Santa Barbara Venture Partners
Santa Barbara Venture Partners is a generalist tech venture firm in Santa Barbara, California. Founded in 2020, it backs early- and growth-stage software companies and helps them with customer acquisition and marketing. Its water exposure is narrow: it has backed 1 water company, satellite-data firm Hydrosat, across 3 deals. As of August 2025 it runs a $25M second fund.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Santa Barbara Venture Partners is not a water fund, and it would never claim to be. It is a generalist tech investor built around one unusual edge: its partners and a 100-plus network of operator-investors sell software for a living, so the firm earns its keep helping portfolio companies with customer acquisition and marketing. As of August 2025, Santa Barbara Venture Partners closed a $25M second fund, after a debut fund that booked six full or partial exits in its first five years.
Santa Barbara Venture Partners touches water through a single, telling bet. The firm backs Hydrosat, which flies thermal-infrared satellites that read the temperature of farmland to measure evapotranspiration, the rate at which crops and soil lose water to the air. That data lets growers cut irrigation water and electricity without sacrificing yield, turning water scarcity into the kind of software-and-satellites problem Santa Barbara Venture Partners likes to scale.
Santa Barbara Venture Partners shows up in the Leviathan database as an Occasional water backer, one water company across three rounds rather than a standing thesis. The water it touches is digital, not infrastructure: no pipes, no membranes, no treatment plants, just the orbital data layer that tells a farmer when to switch the pump off. That is the useful read I would give a newcomer investor here, Santa Barbara Venture Partners is a way to back water efficiency indirectly, sitting inside a broader tech portfolio rather than a dedicated water mandate.
Water Commitment Score
Compiled from official filings, third-party records, and direct intelligence from investors and founders, in Leviathan · recomputed monthly · as of Jun 2026.
How they invest
Portfolio · 1 water companies
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What does Santa Barbara Venture Partners invest in?
- Santa Barbara Venture Partners invests in early- and growth-stage tech and tech-enabled companies, spanning software, fintech, healthcare and AI. Its edge is hands-on customer acquisition and marketing help from a 100-plus network of operator-investors. Water sits at the edge of that mandate, through a single satellite-data company, Hydrosat.
- Is Santa Barbara Venture Partners a water fund?
- No. Santa Barbara Venture Partners is a generalist tech venture firm, not a water-only investor. Its water footprint is one company, agricultural-satellite firm Hydrosat, backed across three rounds. (don't) Waste Water rates its water commitment Occasional, meaning water appears inside a broader tech portfolio rather than as a thesis.
- Who runs Santa Barbara Venture Partners?
- Santa Barbara Venture Partners was founded in 2020 by Dan Engel, its Managing Partner, a software entrepreneur who led customer acquisition at Google and was CEO of FastSpring before serving as a venture partner at OCV and NGEN. Daniel Hedden is Partner, working alongside Engel on sourcing and evaluating deals.
- How big is Santa Barbara Venture Partners' fund?
- Santa Barbara Venture Partners closed a $25M second fund in August 2025, according to the firm and the Pacific Coast Business Times. The raise followed a debut fund, launched after the firm was founded in 2020, that booked six full or partial exits within roughly five years.
- What water company has Santa Barbara Venture Partners backed?
- Santa Barbara Venture Partners has backed Hydrosat, which flies thermal-infrared satellites that measure farmland temperature and evapotranspiration to guide irrigation. The firm has supported Hydrosat across three rounds, its only water company so far, which is why (don't) Waste Water rates its water commitment Occasional.