Patrick Klas: AI-First Pre-Seed and Seed Investor, Bay Area

Venture Capitalist, based in the Bay Area.

I’m an AI-first pre-seed and seed investor at MGV, writing lead checks in the Bay Area for founders building AI-native companies. I like the earliest stage best, when the product is rough, the customers are few, and the founder’s judgment matters most.

I’ve been in venture since 2013: founding investor at American Family Ventures, COO at Bunker, and now at MGV. Along the way I helped launch a startup accelerator with Microsoft Ventures and led diligence on Lattice Data, an early AI company later acquired by Apple. I’m most useful to founders on the practical parts: first customers, go-to-market, and finding the right people around them.

Experience

• MGV, Investor, 2020 – Present. Venture capital fund investing in AI and SaaS startups. mgv.vc
• Kauffman Fellows, Class 26, 2021 – Present. kauffmanfellows.org
• American Family Ventures, Founding Investor, 2013 – 2017 and 2018 – 2020. amfamventures.com
• Bunker, COO, 2017 – 2018. buildbunker.com

Education

University of Wisconsin–Madison, BA in Applied Economics. wisc.edu

Venture portfolio

• Adapt API (Insurtech): Automates insurance-agency back office by pulling cancellations, endorsements and underwriting memos from carrier portals straight into the agency management system, claiming ~95% less manual processing.
• Ascend (Insurtech): Vertical financial-operations platform for insurance that bundles AI accounting automation, payments and premium financing, used by 4,000+ agencies, MGAs and carriers.
• Attention (AI): AI sales agent platform that records calls without a bot, auto-updates the CRM, drafts follow-ups and coaches deals for enterprise revenue teams.
• Authentic (Insurtech): Infrastructure that lets brokers and carriers launch and run specialty insurance programs on one unified platform with real-time data visibility.
• Bold Penguin (Insurtech) – Acquired by American Family Insurance: AI-powered commercial insurance platform that automates the submission-to-bind workflow between brokers, carriers and distributors, and already works with 8 of the top 10 commercial carriers.
• Camber (Healthtech): Revenue-cycle-management software purpose-built for specialty behavioral-health (ABA) clinics that automates billing to cut claim denials and speed up payment; a16z-backed.
• Cascade Space (American Dynamism): Building deep-space communications infrastructure using arrays of smaller dishes as a scalable alternative to giant antennas, with new capacity launching in 2027.
• Halluminate (AI): Builds reinforcement-learning environments that train frontier AI models on real investment banking, private equity and consulting workflows.
• Haven (Healthtech): Virtual-first headache and migraine care delivered by certified specialists in California and Washington.
• KarmaCheck (AI): AI-driven background-check and credential-verification platform built for staffing firms and enterprises, backed by a $45M Series B.
• Kolors (Mobility): Digital marketplace that aggregates independent operators onto one booking platform for intercity bus and van travel in Mexico; Series A-funded.
• Lattice Data (AI) – Acquired by Apple: Stanford-born AI company (acquired by Apple in 2017 for $500M+) that turned unstructured 'dark data' like text and images into structured, queryable data using machine learning.
• Life360 (Consumer Tech) – Public: Family-safety subscription platform (location sharing, crash detection, Tile trackers) with roughly 100M users.
• matcha (Insurtech): AI job-matching platform that scores candidate fit beyond keywords and automatically screens and ranks applicants for employers.
• One Inc. (Insurtech): Insurance-only payments platform handling premium collection and claims disbursement, processing about $230B a year across 320+ carrier and insurance customers.
• oraclaim (Insurtech): AI tools and data analytics that help defense lawyers and claims managers work legal cases and insurance claims faster.
• Palm (Insurtech): Business identity network that lets banks, insurers and vertical-SaaS platforms onboard, verify and monitor small-business customers using verified Secretary of State, IRS and licensing data on 125M+ businesses (company-reported).
• Recora (Healthtech): Rebranded as Aviary Health; pairs AI workflow automation with clinical staffing so health systems can run virtual cardiac/pulmonary rehab and care management at scale (customers include Geisinger and Tampa General).
• Ring (Consumer Tech) – Acquired by Amazon: Video-doorbell pioneer founded by Jamie Siminoff (originally Doorbot) that turned a home-security gadget into a category-defining consumer brand and sold to Amazon in 2018 for a reported ~$1B.
• TurtleMint (Insurtech): Indian insurtech distribution platform that equips community-based advisors to sell insurance and investment products.
• VN.AI (AI): Early-stage company positioned around letting creators control how AI uses their work; public product details are still sparse.
• Woz (AI): Raised a $6M seed to build production-grade AI apps; its site now redirects to WOZCODE, a plugin that cuts cost and boosts speed for Claude Code users (appears to have pivoted).
• YourMechanic (Consumer Tech) – Acquired by Wrench: Mobile auto-repair marketplace that sends mechanics to customers' homes across 2,000+ cities with upfront pricing and a 12-month/12,000-mile warranty.

Contact

patrick@mgv.vc · LinkedIn · X · Instagram