NVCA Member Spotlight: Dcode Capital

Welcome to our Member Spotlight series where we give a profile overview of our many diverse members. For this deep dive, we spoke to Rebecca Gevalt, General Partner at Dcode Capital, to learn more about her firm.

What makes your firm unique?

Dcode Capital invests alongside top tier VCs in some of the best growth-stage, commercially successful tech companies that can help the federal government better serve and protect Americans. It’s not a riveting topic for many, but we’re experts in federal contracting and helping companies translate their commercial success into federal revenue.

Our success helping tech companies expand into the federal market has resulted in requests from the amazing founders we’ve worked with to join as investors. We’re a women-led fund with unique experience across tech, investing, and the federal government.

What inspired the name of your firm?

Dcode Capital is built on top of the advisory firm, Dcode, so we can’t say we got real creative with the name. We help companies decode the government….but if you’re going to work with startups you have to follow the trend and spell the word slightly incorrectly.

What defines your portfolio?

Tech companies we invest in have amazing commercial traction and the ability to solve some of the government’s toughest challenges. We also get to know our companies really well before we invest because typically we’ve already been working with them to build or grow a sustainable government business. I’ve heard others describe us as being able to pick the winners as we see them winning. And that’s all courtesy of our evolution, which is covered next, so keep reading!

How has your firm evolved from its founding to today?

Launching Dcode Capital from Dcode the advisory firm is a pretty cool evolution. We founded Dcode about six years ago with the mission of getting better tech into the federal government. As former federal employees, we can tell you it can be bleak at times to see the tech that’s used to serve and protect Americans. You’ve been to the DMV. You get it.

So, we designed programs to de-risk the federal market for VC-backed tech companies, teaching them everything they need to know to grow a federal business and making connections to win government contracts. We’ve worked with 100+ tech companies and about 10% of them are now unicorns. For the federal government, Dcode provides training courses and advisory services to help them connect with the best VC-backed tech. We bring both sides of the market together.

Since Dcode’s mission is to get the best tech into the government, we wanted to ensure we worked with the best tech companies out there regardless of when they were raising their next round. In other words, Dcode doesn’t require an equity stake in a company to work with them. We meet founders where they are. And a wonderful thing happened. As companies benefited from working with us, they would hold open allocations for us to join as investors to deepen the partnership. We developed an angel network and worked with a great partner VC to invest in our first six companies and develop a track record. Now, we’re gearing up to be able to provide committed capital to new investments.

We’re building Dcode Capital on top of a platform that already generates consistent deal flow of great tech companies, provides a unique ability to conduct diligence, and supports all aspects of our portfolio companies’ federal go-to-market.

Why is your firm an NVCA member?

Our VC friends kept telling us that we have to join NVCA because it’s so valuable. We’re not usually lemmings, but the advice made sense and has panned out. With all the events and comms, it seems like NVCA has a staff of 100+. It’s been great.

Describe your firm’s culture in 5 words or less?

Mission-focused & really good with numbers