If you are a Pittsburgh entrepreneur with hopes of scaling your business and need access to capital to make it happen, there are several new funding sources available, both locally and nationally, including funds specifically dedicated to minority and student entrepreneurs.
As part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, the University of Pittsburgh Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Big Idea Center hosted an investor panel that explained the types of startups their funds target, the typical size of their investments, and the qualities they look for in founders and their companies. You can download the video of the event here.
Dorm Room Fund has invested in more than 300 companies at more than 40 universities. It invests in the earliest stages of idea formation and product development. It typically invests $40,000 into startups with at least one current student, or student who has graduated within the past year. It also provides opportunities for students to learn to become startup investors.
“We mentor founders at the earliest ideation, pre-product stage all the way through revenue generation. We heavily index on team commitment; size and growth of the market and potential exit opportunities; see some demonstration of product/market fit.”
-Andrew Mota
General Partner
Black Tech Nation is a network of 1,600 people from across the country united to support black and other under-represented people in technology companies. It recently established a $50 million venture capital fund in Pittsburgh. It is looking to invest between $250,000 and $1 million in up to 40 companies in this initial fund.
“In my group of black entrepreneurs we realized access to capital was an issue. We wanted to create a fund where black and diverse entrepreneurs come for funding. We just closed on our first two companies. We’ll be opening the floodgates for more black and diverse companies to apply.”
-Kelauni Jasmyn,
Founder and General Partner
This firm seeks to make pre-seed and seed investments of $100,000 to $500,000 in companies looking to make digital transformations using next generation technologies in robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence in spaces including financial technologies (fintech); enterprise business to business, healthcare and more.
We have invested in one Pittsburgh area company and recently committed to a second. We typically don’t lead and investment, but help bring together a syndicate. In addition to capital we provide a startup acceleration platform to support teams as they accelerate to a minimum viable product, obtain financing and growth their team.
-Juan Scarlett
Managing Director
Launched a year ago, 412 Venture Fund is a $20 million seed and Series A stage fund comprised primarily of former company founders from the Pittsburgh region. It seeks to invest from $250,000 to $750,000 in a seed investment and up to $2 million in a Series A. It is interested in founders with a connection to Pittsburgh across a wide range of industries.
“We recently closed 12th investment in a Pittsburgh-based company. We’ve all been there in the entrepreneur’s shoes. When all of us exited, we decided wanted to invest. We each took a different path to learning about venture funding. We’re investing across a wide-range of industries, but the two things we want to see are a product in the market with customers who are using it. We want to see you are solving a problem that makes sense for a customer.”
-Illana Diamond
General Partner
This firm provides crowd-funded loans from friends, family and community and customers.
“We have moved $10 million across our platform so far with an emphasis on businesses that are in communities that are outside of the traditional banking realm.”
-Chip Homer
Director of Customer Experience
There were many other interesting and exciting events during Global Entrepreneurship Week sponsored by the Big Idea Center and the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University.
Steel City Startups
Listen to a panel of startups from Pitt and CMU as they discuss how they were motivated to pursue commercialization, the support they received from the university and regional innovation ecosystem, and the paths they are forging for their companies and the challenges they have faced and overcome.
Meet the Champions
Hear a virtual “fireside chat” with representatives from some of the newer organizations and programs that are enriching the Pittsburgh region’s ecosystem and ability to support a diverse range of entrepreneurs and businesses, including Katie Johnson of Creative Business Accelerator | Bridgeway Capital; Alec Wright of OneValley, Nadyli Nuñez of Ascender, Michelle Chenn of Axiom Advancement Corp and Megan Shaw of AlphaLab Health.