1517 Fund is a pre-seed and seed venture firm that backs young founders outside conventional credentialing paths, describing its focus as college dropouts, renegade students and deep tech scientists. The firm's homepage states an average pre-seed check of $400,000 and first checks ranging from $50,000 to $1,000,000, and says it has more than $175mm in capital committed across four flagship funds plus more than 15 SPVs for follow-on investments. It also runs the Medici Project, which the firm says deploys more than 200 grants a year at a $1k minimum. The partners previously helped run the Thiel Fellowship, which the homepage says they co-founded in 2010.