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VC

2 mins read

Slauson & Co. Closes $100M Fund II to Invest in Early-Stage Tech Startups

Slauson & Co., a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm dedicated to supporting early-stage founders from underrepresented backgrounds, has successfully closed its second fund, raising a total of $100 million.

This milestone represents a substantial increase from its initial $75 million fund, demonstrating the firm’s growing reputation and investor confidence.

“To date, we’ve invested in 38 companies from our first fund led by 66 founders across the U.S., whose lived experience is their competitive advantage. Notably, 95% of our portfolio companies are led by founders of color, with over half of our founding teams led or co-led by women. These companies have gone on to raise hundreds of millions of dollars following our initial investment,” said a company representative in an online statement.

Fund II will focus on investments ranging from $500,000 to $2 million, with plans to lead most rounds and make approximately 30 investments over the next three years. The firm has already begun deploying capital from Fund II and remains dedicated to its mission of advancing inclusivity in venture capital.

Despite a challenging fundraising environment in recent years, Slauson & Co. persevered and successfully closed Fund II. The firm faced numerous rejections but remained steadfast in its mission. As noted in the statement, “Our hurdles are akin to those faced by the founders we support — fundraising while operating the business, volatile markets causing constant shifts in investor sentiment, all while building a transformational product.”

The closing of Fund II marks a significant step forward for Slauson & Co., positioning the firm to continue its work of empowering founders from underrepresented backgrounds and driving innovation in the tech industry.

Echoing the sentiment, “The greatest loss is what dies inside while you’re still alive. Never surrender,” Slauson & Co. embodies this spirit of perseverance and inclusivity.

by Tony O. Lawson

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6 mins read

Black Owned VC Firm Invests in an African American Owned Mining Company in Tanzania

Brown Venture Group is a Black owned VC firm and venture studio exclusively focused on Black, Latino, and Native American technology entrepreneurs.

The Minnesota-based firm provides technology founders of color with investment capital, training, and professional networks that assist in launching and scaling tech-based startups.

We caught up with Dr. Chris Brooks, co-founder and managing partner at Brown Venture Group.

brown venture group
Dr. Chris Brooks, Managing Partner at Brown Venture Group

Describe your path to becoming a venture capitalist. 

My path to VC was an extremely improbable one. At age 16 I was charged with 3 felonies, including attempted murder.

My career has been most heavily in the nonprofit and education sectors.  Two of my 3 degrees are Theology degrees. The thread woven throughout my life is a deep curiosity about and commitment to racial and economic justice.

These two things led me to co-found Brown Venture Group with Dr. Paul Campbell in 2018, and it is a perfect space for me to live out my passion and calling.

What are your thoughts on the state of today’s venture capital market? 

VC has been a gated community for most of its history.  Women and people of color have had little to no access to the industry, both as Executives of VC firms and as recipients of VC capital allocation.  

This remains true today, but things are changing.  Hundreds of new firms led by and focused on women and people of color have emerged over the last decade.  

It is inevitable that a subgroup of these firms/funds will have great financial success, and the industry will be changed forever.

Your firm recently partnered with the Africa Chamber of Digital Commerce (ACOFDC). What inspired the collaboration and what do you hope to accomplish?  

Africa has always had millions of remarkable entrepreneurs.  Due to the long-term impact of European colonization of Sovereign African Nations, access to capital for (Black) African entrepreneurs mirrors the trends in the USA  – it could be argued that it is exponentially worse on the African continent.  

Currently, over 90% of VC investment on the continent is allocated to white entrepreneurs.  Reflect on that.  The partnership between Brown Venture Group and the African Chamber of Digital Commerce has 3 goals:

  1. Accelerate technology investments on the African Continent and within the African Diaspora globally
  2. Strengthen the relationships between African leaders and African-American leaders
  3. Scale a global, interdependent, Black tech economy.

Imagine what it would look like to give access to transformational capital to African entrepreneurs at scale.  Imagine the results, both in terms of financial returns and in terms of global impact.  This is our shared inspiration: a world where Africans own Africa.

What spurred your firm’s interest in African investments? 

We understand that there are disproportionately great investment opportunities on the African Continent, in both existing technologies as well as emerging technologies. 

Our interest stems from the dual purpose of financial returns and (positive) impact.  We are just getting ourselves familiarized with the various nations and sectors. 

Eventually, it is our intention to increase our investment activity in African entrepreneurs and tech companies.

You recently invested in a mining company located in Tanzania. Tell us about the significance of that deal. 

Our first fund only invests in US-based companies.  Our investment in Pula Group, the only American mineral exploration company operating in Tanzania, represents our strong commitment to investing for both returns + impact. 

Pula Group aims to disrupt and redefine the African mining sector, which is currently dominated by extractive outside interests.  We share deep values and vision related to the future of Black ownership.

What advice do you have for other fund managers? 

It is critical to have a very well thought through investment thesis, as well as some concretized, deeply held core values.  These 2 components will guide you internally while they simultaneously send signals to investors and to the broader market about who you are and your intentions. 

Additionally, financial returns must always be prioritized above social impact.  Both matter, but leading a fund includes an inherent ethical mandate to produce financial returns for the fund’s investors (limited partners). 

Without those returns, the fund and/or the Firm is not sustainable long-term.

– Tony O. Lawson

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7 mins read

One of the Largest Black Owned Venture Capital Firms Just Doubled in Size With a $250 Million Round

One of the largest Black-Owned Venture Capital Firms just doubled in size. Two years after closing their debut fund of $150 million, Base10 co-founders Adeyemi Ajao and TJ Nahigian are back with a $250 million investment fund and a sense of vindication for their thesis of investing in startups making automation for the people.

