Going Beyond Investing
We launched Recast (in a global pandemic!) because we felt emerging managers in venture, particularly those with diverse partnerships, were underserved and underfunded despite the data showing they outperform.1,2 We wanted to leverage our institutional backgrounds to enable a path to greater diversity in venture, empower more emerging managers and provide a vehicle for LPs to access the investment opportunity emerging managers present. We’ve had our heads down building a platform to accomplish these goals.
The first component of the platform is the fund investment strategy but the limitation of any investment vehicle is the number of slots that it has, and from day one we had the ambition to support more emerging managers than just those that Recast could invest in at any given time. How could we use our experience to accelerate the success of many new venture fund managers? Although we do believe there are too many funds in market today and that the field will be winnowed over time, we also believe there are fund managers with immense potential who could benefit from a broader network in venture and specific, hands-on strategic guidance from institutionally-trained fund investors.
As a result, we created a tuition-free educational program called the Recast Enablement Program. The Enablement Program is for US-based (for now!) emerging managers pre-launch or in-process of raising Fund I/II that provides managers a peer network, broader LP relationships, market intelligence and strategic guidance from experienced LPs, GPs and coaches that are passionate about helping this community. We ran a beta of the Enablement Program in Q4 of 2020 with the support of a group of incredible emerging managers (see some of them here) that opted-in to help us refine our strategy and curriculum.
Today, with the launch of our new website, we’re excited to announce that we are now accepting applications for the inaugural Recast Enablement Program cohort! You can learn more about the program on our website here and you can find the application here. Applications will remain open until midnight Pacific Time on May 2, 2021.
With the public launch of the Enablement Program, we’re also proud to launch version one of a publicly facing Resource Library for emerging managers. We believe democratizing access to the information helpful in starting a new fund is a critical piece of the puzzle to enable more managers; these resources shouldn’t be so hard to find and you shouldn’t have to pay for them. The resources featured in the library were created by respected venture community members and have been recommended by other managers. This will be a living resource, and new content will be added frequently. We welcome your recommendations for additions to this active library here.
Finally, in support of our fund investment strategy, we’ve launched a Fund Intake Form so that neither a warm introduction nor a referral is necessary to share your information with our team. Our investment criteria may be found on our website here.
We’re excited to be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other organizations and individuals who share our passion for supporting and lowering barriers to entry for emerging managers. We’re just getting started!
Have ideas for other ways we can support the community? Interested in engaging with Recast? Please contact us at hello@recastcapital.com.
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1https://www.cambridgeassociates.com/insight/venture-capital-positively-disrupts-intergenerational-investing/
2https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend