🙌🏽 Ganas Ventures Anniversary Celebration: Be Part of Our Community's Efforts to Create Change and Empowerment
This is a special edition of Lolita's Newsletter, a bi-weekly newsletter of curated actionable insights and resources for underestimated founders, funders, and friends.
Photo: Ganas Ventures's portfolio founder family and me
Happy International Women's Day! Ganas Ventures is proud to share that it is celebrating its 1st-anniversary today too. Below we share updates and learned lessons, talk about going against the norm, and offer an exclusive invite for our community - you!
🏃🏽♀️💨 Updates
Thanks to the support of top-tier, community-driven limited partners (LPs), including Sweater Ventures, New Chic Capital, FirstLook Digital Assets, Elias (Co-founder at unicorn Drift in the US), Beezer (Partner Sapphire Ventures), Arlan (Managing Partner at Backstage), Satya (Partner Homebrew and Midas List member), Dani (Co-founder at unicorn Cornershop in LATAM), and many more members of our community, we have received over $4.2 million in commitments to invest in pre-seed and seed community-driven startups in the US and Latin America.
Since our launch last year, we have also received over 2,500 startup submissions and invested in 6 startups in the US and Latin America. All of these startups were led by BIPOC, with 67% led by women and 17% led by LGBTQ+ founders. Ganas could not have achieved this without our community, and we realize that we could do better for our community. Allow me to explain.
As you may have read in our launch post or Sweater’s LP investment memo, Ganas believes in creating generational wealth with the power of community, as highlighted in our thesis of investing in diverse, community-driven founders addressing large problems in growing markets. In other words, we aim to support the best founders, generate high returns, and change the narrative of who has the power to invest and who receives the investment.
To achieve this goal, we believe that the money we raise and use to invest in our community’s founders will be most effective if it comes from firms and individuals who represent our population of underestimated and underrepresented founders and allies. These investors believe in our thesis, the power of community, and know that we can achieve outsized returns by punching above our weight with their support while also challenging the status quo. These are the limited partners we want to work hard for!
📚 Learned lessons
The thing is that we haven’t made it as easy for members of our community to join us on our mission to create outsized returns and change the narrative. We have identified a few gaps, including (1) not providing enough education on what it means to invest in a fund as an LP and (2) starting with a minimum individual LP check of $50K. While we have shared some VC fund-LP education via my newsletter and thought we were doing great by making our minimum check size $50K (considering the industry standard is a 6-figure check), we need to do better. We need more educational resources and to acknowledge that $50K is A LOT (even if you are an accredited investor*-making $200K a year as an individual or $300K as a couple). Many of us in our BIPOC, women, LGBTQ+, and ally community have financial responsibilities beyond ourselves. As a result, $50K is not an amount many of us can manage, making it difficult for those who want to join the Ganas LP family.
To address these issues:
We are sharing more investor educational resources. You can get notifications on content by following us on Medium or LinkedIn.
We are, starting today, accepting a limited amount of angel LP checks, smaller than $50K. Note: Ganas cannot accept unlimited checks because the SEC limits fund managers on the number of investors we can have in our funds.
*We understand that many of us do not meet the SEC's definition of an accredited investor, which legally prevents us from investing as limited partners in funds. However, we believe in creating pathways to break into venture capital and have thus established our Ganas Deal Partner (scout) Program. This program enables unaccredited investors to join the Ganas family, build their investor track record, and earn carry on deals they refer that Ganas backs.
👊🏽 Going against the norm
We are going against the norm** by building this fund. Why? Because we envision a world different from the one we currently live in. Our goal is to support the best founders in our community and work hard to make money for those community members who believe in us (shoutout to our first-believer LPs!). We want to be part of the change we want to see in the world, where we can feel safe in our diverse and allied existence, where we are included, equal, and truly feel a sense of belonging.
**Venture capital funds are typically led by multiple partners, have six-figure LP check size minimums, invest in a small number of companies, and prefer a limited number of LPs and to not have them involved in the fund. They often describe themselves as differentiated because of their pedigreed and elite 1% network. Conversely, Ganas Ventures is led by just one fund partner. We aim to back many startups because we know that if we back the founders in our community, they will build unicorns that will create products and services that serve our community’s needs and wants. We accept smaller checks, want to have the maximum amount of LPs allowed, and we want our LPs involved as much or as little as they want because we want to grow with a new wave of investors who come from our community. And, most importantly, we understand and celebrate our superpower of community. We are stronger together.
🙌🏽 Exclusive Invite
All that said, I'm excited to invite you to learn more about Ganas Ventures (check out our LP deck, overview, and FAQ) because what drove us to launch Ganas and our purpose has always been community - creating value with and for it.
Let's change the narrative together. Take action now and let us know if you want to become an angel LP and a member of our Ganas Ventures LP family.
Thank you for believing in the power of community and supporting me!
✨ Lolita Taub, GP at Ganas Ventures | twitter | luma
Additional reading and resources
Ganas Ventures: How We Source, Select, and Support Startups
The Rise of Community-Driven Companies: Why They are Great for Founders and Investors
The Benefits of Becoming an LP to a VC Fund During a Downturn and Why Everyone Should Consider It
The Benefits of Investing as an LP in VC Funds Compared to Angel Investing in Startups
Early-stage micro-fund VC 101: What Investors, Founders, and Scouts Should Know
Community-Driven Companies: What They Are and Why We’re Investing in Them
About: Ganas Ventures invests in pre-seed and seed community-driven startups in the US and Latin America. To learn more visit us at ganas.vc.
About Lolita Taub: As a Latina emerging manager and general partner at Ganas Ventures, I always want to work with or invest in community-driven founders, funders, and friends. I have a strong track record with 15 years of experience in the Silicon Valley ecosystem. I have sold over $70 million in tech products and services, made over 90 investments as an angel investor and venture capitalist with Backstage Capital, Lightspeed, and The Community Fund, and had 3 successful exits from my portfolio.
Forbes, Inc Magazine, Nasdaq, and others acknowledge my efforts in advocating investment in underestimated and undervalued founders. I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Southern California and earned my MBA from the IE Business School.
In addition to my professional accomplishments, I am a dedicated community builder with more than 79,000 founders, funders, and ecosystem friends. And I want to back founders who care about the community, invite LPs into the Ganas Ventures family, and build wealth in the community that will last for generations.
Disclaimer: Ganas Ventures is a 506c fund that allows us to publicly solicit for our raise. All are welcome to apply to become an LP; however, commitments to Ganas Ventures will only be accepted from accredited investors.