in August
• Westmag, a maker of motors for drones and robots that Sakkers backed at pre-seed alongside Nat Friedman, emerged in June with an $11 million seed led by Andreessen Horowitz
• Flai, an AI startup for car dealerships, followed its 2025 seed with a $27 million Series A
• Humble Robotics, a driverless-truck startup, announced a $51 million Series A led by Obvious Ventures this month after a $24 million seed round RedBlue joined

What is the edge?

Sakkers argues discipline is his advantage. RedBlue publishes thesis essays, including one on robotics, and runs on a custom database he built with Claude Code to log relationships, meeting notes and introductions. That lets him and his lone full-time principal, based in New York, work asynchronously. AI agents are "useless if they just have to guess," he says, so everything gets written down. He contrasts the approach with Benchmark's artisanal model, which he says suits a firm with a record he lacks.

Long exit timelines for physical-world companies do not worry him. Even a $50 million to $100 million fund, he says, can sell stakes on the secondary market.

The data is not uniformly grim. Funds between $1 million and $10 million consistently outperform larger funds of $100 million or more at the top end of net TVPI — total value to paid-in capital — across recent vintages tracked by Carta.

Sakkers says he never seriously considered a safer job. "Life is short, and regrets last forever," he said. He is still knocking on doors and betting that paper marks convert into distributions before the emerging-manager squeeze tightens further.