After over 18 months of fundraising (primarily in a global pandemic and over Meets, Zooms, Teams, and the occasional Webex), we are excited to announc

Collab Capital Closes $50M First Fund to Invest in Black Innovators

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2021-05-27 18:00:10

After over 18 months of fundraising (primarily in a global pandemic and over Meets, Zooms, Teams, and the occasional Webex), we are excited to announce the close of Collab Capital Fund I. We’ve garnered the support of 99 Limited Partners and are thrilled to have over $50M to invest in the best Black led early stage startups over the next few years. We have been intentional and specific about our focus on Black founders since 2018, when we first began planning the launch of our fund. At that time and when we began fundraising in 2019, many people told us that focusing exclusively on Black founders was too narrow and that we would not be successful in raising the fund or finding enough qualified Black founders to back. We never wavered from our mission, and are proud today to be in a position to write meaningful first checks and roll up our sleeves to help Black innovators build world class businesses that scale, create jobs, and make a positive impact.

We write checks between $500–750K, with 30% of the fund reserved for follow on investments up to $2M. We will invest in 50 startups across the US over the next 3–5 years. The majority of our investments will fund companies in our hometown of Atlanta and in cities like DC, Houston, Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans, which have a high concentration of Black entrepreneurs and a low concentration of risk capital. We are particularly interested in founders who are using technology to solve problems related to the future of work, learning and care (i.e. elder care, fem-tech, mental wellness), as we think these areas have the highest impact on society overall. Black folks are often the most marginalized in each of these areas and therefore are more likely to have experience and perspective that can lend to the best, most inclusive solutions. We invest in startups that are past the idea stage, where the founder has already built something and is validating it with early customers or users. We prefer to lead deals, and don’t need to wait on other investors to show up in order to write a check. In fact, we think our check size is typically adequate to reach the first important milestones in an early-stage startup. While we’ll occasionally participate in rounds (1–3 deals per year), we have a strong preference toward leading deals on our SPACE agreement (keep reading to learn more about the SPACE).