MaC Venture Capital is the result of a merge between Cross Culture Ventures and M Ventures.
Courtesy of MaC Venture Capital
In an industry as small as venture capital, it didn’t take long for the teams behind Cross Culture Ventures and M Ventures to realize they had the same investment strategy: to identify and invest in underrepresented tech entrepreneurs whose companies have the potential to become household names.
Two years later, competition turned into collaboration. The result: MaC Venture Capital, a newly merged, majority Black-led investment firm that on Thursday raised an inaugural $110 million to double down on supporting overlooked tech startups on the brink of disruption, with participation from companies including Foot Locker, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Howard University.
The firm’s four-person team brings to the table strong portfolio companies—including Mayvenn and Blavity—and a finger on the pulse of emerging cultural and behavioral trends across industries including fintech, e-commerce, media and aerospace.
It also boasts a diverse range of professional backgrounds: Marlon Nichols is a serial venture capitalist and cofounder of Cross Culture Ventures, while former Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty, former William Morris Agency talent agent Michael Palank and Macro founder and CEO Charles D. King launched M Ventures.
“I want to build the best seed stage fund in the world,” says Nichols. “The only way you can do that is to have a super team, and we thought if we came together it would be like the Avengers.”
Part of what makes MaC Venture Capital different, King says, is its “rolodex and relationships to anyone in media and entertainment.”
Of the more than 135 companies in which the four founders have collectively invested, 25 have been through MaC Venture Capital. Some 76% of these companies have Black, Latinx or female founders. “Diversity is part of our ethos,” adds Nichols. “Our portfolio should at least mirror the demographic of our country. It’s the right thing to do. And in the business of venture capital, it’s the economic thing to do.”
“We try to give our companies a leg up by encouraging them to become more diverse organizations,” Palank adds. “Diverse teams outperform. We’re one of the uniquely positioned companies to do that.”
Also important to MaC Venture Capital is the problems its portfolio companies are aiming to solve: Mahmee, for example, is a Black female-founded platform streamlining maternity care management, and Goodfair, is an online thrift store fighting climate change.
With its new funding, the firm intends to make at least 40 investments of, on average, $1 million.
“Our goal is to help entrepreneurs change the world,” says Fenty. “We’ve already shown that we’re well on the way towards doing that.”
