Thirty-six VC firms have been selected for Recast Accelerate, a program designed to help early-stage venture funds led by women and non-binary people, according to a statement.
The Accelerate program is run by VC fund-of-funds manager Recast Capital with support from Pivotal Ventures. It grants GPs $100,000 each in expenses to help them build out their operations. In addition, the managers receive executive coaching and access to Recast’s enablement program, a 12-week course designed to educate firms on fundraising strategies and firm building.
Related: See Venture Capital Journal’s list of more than 100 women-led VC funds
To earn a place in the program, participants “need to have a vision as to what their fund is doing, they need to have a fund name and they need to have relevant industry experience that will allow them to be good pickers of great companies. They also need to show how they will gain access to add value to those businesses,” Recast co-founder Courtney McCrea told Venture Capital Journal in a July interview.
The cohort was originally intended to be 30 managers, but the volume and quality of applications led Recast to increase the number to 36, Recast co-founder Sara Zulkosky told affiliate title New Private Markets. In total, 87 VCs put themselves forward after applications opened in May. New cohorts will be announced on an annual basis.
Eighty-three percent of the managers included are raising their first fund and 53 percent are one-person operations, per the statement. “We did ask about track record, but that certainly wasn’t the Holy Grail of this process at all,” said Zulkosky. “What we were excited to do was to identify funds that were led by general partners that had really unique industry expertise that could really bring with them a differentiated investment thesis for their fund.”
Some of the GPs selected for the cohort have already raised their first fund. For example, Noramay Cadena and Shayna Harris, co-founders of Supply Change Capital, told Venture Capital Journal in July that they had held a final close on $40 million for their debut fund after about two-years of fundraising.
As well as helping specific managers, the Recast program also forms part of a research project. “We’re essentially testing a hypothesis with this support that by supporting more women-led and non-binary-led emerging fund managers in market, particularly those focused at the earliest stages of company development, that we will see more underrepresented founders receive funding,” Zulkosky explained.
To that end, Recast receives nothing in return for the funding and resources it is providing to the cohort, but is asking them report on the demographics of the founders in which they are investing from the fund being raised while going through the program.
Participants in the new program include:
- Chi Achebe, Achebe Capital
- Annie Luchsinger, Breakers VC
- Pamela York, Kathy Tune, Capita3 Ventures
- Tessa Flippin, Capitalize VC
- Sally Zheng, Centenarian Fund
- Jennifer Kan, Michael Luciani, Climate Capital
- Rebecca Gevalt, Meg Vorland, Meagan Metzger, Dcode Capital
- Megan Maloney, Dria Ventures
- Mahrinah Shije, Endemic Venture Capital
- Jenny Fielding, Scott Hartley, Everywhere Ventures
- Connie Bowen, Farmhand Ventures
- Jenny Barba, Jeff Chu, Features Capital
- Kathryn Finney, Genius Guild Greenhouse Fund
- Jennifer Keiser Neundorfer, Maren Thomas Bannon, January Ventures
- Helene Servillon, JourneyOne Ventures
- Ariane Tom, Kaleida Capital
- Madeline Darcy, Kaya Ventures
- Rohini Chakravarthy, Chad Bailey, NewBuild Venture Capital
- Batchimeg Ganbaatar, Tem Tumurbat, Nomadic Venture Partners
- Kimberley Nixon, Open Venture Capital
- Erica Wenger, Park Rangers Capital
- Jenny He, Position Ventures
- Rachel ten Brink, Herman Goihman, Red Bike Capital
- Lisa Morales-Hellebo, Brian Laung Aoaeh, Refashiond Ventures
- Tahira Dosani, Vikas Raj, ResilienceVC
- Tara Tan, Strange VC
- Sonam Velani, Laura Fox, Streetlife Ventures
- Noramay Cadena, Shayna Harris, Supply Change Capital
- Sydney Thomas, Symphonic Capital
- Stephanie Campell, Leslie Goldman, Diana Murakhovskaya, The Artemis Fund
- Himalaya Rao-Potlapally, The BFM Fund
- Amber Illig, The Council Fund
- Allison Barr Allen, Trail Run Capital
- Danielle Steer, Amanda Heyman, Adam Choe, Tundra Ventures
- Brita Rosenheim, Beatriz Franco, Vita Vera Ventures
- Gale Wilkinson, Caroline Casson, Vitalize Venture Capital
Recast, which launched in 2020, began raising its inaugural fund in May 2021, seeking $100 million, according to a regulatory filing. Recast Capital Fund I closed on $6 million from three investors as of March 10, according to a separate filing.
Additional reporting by Lawrence Aragon
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