I’ve always wanted to be a VC, but I never considered raising my own fund. That was for experienced angel investors and founders, and I fit neither of those categories, so I never thought it would be possible.
Until one night, when I took the first step to raising a venture fund:
The replies to a tweet about naming a fund after my tattoo made me think of the idea as more than just Twitter content, and I stayed up all night putting together the first deck for Shrug Capital.
Shrug Capital
Shrug Capital is a $3M consumer focused Angel Fund, backed by some of the best angels, VCs, and entrepreneurs around. I don’t have a typical investment thesis, but this is how I’ve made investment decisions for every company I’ve committed to invest in, and the 10 companies the fund has backed so far:
Shrug Capital invests in startups and founders that I’m so excited about, I could talk about them to a non-tech audience for more than an hour.
The “non-tech audience” is an extra filter that I think is important for consumer startups.
All-in on Shrug Capital
Throughout the process of raising the fund, I never really considered doing this full time. I joined companies, I wasn’t a founder and I never wanted to become one — until I realized that I’ve already started something, and it was what I wanted to be spending my time on.
Last week, I shared the news with my limited partners:
Thank You
It’s been an incredible past few months! I’m excited to be working with so many great founders, and thankful to all the people who have been supporting me on this journey. I am being mentored by some of best investors and entrepreneurs — people I’ve looked up to and went to see at conferences are now a phone call away, and it all kind of just happened.
I’ll share more of what I learned from reaching out to ~120 people and how I ended up with 73 LPs in a separate post about the fundraising process. A very special thank you to Cyan Banister, who has made all of this possible.
To date, the fund has invested in: 🐼, ⚡️, 🧠, 💚, 👟, 🌊, 🍭, 💡, 🦔, 👧🏻
You can learn more about them at: shrug.vc
