At a Glance
Sidelines is an advisory and investment firm co-founded by Marisa Hodgdon that embeds with consumer companies for six to twelve months ahead of a major milestone, then invests in the companies through SPVs.
Sidelines runs a deal-by-deal SPV model with no plans to raise a traditional fund, backed by a concentrated group of investors chosen for their relevance and their ability to add value.
Sidelines invested in De Soi, the non-alcoholic apéritif brand co-founded by Katy Perry, across two early fundraising rounds.
At the company's request, Sidelines assembled an all-women investor group, built around genuine relevance to the brand: operators, board members, and long-time product advocates.
With Sydecar, Sidelines onboarded first-time and IRA investors, gained visibility into investor funding status, and closed quickly, with a dedicated Sydecar support representative on each deal.
The Opportunity
Marisa Hodgdon spent most of her career as a serial COO, reshaping businesses and engineering successful exits. After that, she moved into the CEO seat, then eventually landed on the other side of the table as an operating partner and, finally, a GP. That background influences how she picks companies. She looks for companies at an inflection point: when product-market fit is well-established, but the business needs a strong operator to reach the next level of scale.
Marisa built Sidelines around that model. The firm works sequentially: it embeds with a company six to twelve months before a defining moment, whether a fundraise, a major partnership, or an exit, and acts as an inside team for the CEO, the board, or a co-founder. When the company is ready to fundraise, the firm uses its deep context to determine whether to participate. When it does, it invests through an SPV.
That deal-by-deal approach is deliberate. Many investors use SPVs as a stepping stone to raising a committed capital fund, but Sidelines sees a strategic advantage in using these vehicles for all its investments. From her time as a GP and operating partner in the fund world, Marisa came away convinced there was a better way to invest. Committing capital one deal at a time lets Sidelines move only once its hands-on advisory work has built conviction in a company, assemble a group of investors suited to that specific deal, and keep the economics aligned for the company and its LPs.
But choosing not to raise a fund doesn’t keep Sidelines from operating like an established VC firm. Marisa pairs her operator's pedigree with deep diligence on each company. She chooses investors for the doors they open and the guidance they give the companies they back. Sidelines anchors a meaningful portion of a round, earning a say in where the company goes.
Its investments in De Soi are a product of that model. Sidelines met the company two years before investing in it, and built a relationship with its CEO and founding team. De Soi had strong backing, including Willow Growth, CAA, and Katy Perry, co-founder of and investor in De Soi. The company came to Sidelines with a specific ask: its customers are women, and its investor base did not reflect that. Could Sidelines help change it?
Execution
When reaching out to LPs from their community for the De Soi deal, Sidelines focused on relevance. Every investor had to know the brand and be able to help shape its trajectory. One sat on the boards of several major beverage companies. Others were genuine advocates who already kept the product in their homes and could speak about it within their own circles. The result was an all-women group of LPs in the SPV, each chosen because she made sense for the company's journey.
When it came time to execute, Sidelines chose Sydecar. Marisa credits this choice to Sydecar having the cleanest interface among platforms she evaluated, as well as the clearest, most transparent fee structure. She describes the decision as the start of a partnership the firm has continued to build on.
Many of the investors were investing in a private company through an SPV for the first time. On Sydecar, they could easily set up a profile, connect their credentials, and let KYC run in the background, then choose from different funding options. When an investor needed help, a Sydecar Deal Operations Associate was on hand, at times joining calls with individual LPs on Sidelines' behalf.
Throughout the fundraising process, Sidelines could see exactly where each investor stood as they moved through the various stages from indicating interest, signing subscription agreements, and funding their investment. That gave the firm a clear read on who still needed to act and how the overall raise was tracking at any moment.
Several investors funded through their IRAs, an approach Marisa expects to become a trend among her LPs. Because Sydecar accommodates IRA funding and supports investors through the process, Sidelines can say yes to LPs who want to invest with retirement capital, keeping its investors happy and commitments on track through close.
Results
Sidelines closed both deals for De Soi on Sydecar and put meaningful capital into a company it had worked alongside for years. Marisa credits Sydecar's swift closing process for making this possible
The relationship is compounding. The De Soi deals are two of seven SPVs Sidelines has run on Sydecar since 2024, and the firm is already preparing for the company’s Series A. Because its repeat investors are already set up on Sydecar, they can return to their profiles, see what they committed to before, and reinvest without redoing onboarding, which she credits with driving repeat investor participation.
Takeaways
For Marisa, the De Soi deal reflects her conviction that deal-by-deal investing should mature, and that independent venture managers like her can play a meaningful role in the industry. She runs Sidelines like a professional investment firm: deep diligence on every company, a meaningful position in each round, and investors who stay involved as long-term partners. She treats this as a deliberate, permanent way of operating in venture.
Sidelines is doing that work with a lean, professional team and running its deals on infrastructure that keeps pace.
If you run deals the way Sidelines does–or plan to–talk to our team:
