Panoramic Ventures hit the ground running with the launch of a $300 million fund.
Panoramic Ventures is a new Atlanta-based VC firm. It is a partnership between Paul Judge, a black serial entrepreneur and investor, and BIP Capital. The latter has more than $550 million in assets under management. While announcing its formation, Panoramic also flagged off a new $300 million fund targeted at founders from under-capitalized communities and startups located in the south-west and mid-west regions of America. (Crunchbase)
Fund to focus on emerging tech hubs
The new fund is “stage agnostic,” according to BIP Capital co-founder Mark Buffington. Moreover, it will strike out on a different investing beat beyond Silicon Valley and the North-East, and look for investment opportunities in the “overlooked” regions of the country.
If closed successfully, the $300 million fund would be the biggest ever for Atlanta. The city is one of the largest tech hubs in the US not counting New York and California.
In the past six months three Atlanta startups – Greenlight, SalesLoft, and Calendly – achieved the hallowed unicorn status.
Panoramic will invest across a wide swathe of sectors, including cybersecurity, enterprise IT, work-from-home technologies, and fintech.
Diversity a key objective
The new fund will also seek to undo the damage done to minority entrepreneurs over the past 400 years, according to Judge.
Judge says minority entrepreneurs find it difficult to access many venture capital firms, and that Zoom has made only a small dent in the situation. He would like to see more minorities in the positions of a general partner and senior positions in VC firms.
In a plug for minority founders Judge commented to Crunchbase: “I joke sometimes that being Black in America equips you to be the perfect entrepreneur. You have to learn how to perform in the face of adversity, learn to have grit. All the things you look for in an entrepreneur.”
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