Hustle Fund Raises $33.6 Million To Democratize Access To Pre-Seed Capital

The general partners at the Hustle Fund don’t need to be told that the fund’s strategy of investing $25,000 initial checks into “hilariously early” companies goes against venture capital norms. They’ve heard it all before.“I think the first reaction is a consistent ‘Are you fricking crazy?’” says cofounder Eric Bahn.

But perhaps crazier, it’s appeared to resonate so far for Bahn and his fellow partners Elizabeth Yin and Shiyan Koh with the the group they care about the most: entrepreneurs. Hustle Fund’s first investment vehicle backed 101 startups. Now with a $33.6 million second fund, Hustle Fund is looking to invest in 200 more, Bahn tells Forbes.

Hustle Fund’s second fund is about three times larger than its first, announced in September 2018; new of the fund’s pending status was reported by TechCrunch in November. New to California-based Hustle Fund’s investors this time is Foundry Group Next; LINE Ventures and Shanda Group re-upped after backing the first fund, too.

Bah, Koh and Yin initially teamed up in 2017 with a shared question: “why do the same type of dudes get disproportionate access to seed capital?” Yin and Bahn worked at early-stage venture fund 500 Startups at the time, and Koh as a vice president at NerdWallet. Yin and Koh were childhood friends from reading camp; they’d met Bahn in 2000, when all three were freshmen at Stanford. Tech veterans all, the trio doubted that the disproportionate access to capital that men in the startup ecosystem enjoyed derived from similarly disproportionate talent.

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