Skip to content
Yonder
Early capital for marketplace founders

First check for founders building new economies

I built Yonder for marketplace founders who are early enough to look weird and ambitious enough to create a market. I invest $50K to $100K at first-check and pre-seed, then help founders get the market and the next round moving.

Pitch Yonder
No warm intro required
Colin Gardiner, founder and general partner of Yonder
Colin GardinerMarketplace operator turned first-check investor
marketplace rentals built at Outdoorsy
$3B+
marketplace investments
50+
venture capital raised as an operator
$250M+
marketplace founders, operators, and investors reading Take Rate
5,000+
Why Yonder exists

I built the marketplace fund I wish had existed.

When I was helping build Outdoorsy, too many investors evaluated a marketplace like SaaS or compared every network to Airbnb and Uber. They missed what actually mattered.

We went on to build more than $3 billion in rentals. That experience taught me how much good marketplace founders need an investor who understands liquidity, supply, trust, take rate, and sequencing before the numbers look obvious.

Yonder is my answer: early capital, honest judgment, and practical help from someone who has lived the same problems.

Why I started Yonder
Marketplace experience across
  • Outdoorsy
  • Ancestry.com
  • Tripping.com
  • Roamly
  • Karta Labs
  • Take Rate
01Where I get useful

The check matters. The judgment after it matters more.

Marketplace problems are rarely solved with generic advice. I work directly with founders on the decisions that determine whether a market gets liquid or gets stuck.

What it is like to work together
  1. 01

    Get the market moving

    Supply, demand, liquidity, trust, incentives, and which side to unlock first.

  2. 02

    Build the business model

    Take rate, pricing, unit economics, workflow depth, and what should sit around the transaction.

  3. 03

    Tell the right fundraising story

    A deck and narrative that help generalist investors understand why this market can be enormous.

  4. 04

    Find the next believer

    Thoughtful introductions to marketplace founders, operators, customers, and the next investors.

02The Yonder lens

The hard part is not building the app. It is getting the market to move.

The best marketplaces solve the ugly operational work around a transaction. That work is often where the product, the data, and the moat begin.

01

Constrained supply

Credentialed, local, fragmented, regulated, or simply hard to reach.

02

Better workflow

A product that makes the transaction easier, faster, and more trusted.

03

Real liquidity

Better matches pull more supply and demand into the network.

04

Compounding data

Transactions improve pricing, trust, matching, and defensibility.

Read the full investment thesis
03Take Rate

I share the marketplace playbook in public.

More than 5,000 founders, operators, and investors read Take Rate for practical ideas on liquidity, marketplace design, fundraising, and the companies changing how markets work.

Read Take Rate
For founders

Building a new economy?

Send it. No warm intro required.

Pitch Yonder
For LPs

Looking for focused access to first-check marketplace investing?

A concentrated, operator-led approach to the earliest marketplace rounds.

See the Yonder edge