Series

Marginalized groups remain drastically underrepresented as recipients of venture capital funding in the United States.  The numbers are startlingly low.  Perhaps where you might expect them to be in the 1960s of 1970s, but certainly not today.  The deployment of venture capital remains archaic and exclusionary.  In 2022, female-founded companies accounted for just 2 percent of total capital invested in venture-backed startups.  Currently, only 2 percent of venture-backed founders are Latino and only 1 percent are black.  

While there has been some effort to change where funds currently flow for the better, these numbers have barely budged over the past decade.  Though more certainly needs to be done, the United States has progressed considerably in terms of equity, opportunity, and inclusivity in recent years.  Unfortunately, the venture capital industry is stuck in the past.

Series hopes to increase the amount of venture capital flowing to minority and marginalized groups.  Currently venture capital flows are not representative of the diversity or demography of the United States.  We hope to rectify this issue through a more equitable and merit-based sourcing process, evaluation regimen, and due diligence system.  In doing so, we hope to dismantle the structural barriers to financial inclusion in the venture capital ecosystem. 

Our solution is to create a standard application for early-stage venture capital funding modelled off of the Common Application.  Through Series, applicants will be able to fill out a single application and have it arrive in the inbox of venture capital funds and independent investors of their choosing seamlessly.  The questionnaire will be modelled of the Y Combinator application, which has proved to be hugely effective in the early phases of deal flow diligence.  

Similar to the college admissions process, Series will also provide founders with the resources and tools they need to best help them best complete their application.  This will include everything from sample answers, brainstorm questions, and writing tips to information on the funds themselves and search functions to help them select the best funds for their company.  

For our MVP, we will be using Airtable to process the applications.  This will allow them to be directed directly to inboxes of investors.  We are planning on charging venture capital funds and angel investors to use the platform so as to not compromise on our mission of empowering underrepresented founders, levelling the playing field, and promoting financial inclusion.

Like any effective marketplace, Series helps both parties in the exchange.  For founders, we make raising a seed round easier than ever before.  We not only streamline the process and make it far less time intensive, but also put people in a position to put their and their companies best foot forward.  

For investors, we provide them with increased deal flow, higher quality deal flow, and data insights on their pipeline.  Investors can still maintain traditional channels for proprietary deal flow in conjunction with using Series.  We are hoping to add another pipeline.

While our main target population is underrepresented founders, we also expect Series to be hugely beneficial to venture capital funds and angel investors by making sourcing more efficient and effective.  We hope to help investors expand their pipeline, improve the quality of their pipeline, and provide them with advanced analytics and insights into their pipeline.

We believe Series has the potential to directly and meaningfully improve the lives of our target population (minority founders) and effectively solve our core issue: the financial exclusion of marginalized groups in the venture capital ecosystem.  Our contention is that the key EDI metrics in early-stage venture capital remain so low and disproportionate to actual demographics not because investors are systemically and deliberately choosing to not consider applications from marginalized groups, but because they are not seeing and evaluating enough to begin with.   In many respects, VC is like a country club.  It matters who you know.  Quite often, the people who do not have friends or family members who can make a warm introduction are already marginalized.  This leaves them with few open doors to venture-funding, a major tool for economic growth and mobility. Series opens up the VC application process.  We are working to level the playing field and democratizing the process by allowing anyone with a good idea to have a fair shot at succcess.

Our team has first-hand experience dealing with the antiquated VC landscape.  We have not only struggled to find a channel to pitch to investors, but also have experienced how inefficient and time-intensive the process is even when funds have a centralized intake form or outreach email.  We have had to independently reach out and apply to dozens of different funds.  Having recently gone through the university admissions process, we also are familiar with how that system works, and how it could work equally well in venture.  

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We are applying to Solve because we think it has the potential to serve as an unparalleled launching pad for Series. There is not one single aspect of Solve that is exclusively appealing.  We are not applying solely for leadership coaching and strategic advice, media exposure, or financial support.  Rather, we believe that all these resources in tandem will serve as an excellent catalyst for the growth and success of Series.

Series has the potential to flip the venture capital industry on its head.  If we are successful, we hope to do to early stage sourcing what the Common Application did to college applications: reinvent it to such a degree that people cannot even remember what it was like before.  Today, almost every college in the United States is on the Common Application.  It serves over 1 million students a year and has over 1,000 college and university partners around the world and across all 50 states.  It is inseparable and indistinguishable from the university admissions process.  We hope to completely change how early stage venture capital works.

In the coming years, we hope to steadily grow across three major areas: the number of founders using Series, the number of investment partners on board, and the number of applications submitted.  By the end of this year, we are hoping to have 10 partner VC funds on the site, 1,000 founders, and 5,000 submitted applications. 

From here, we will analyze our data and see where Series is working and where it can be improved.  In essence, whether our demographic statistics and diversity metrics are better than the industry average.  Later down the line, we hope to be such a large player in the ecosystem that we have the capacity to single-handedly shift the statistics at-large across the United States.

We will keep track of a variety of metrics in order to effectively measure our impact goals and gauge our success.  For the most part, these metrics will be self-declared biographical and demographic questions.  For instance, gender, disability status, veteran status, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. 

Our team is exceptionally excited about Series and bullish about our potential for impact.  2 years down the line, we hope that the demographic breakdown of the founders applying through Series and receiving funding through Series is more representative and diverse than the industry at large.  10 years from now, we hope to own so much of early-stage VC sourcing that we can move the needle on who is receiving funding across the entire ecosystem.

The core technology that powers our solution, at least in the immediate future, is Airtable.  Later down the line, we hope to offer advanced data analytics and insights to users on both end of the exchange (investors and founders).

Given that that the goal of Series is to increase financial inclusion and promote equity and diversity in early-stage venture incorporating these three principles (diversity, equity, and inclusion) into our own work, team, and culture will be critical.

We will charge a yearly membership fee for angel investors and institutional investors.

We will charge investors to use our platform.

The Common Application, though a non-profit, provides a useful example of how we can achieve financial sustainability.