Candou Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California, founded in 2015. The firm focuses on investing in entrepreneurs with novel and defensible ideas, particularly in the areas of Blockchain, AI, SaaS, IoT, and Cloud Infrastructure. Candou Ventures offers initial seed investments ranging from $500K to $1M, providing capital, attention, and experience to help shape plans into investable businesses and support subsequent fundraising from tier-one venture funds.

The firm's investment strategy emphasizes innovative technologies that are differentiated, solve real problems, and have large addressable markets, while excluding mobile apps from their investment scope. Candou Ventures is led by Managing Partner Susan Akbarpour, who has a background in founding multiple SaaS platforms and serves on the boards of several AI startups and nonprofits. The firm's portfolio includes companies like Bodo.ai, Movellus, and Frequencz.