Announcing The Community Fund

We’re thrilled to announce that we’re launching The Community Fund. It’s 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.

We are looking for nine incredible investment partners to join The Community Fund to invest in the most brilliant and driven founders from their communities.

We know that the typical investor applicant usually rocks a Patagonia vest and Allbird kicks. For The Community Fund, we are focused on being intentionally inclusive and looking beyond typical profiles and pedigree to find investors that bring a fresh perspective — and maybe even a fresh outfit choice ;)

How It Got Started

We both had the shared vision to start a fund to reap outsized returns through access to differentiated networks and community-driven companies.

It wasn’t until we connected over Twitter that we realized how much our efforts complemented one another. Jesse, a general partner at Flybridge Capital, was looking to broaden his reach to founder communities he wasn’t a part of — mainly non-white, non-NYC/Boston. And, Lolita, a startup executive, investor, and community builder, was looking to amplify her impact and increase the dollars going into underestimated founders and increasing the number of investors from underestimated backgrounds.

Through the power of DMs — and the full support of our two firms, Flybridge and Catalyte — we’re able to launch The Community Fund.

Vision For The Fund

In the next three years, we have an ambitious goal of making 100 investments in early-stage community-driven companies. Luckily, Jesse’s team at Flybridge Capital is providing us with their full institutional support. They are committed to changing the narrative of where unicorns are born and by whom they’re founded.

They’ve already proven this with XFactor Ventures. In three years since launch, XFactor has invested in over 54 female-founded companies with an all-female founder investment partner team showing that game-changing companies can (and will) be built by women. And they’ve proven their commitment to the ecosystem of under-estimated tech professionals through their work co-founding Hack.Diversity. Flybridge aims to build off their success with XFactor and achieve similarly great returns with The Community Fund.

Are you interested in joining our team? Here’s what we’re looking for:

Candidates that want to:

• Establish an investor track record
• Work with other investors
• Change the status quo
• Potentially launch a fund or pursue a VC career afterward

Even more specifically…

We believe the best investors hold these characteristics:

• Values: Community-centric, collaborative, transparent, scrappy
• Network: Have access to differentiated deal flow
• Track Record: Already investing or would if capital was accessible. Want to invest in pre-seed/seed companies that will become unicorns
• Bandwidth: Minimum of 2–4 hours per week to dedicate to working with the investment partner team over the next year

By joining the Community Fund team, you’ll:

• Receive carry
• Be able to write checks to founders running community-driven companies
• Immerse yourself within our investment partner community

Sound like a fit? Please apply here.

If it’s not the right fit for you, and you know someone who’d be incredible in this role, please pass along this page. Sharing is caring.