It's time to look back on 2022 as we come upon the holiday season and some well-deserved rest and relaxation. It's been an eventful year here at Armory Square Ventures, and we wanted to take this opportunity to share exciting recent developments for our firm and portfolio. We hope you're enjoying the culmination of a successful year wherever you are, and that you're looking forward to 2023 in happiness and health.  

Fund III Announcement 
 

We are thrilled to announce that five new advisors have joined our firm in advance of the closing of ASV Fund III, which we began fundraising for in May of this year. We briefed our community at the Annual Limited Partner Meeting in September, and so far, we have seen very strong demand from old and new investors. Fund III will be larger than Funds I and II combined. 

While the funding environment for both early and later-stage companies continues to be challenging, we are encouraged by new companies in the pipeline that demonstrate strong fundamentals. We also remain optimistic about our team's network and experience in identifying solid investment opportunities in secondary cities and encourage you to stay in touch with us. We will share more on fund developments and ASV III after the new year. 
 
Elizabeth MacBride, Platform Advisor, has three decades of experience as a journalist, author, and founder and has deep expertise covering small business in towns across America. Most recently, she co-authored The New Builders, a book on entrepreneurship with venture capitalist Seth Levine of Foundry Group. As part of her role at ASV, Elizabeth will highlight founders who operate outside major cities and focus on building ASV's profile in new secondary markets. 

Vikas Mehta, Venture Advisor, is COO at ACV Auctions and has two decades of experience building marketplaces globally, initially at eBay and later at ACV. As part of the new fund, Vikas will help us evaluate new B2B marketplace companies and work with portfolio companies to scale products, technology solutions, and operations.

Pete Petrella, Venture Advisor, is Managing Director at Talentrise. Pete and his colleagues have identified and recruited C-level  executives across our portfolio in the past. As part of the new fund, Pete will counsel us on talent and recruiting needs and will co-manage our network to connect us with new advisors, customers, board members, and other senior operating talent in our target geographies. 

Prabhdeep "Prabh" Singh, Venture Advisor, is Chief Growth Officer at Clover Health. He started his career at Morgan Stanley before working for the Partnership Fund, a $170M VC fund based in NYC. Prabh later joined the executive teams of GLG, WeWork, and Uber and led the Uber Eats Enterprise business, managing some of the world's largest restaurant partners. 
 
In July, we launched the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation to inspire new directions for translators into English from one of the most diverse, historically complex and culturally vibrant regions of the world. At ASV, our mission is to foster novel creative opportunity. Over the past few years, we have realized that cultivating vibrant ecosystems is as vital to the world of literary translation as it is to the world of business, and we are excited to seed this initiative. 

The groundbreaking new prize is accepting entries through the end of 2022. The competition is open to translators of literature written by a South Asian author in a language other than English. The winner, selected by a jury of award-winning specialists in literary translation, will receive publication of their work by Open Letter Books. Open Letter is based at the University of Rochester and is one of a handful of publishing houses dedicated to works in translation. For more see our Twitter handle and follow Jury Chair Jason Grunebaum @jasongrunebaum. 

The Prize shortlist will be announced in March 2023. We are currently also seeking an intern to assist with the process; interested parties should contact jason@armorysv.com and pia@armorysv.com.