There’s a new venture capital firm in town, and its name is Avid Ventures.
Co-founded by Addie Lerner and Tali Vogelstein — both former investors at VC heavyweights like Goldman Sachs and Bessemer Venture Partners — Avid officially launched on Friday with a $68 million debut fund, as first reported by Forbes.
The firm is focused on making early stage investments in companies across the fintech, software and consumer internet space, with the goal of taking a “hands-on and collaborative approach to scaling” their growth, according to Avid. To date, the fund has already made investments in six companies, including Alloy, The Wing and Nova Credit.
“It’s rare to find an investor who creates so many surface areas for collaboration — and who delivers against all of them. The Avid team has acted as an extended business development arm of the company: identifying potential partners, connecting us through warm intros, and getting us broader exposure,” credit reporting agency Nova Credit said in a statement. “The Avid team has been an operational machine: helping us build out our financial plans and KPIs, and supporting as a recruiting machine.”
Avid is anchored by a pool of limited partners, including Schusterman Family Investments and the George Kaiser Family Foundation. The firm also says it prioritizes diversity across its team, investments and partners, telling Crunchbase that 50 percent of its portfolio companies have at least one woman co-founder and 50 percent also have at least one co-founder who is an immigrant.
Looking ahead, the young firm hopes to keep up the momentum, “staying disciplined, staying focused, and honing in on one of [its] core values, which is building long-term relationships,” Lerner told VentureBeat.
“There can be a tendency to rush, a tendency for FOMO to take over, to do quick deals at any price. That’s quite antithetical to how we think about relationships with our founders, with our LPs, and with each other,” she continued. “My hope for 2021 is that we can let that calmness prevail, focus on knowing this is a long-term game, and orient toward that long-term success together.”
