Huntington Avenue Ventures, a new early-stage venture capital firm, today announced their first close. The fund, investing in Pre-Seed to Series A companies with an affiliation to Northeastern University, exceeded its first closing target of $1M USD. With a final target of $2M, it is the first fund focusing exclusively on NU and is amongst the many university focused funds in the U.S.
Huntington Avenue Ventures leverages the breadth of NU’s alumni network to assist founders in building unique and defensible companies that are disrupting billion dollar markets.
“Northeastern alumni have started and led transformative companies including EMC, Lycos, Clean Harbors, Twitter, and Palo Alto Networks as well as fast growing startups such as Snyk, Digital Ocean, Axonius, Medly Pharmacy, and Starry. Over the last 15 years, Northeastern has experienced an unprecedented transformation into one of the top universities in America and HAV has conviction that graduates will continue to build industry defining businesses,” said Alfston Thomas, Founding Partner.
“We make $25K – $125K investments but focus our efforts on being a value-add to our portfolio companies. By tapping into the powerful alumni network we have developed relationships with executives in the top technology and consumer companies. As a result, our portfolio companies can better understand user needs, bolster its go-to-market strategy, and gain introductions to potential customers,” said Mitchell Groves, Founding Partner.
Katya Pourteymour, Founding Partner, added: “The co-op program gives students 1-1.5 years of work experience before graduating. Coupled with its robust entrepreneurial ecosystem, world-class faculty, and state-of-the-art research facilities, graduates leave with an entrepreneurial mindset and a desire to solve the problems they have encountered during their co-ops.”
Huntington Avenue Ventures’ first investment is in Aidentified, a sales prospecting and relationship mapping tool that reveals money-in-motion events and the best paths for sales teams, account executives and brands to connect to hyper-targeted, qualified prospects. “We couldn’t be more excited to back Tom and Darr Aley, two former Northeastern MBAs who have built and sold numerous companies in the analytics space. The two are world-class founders and epitomize what it means to be a husky,” Alfston added.
