🔥🔥🔥 We’re officially launching The Community Fund with our investment team!
Special edition of my practical bi-weekly newsletter for early-stage founders, funders, and friends.
Jesse and I are excited to share that we’re officially launching The Community Fund with a brilliant team that is on fire. 🔥🔥🔥 Help us welcome our investment team: Aaron Samuels, Cheryl Campos, Calanthia Mei, Dave Salvant, Elias Torres, Hassan Bhatti, Kara Weber, Melissa Moore, Mike Swift, Sonia Nagar, and Songe LaRon!
And we can’t wait to start investing! So, if you’re an early-stage community-driven company that’s fundraising, learn more about us, and, if we’re a fit, reach out.
✨ Our investment team selection process
Round ①
+450 community-passionate and talented individuals expressed interest in becoming an investment partner and less than 10% moved on to the second round. The selection was difficult, and we had to decline many great applicants based on relative qualifications (e.g., investor experience/potential, differentiated deal flow across communities in the US, activity in building-engaging startup-VC communities).
Round ②
The next round was incredibly challenging, as we had quickly become fans of the +40 outstanding community-driven candidates. Because we had limited partner spots, we knew we had to pass on ~80% of these candidates. Like round 1, we considered investment experience/potential, US differentiated deal flow access, and their involvement in the startup-VC ecosystem. For round 2, though, we honed in on individual candidate business areas of expertise, cultural add, and collaborative potential. We then considered what candidates together could create an outperforming investment team - where the members complement each other on their expertise and areas of interest.
At the end of the investment team selection process, 2% of all applicants were invited to join The Community Fund. And that led us to our 11 incredible partners. Jesse and I are lucky we get to work with each of them!
🙌🏽 The Community Fund’s team demographics
I’m grateful to have a team that spans deep and wide into the communities where the next unicorns will be born and to which the VC industry has had limited to no access to date. We’re going to change the way the world thinks about who builds the most successful companies and who funds them! Community will be at the center of all of it.
Below is our gender and ethnicity breakdown relative to the US VC industry.
The next time anyone complains about “the pipeline problem,” I’m sending them this chart! - Calanthia Mei
💰 The Community Fund
The Community Fund is a $5 million early-stage fund that invests in community-driven companies through an investment partner team. We believe that companies with community at the center of all that they do will become unicorns and produce outsized returns.