Last year, a small group of Emory University graduate students at Goizueta Business School in Georgia began to examine the challenge of getting Black and other historically underrepresented founders access to capital. One way to do that, they reckoned, was to raise a generation of investors who would pay more attention to these groups.
The idea grew into an investment fund called Peachtree Minority Venture Fund, with the goal of teaching students about venture capital while investing in real companies with minority founders. The fund just completed its first group of investments as the idea came to life in the classroom.
Humza Mirza and four other student managing partners — Alexia Brown, Jack Semrau, Dylan Cowley and Miguel Vergara (pictured above) — worked with the inaugural class around the fund’s initial investments while learning about being a venture capitalist.
“We are a fully functioning fund. We have a cohort of 24 students who are doing due diligence on our investment pipeline. And we’re just keeping this kind of ball rolling and growing,” Mirza said.
These lessons and activities resulted in three initial companies receiving funding from this year’s group. Among the first investments from the fund were $25,000 for CommunityX, an app for organizing around particular causes, including creating calls to action, events and petitions.
Source: Emory University student venture fund is raising a new generation of investors | TechCrunch