For Ajao, an immigrant who grew up in Nigeria and Spain before moving to the U.S., the new fund is a confirmation that even without having an explicit focus on minority investments, it’s possible to create a portfolio led by a diverse mix of founders. Indeed, roughly 60% of the firm’s investments have been into companies led or co-led by women or minority founders.

Part of the firm’s diversity simply comes from the geographic diversification of the portfolio, said Ajao. “We like to invest in Latin America [and] we like to invest outside of Silicon Valley… We have always had the knack of look where others are not looking.”

And as part of that commitment, the firm is making a diversity pledge, including doubling-down on a commitment to diversity through its investment process, hiring practices and bias training; and a commitment of 1% of the firm’s profits from its management company and another 1% commitment of its carried interest to support organizations fighting for inclusion and racial equality.

Ajao and Nahigian have already enlisted firms like Precursor Ventures, Illumen Capital, and Plexo Capital in the new commitment.

Drawing on Ajao’s connections in the Spanish and Latin American community of entrepreneurs has meant that Base10 already has a geographically and racially diverse portfolio. Latin American companies account for about five of the firm’s 28 publicly listed portfolio companies, with other portfolio companies coming from the Netherlands and Germany.

Ajao and Nehigian have also spread the wealth pretty broadly across the U.S., with companies in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Stamford, Connecticut and Seattle, in addition to the traditional startup hub of San Francisco.

At Base10, the typical check size will remain in the $500,000 to $5 million range and the focus remains on experienced founders in industries as diverse as agriculture, construction, waste management, shipping and logistics.

Investments include Cottage, which is building adjacent dwelling units for the California market; Faber, which provides staffing for commercial construction; the Mexico City-based digital freight forwarder, NowPorts; birth-control delivery startup The Pill Club; on-demand staffing company Wonolo and TokenSoft, a platform for compliant token sales.

The new capital is a huge vote of confidence in both Nahigian, a Los Angeles native who spent years as an investor at Summit Partners, Accel and Coatue Management before founding the mobile job platform, Jobr; and Ajao, who only began working in venture as a corporate investor with Workday Ventures.

Previously, the serial entrepreneur launched several companies, including Identified, which was sold to Workday, and Tuenti, which Telefonica acquired for $100 million back in 2010. Ajao also has the distinction of co-founding Cabify, which raised at a $1.4 billion valuation back in 2018.

And he was Nahigian’s first investor in Jobr. The pair stayed in touch, discussed startups and potential deals, and ultimately decided to go into business together back when the firm was first getting off the ground.

These days, Ajao believes the public’s fears of automation coming for people’s jobs have been replaced with a realization that automation is “essential to survival for millions of people and small and medium businesses” looking to stay afloat amid the wave of economic shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Moreover, with issues of racial, economic, and gender inequality front and center, it is evident today more than ever that we have a collective responsibility to focus on urgently solving problems that are actually important for 99% of people,” Ajao wrote in a blog post announcing the new Base10 fund.

As the co-founder of what is one of the largest Black-led venture funds, with $400 million in assets under management, Ajao is taking this moment to situate his fund in a place that supports the development of technology for the 99%.

Examples of portfolio companies stepping in to solve real business problems abound, writes Ajao in his blog post, from a family-owned restaurant in San Francisco using Virtual Kitchen Company to transition its operations to a full-service delivery model; to restaurants across the Southeast using PopMenu. There’re also newer portfolio company investments like AMI, a Salesforce-style software platform for direct marketers.

As employers responded to the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 epidemic by slashing jobs, many laid-off workers turned to direct sales to support their families, Ajao said. Tools like AMI are helping these stay-at-home entrepreneurs continue to make money as their main source of income.

New investments in the firm’s second fund include companies like Wise, which gives online storefronts and gig economy workers a way to set up bank accounts online easily; Mimic, which is building a distributed kitchen network for Brazil; and Lana, the financial management service for gig workers in Latin America.

These new deals illustrate the firm’s belief that “the tech industry’s collective responsibility [is] to focus on the problems that affect 99% of people, and to work in tandem with communities, governments, and existing Real Economy companies to solve these problems.”

Ultimately, Ajao and Nahigian are attributing their success to what amounts to the old (and overused) investment cliche that investors go where opportunities are going to be.

“If the VC industry as a whole is overlooking minorities, you can generate alpha by simply taking steps to ensure that you don’t have this same blind spot,” Ajao writes.

 

Source: Tech Crunch

 

 

 

1 min read

This Black Venture Capitalist sold his former company for $100 Million

Adeyemi (“Ade”) Ajao is co-founder & Managing Partner at Base10 Partners, an early stage venture capital fund.

Ade Ajao

Black Venture Capitalist

Base10 recently made news for raising $137 million, the most money ever raised by a Black-led  venture capital fund.

Before Base10, Ade was a co-founder of Tuenti (The “Spanish Facebook”). He launched Tuenti in 2005 and in 2010, it was acquired by Spanish telecommunications giant, Telefonica $100m.

Black Venture Capitalist

Ade was also co-founder of Identified (acquired by Workday in 2014 for an unspecified amount) and a founding investor of Cabify, the largest ride sharing company in Latin America. Cabify is currently valued at over $1 Billion.

As an angel investor, Ade has participated in more than 40 deals including companies like Dollar Shave Club (acquired by Unilever), RelateIQ (Acquired by Salesforce), Jobr (Acquired by Monster), Instacart and Reflektive.

Joaquin Ayuso de Paul, Ade’s co-founder from Tuenti once stated, “He is the guy that trusted me to be his copartner on Tuenti.com project. He is the mastermind behind the social network idea and concept.”

Ade volunteers with CODE2040 to create access, awareness, and opportunities for gifted Black and Latin engineering talent.

 

-Tony O. Lawson


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