You may remember me writing about a new venture capital fund focused on local tech startups that local Portland startup community organizer Josh Carter tried to start a few years back, prior to the pandemic. Like startups, raising a VC fund — of any size — can be a challenging road, fraught with peril. Especially for first-time fund managers. Sometimes they work out. Sometimes they don’t. (That one didn’t.) But you always learn something. Now, Josh has taken the learning from that fundraising journey, put the concept of 1859 Ventures to rest, and decided to pursue a new fund. Meet Founders First Fund.
While the fund may be a new endeavor, the motivations to form the fund remain largely the same:
When I was a founder fundraising in the area what I found both fascinating and frustrating was watching as many of the area funds would sit around waiting to see who would invest in a company first. Then, and only then, they would possibly commit to a small amount of capital into those companies. But the frustration didn’t stop there. Many of the funds were making founders go through a due diligence process that was cumbersome, tedious, lengthy, and completely unnecessary. I chalk it up to a mix of risk aversion, lack of founder empathy, and thinking that because they’re one of the few funds writing checks in the area they can come up with a process that makes sense for their firm.
Founders First Fund aims to be the first institutional commitment into an early-stage startup so that we can get them the help they need to continue to scale, give them guidance, resources, and (most importantly) just get the fuck out of their way.
For more on the 1859 Ventures experience and how it informed the formation of this new VC fund, “Founders First Fund & Lots of False Starts.”
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