Big-name investors pour $50 mln into Uber co-founder’s new incubator Expa

A new incubator/seed fund called Expa Capital has raised $50 million from a Who’s Who of investors and company founders, including David Bonderman, Sir Richard Branson, Li Ka-Shing and Meg Whitman.

Expa, which bills itself as a “startup studio,” was created by Garrett Camp, chairman and co-founder of StumbleUpon and Uber.

Expa said in an SEC filing in February that it planned to raise $75 million. Today, the San Francisco-based outfit said in a blog post that it had raised $50 million from Camp as well as:

• heavyweight investors Bonderman, founder of TPG; Branson, founder of Virgin; Whitman, CEO of Hewlett-Packard; Ka-Shing, a Hong Kong tycoon; Solina Chau,director of the Li Ka-Shing Foundation; and Ram Shriram, an early Google investor and founding board member.
• venture firms First Round Capital, Sherpa Ventures, SV Angel and Lerer Ventures.
• and startup gurus Kees Koolen, chairman of Booking.com; Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress; Scott Belsky, founder of Behance; Josh Spear, founder of Undercurrent; and Tim Ferriss, angel investor and author of “The 4-Hour Workweek.”

Expa plans to seed startups with $500,000 to $1 million. It did not state how many companies it plans to back each year. However, it said in the blog post that its “team will spend significant time on every project” and “actively guide founders from inception toward product-market fit.”

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