Dan Runcie

What’s my “Why VC”? At Harlem Capital it’s always been to break down barriers and increase access to VC funding for women and people of color. And every day I try to live that mission to the fullest - through our investing, our ecosystem work, and our intern program. We’ve invested in 60 companies and 75 founders across our two funds. Our team dug into the data to measure our impact across our portfolio and the ecosystem. Portfolio Impact - 384 jobs created by HCP’s portfolio companies, 36% identify as people of color (POC) and 35% as women - 114 total management positions created, 44% held by POC and 36% held by women Capital Impact (2022-2023): - 6% of all Black & Latino (B&L) seed capital raised was HCP HCP-led syndicates - 15% of all Black seed deal volume ($) was HCP-led syndicates We’re only 5 years in to a long journey and it’s incredible to celebrate these milestones. I’m so proud of this team, but we know it’s only just the beginning and there’s so much more to come in the future Blog post linked in the comments and huge thanks to Nicole DeTommaso and Sophia Escagedo to create this report!

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Great time on the Embracing Erosion podcast w/Devon O'Rourke! We talked about: 🚀 How to scale a company from concept to 9-figure exit 🔄 How to break away from the traditional consulting model and apply product approaches ⏩ Why it’s important to iterate quickly and often with messaging 💸📈What signals are important to pay attention to when investing in startups and much more!

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Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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This doesn’t change without two key steps: 1) Activating more Black Angel investors and LPs. There are thousands of Black individuals and couples who qualify as accredited investors, don’t know it, and have no VC/PE exposure. Also, crowdfunding makes investing accessible to non-accredited investors. Funding Black founders can actually INCREASE the wealth gap depending on how their companies are funded and who gets the majority of the proceeds upon exit. 2) Using social and political power to direct government and philanthropic resources to leverage capital from step 1. All medium to large organizations that claim to be in service of the Black community need to be laser focused on this. The main thing missing here is exceptional leadership with transparent and competent governance infrastructure. Until we do these two things, these stats won’t change. I’m not guessing, I’ve got historical records and basic math on my side.

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I had such an incredible experience with tech entrepreneurs at the Founder’s Cartel! We spoke about building exponential tech companies and raising Venture Capital Investment. Melvyn Lubega provided exceptional insight into how he built Go 1 to unicorn valuation together with his co-founders! It was also great to hear about his Venture Capital experience. What stood out for me was: - Having a growth mindset as a founder: ensuring that your to-do list reflects the growth of your business. - Know your numbers early: Customer acquisition cost, Lifetime value, etc. - Capital efficiency: bootstrapping your business early on and being able to achieve more revenue with less capital raises is a great strategy. Lastly, Simele Shange from Jozi Cloud Kitchens was an incredible host and made the most scrumptious food. #Entrepreneurship #Tech #Startups #VentureCapital Edzai Zvobwo, Zanele Abraham Matome, Onkgopotse Khumalo, Loyiso Vatsha, Moeketsi Molefe, Kgololo Lekoma, Lebogang Mashaba MBA (PD)SA, Lethabo Sekhu

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