🏃🏽♀️💨 The marathon of raising a fund, $19.5B in LATAM, combating loneliness, and more
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A fund manager's journey to launching a VC fund & success
Where to learn more about & how to invest in Ganas Ventures
Carolyn Childers and Lindsay Kaplan (Chief), Adeyemi Ajao and TJ Nahigian (Base10)
👋🏽 Hey all! For those who are wondering about our recent announcement about pausing on new LaaS activities, as you will appreciate, it was an incredibly tough (and sad!) decision. I'm not quite ready to dive into it right now but I know there are plenty of lessons here that I'll want to share with you when the time is right. In the meantime, thank you for all of your support and encouragement. It really does mean the world to me.
⏩ Move forward and focus. Gotta move forward. So, today I want to share a little about what’s happened behind the scenes in fundraising for three reasons: keeping it real, highlighting the importance of adjustments, and staying focused on your goal(s).
☕️ I launched Ganas Ventures in March publicly, talked to over 100 LPs, and raised ~$3M from 50+ LPs. We’ve garnered over $9.5M in LP community interest (which is great!) but many interest checks are small checks that, if we accepted all, would make it impossible for Ganas to achieve our target of $10M and honor the SEC’s LP count limit. To adjust for this, we decided to make our minimum check size $50K and made a small-check LP wait-list (we plan to open it up once we have more of the fund raised 🙂). The challenge: $50K checks are taking just as many calls and work as $200K checks.
🏃🏽♀️💨 Keep it real to avoid the sunk-cost effect. It’s true: life’s a marathon, not a sprint. And, as a 3x marathon runner, I know that in order to be successful, strategy and pacing are required. So, I’m going to take a couple of days to analyze the data and use insights to optimize our fundraising strategy.
🎯 Adjust to achieve goals. I’m certain with an adjusted strategy and setting up for a more sustainable pace we can achieve our goal to raise the $10M of capital for Ganas Ventures. And that excites me because it’ll be the start to investing in the best pre-seed and seed community-driven companies, being a successful fund (AKA creating generational wealth in community), and enabling us to change the world!
✨ Lolita Taub
twitter | luma | Recently in Techcrunch, Assure, Peru Reports, and Lioness.
👉🏽 PS If you want to invest in Ganas, you can let me know here and if you want to pitch Ganas for funding you can do that here.
Congrats
TJ Nahigian, Adeyemi Ajao and the Base10 Partners team raised $460M for their new fund. Brianne Kimmel raised $35M for Worklife VC’s Fund II. Claude Grunitzky raised $28M for Equity Alliance. Arlan Hamilton, Christie Pitts, and Brittany Davis raised $1M for Backstage Capital from Comcast. Lindsay Kaplan and Carolyn Childers took Chief to unicorn status. Arjay Ruggles launched the Community Concierge offering for HomeRoom (port co). Anna Fang Hamm, Mar Hershenson, Kirsten Green, Ann Miura-Ko, and more made the Forbes Midas List.
Sponsored | SVB Startup Banking is a community of former founders, operators, and investors passionate about supporting founders on their path to success. Beyond banking, we work with early-stage founders to help them navigate the challenges of funding and scaling a startup from Day 1. Please reach out to connect with us! We'd love to learn more about what you're building and how we can help. - Rochelle & Vanessa
Funders
Miami Herald | VCs interested in LATAM: learn more about the $19.5B of investment that poured into LATAM in 2021
Arvid Kahl | Emerging VCs: discover new VC thought leaders to follow with this cool Twitter list hack
Startup-Investor Matching Tool | VCs: meet thesis-aligned underrepresented founders
GP-LP Matching Tool | LPs: get thesis-aligned intros to underrepresented GPs
Sponsored | Visible Hands is a pre-seed fund with a 14-week, virtual-first accelerator program that supports overlooked talent in building technology startups by providing company-building services and investments of up to $175K. Applications are open. Learn more and apply here!
Founders
Goscha | Founders combating loneliness: check out tips on creating community without the structure of a traditional FT job
a16z | Early-stage founders: read this thread to learn more about a16z’s new Start! program
Asking for a founder | Founders: learn what’s “normal” with VCs and advisory shares pre-investment
LaaS | Underrepresented founders: get resources made for you
Sponsored | Konvoy Ventures is hiring an Investment Analyst to join their team in Denver, Colorado. If you’re interested in working at a venture capital firm investing in gaming, check out the job description and apply!
Money
New York State | NYC founders: apply for up to $50k in grants
SoGal Foundation | Black female founders: apply for $5-$10K in grants
1863 Ventures | Black founders: apply to get a 3Rs $5K grant
Non-dilutive capital | Create a profile to find non-dilutive capital
Equity Crowdfunding | Raise up to $5 million
Startup-Investor Matching Tool | Founders: get intros to investors
Jobs
Konvoy | Analyst (Denver, Colorado)
Ganas Ventures | PT Associate (Remote)
Ganas Ventuers | PT Community Manager (Remote)
Zeta | Mobile Engineer (Remote, US)
Edlyft | Senior Software Engineer (Remote, US)
Lyonshare | Chief of Staff (Remote, Global)
💥 See all open roles and post yours here.
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