We only invest in companies that are located in the United States and incorporated (C-Corp) in Delaware. We seek out compelling companies building in non-target major cities across the country as well as under the radar companies thriving in coastal metros.

Founder Profile: The Founder & CEO must be representative of the communities we come from. This is core to our strategy and mission of supporting this demographic of historically underfunded entrepreneurs.

Cultivated Relationship: It’s extremely important for us to get to know founders well in advance of needing to raise capital, ideally 3+ months. Within our portfolio, we’ve fostered relationships for 6 months – 2 years before investing. We believe deeply in our ability to assess people and potential which only gets better the more time to we get to spend with founders – observing how they execute on the business and how well they communicate as a CEO. This time also allows us to evaluate if and how we can actually provide tangible value to the growth of the company before we invest.

Technology-based Solution: There are so many existing problems in the world that could and should be solved leveraging technology. If you are building software or leveraging existing software platforms to address the immediate needs of a customer, we’ll take a look.

Early Product-Market Fit: The idea stage and beta stage is too early for us as there are usually not enough data points to validate the need for a product. Once you build something several early customers are willing to use and actually pay for, this is when we like to invest because it means you created tangible value in a market and figured out how to capture that value economically.

Capital Efficiency: Math Matters. Unit Economics Matter. Financial Discipline Matters. It is a fundamental belief of ours that at the earliest stages of company building, frugality is a competitive advantage. As a founder you MUST understand your company’s finances because that is the only way to successfully build and fund a legitimate business.

Strong Market Potential: We look for opportunities where the market is large ($1B+) and fragmented enough where a company with a superior product and aligned revenue model can reasonably capture enough market share to eventually generate $50M – $100M in annual revenue. It’s also important that the market has tailwinds in its favor thus increasing the size or value of the market.

Strong Return Profile: We’re looking to invest in bangers 💥. Every investment we make has to have the potential to return our entire fund. $1B+ outcomes are the 🍒 on top.

Founders must have deep domain expertise within the industry they are building in and have the ability to execute at a high level with a fraction of the capital or resources of their non-underrepresented peers. We prefer to invest in founders who operate autonomously but also have a level of maturity that allows us to trust their judgment whether we agree with their decisions or not. We look for founders that embody humility, resilience, integrity, coachability, positivity and strong communication skills.

Prior To Investment Interaction:
Once we’ve had an initial meeting and expressed interest in a company, we ask founders to send us monthly updates outlining the company’s progress and we schedule meetings every couple of months until the company is ready to raise their seed round.