Artemis Fund, which invests in undervalued founders, has closed its second fund with $36 million in capital commitments.
Stephanie Campbell, Diana Murakhovskaya, and Leslie Goldman Tepper founded Artemis in 2019, naming the company after the Greek goddess of the hunt, the wild, and the defender of women.
With offices in Houston and New York, Artemis leads seed rounds for diverse founders in fintech, commerce, and care, with a portfolio of over 20 companies led by female founders. More than 60% of them are black or Latino. Or immigrant leadership.
The second fund will be created by a group that includes Bank of America, Bank of Montreal, TIAA Nuveens Churchill Asset Management, Texas Capital Bank, Amazon, The Rockwell Funds and Valentine Partners. Supported.
“We really wanted to make sure that the LP was aligned with our long-term goal of supporting diverse founders,” Murakhovskaya told TechCrunch. “There's a lot of pressure on that. We want to grow together with them.”
The company's strategy is to “empower women by leading rounds, championing women and diverse founders, providing access to international co-investors, and establishing discipline early to achieve real revenue growth.” and help move the funding needle for diverse founders,” Campbell said.
“Having diverse perspectives is good business, and we felt there was money left on the table, and we're there to do our best at it,” she said. I did. “We remain steadfast in this policy, aligning our impact and economic benefits not only to LPs but also to the communities these entrepreneurs come from.”
It's good to see more funding targeting women and underrepresented founders, like Artemis and other companies like Amplifica Capital and Black Tech Nation Ventures, which recently raised $50 million in funding. Venture capital investment itself remains fairly stagnant in these areas, according to my colleague Dominic Madri-Davis, who crunched the numbers on venture capital funding for these groups earlier this month.
Funding for Black founders has declined since 2021, with Black founders in the US raising 0.48% of all venture funding allocated last year, or about $661 million out of $136 billion. equivalent to dollars. For the past two years, the woman received her 2% of the total funding each year.
However, there is some hope, albeit in the form of mixed reviews. Female founders and co-founders secured more capital overall in 2023 than in 2020, according to new PitchBook research. Maybe it's because more women are writing checks. At the general partner level, the percentage of female check writers at the largest venture capital firms increased slightly to 17.4%, Pitchbook reports. But at the same time, the number of women-led startups that secured funding fell by 25%.
Artemis began investing in its first fund of $15 million in 2019. Although there have been no exits yet, Campbell and Murakhovskaya say the portfolio is making progress. For example, his 60% of companies in Fund I raised a total of $250 million in additional funding. 70% of that came from Artemis referrals.
Artemis is not the only fund focused on diverse founders, but it also funds technology to address barriers faced by overlooked and underrepresented businesses, communities, and families in the United States. Campbell said it is one of the few funds in the world that does so. Fund I investments include senior home health company Naborforce, ride-sharing startup HopSkipDrive, custom wig and extensions company Upgrade, and corporate lactation room services startup Work & Mother.
Meanwhile, portfolio returns from the fund quadrupled between 2021 and 2022 and doubled between 2022 and 2023. Fund I's total revenue in 2023 exceeded $100 million, they said.
Artemis will continue to make lead and co-lead investments for Fund II, targeting approximately 20 new companies. Funds deployed from this fund have already been sent to alternative payment processor Payverse. Max Retail is an online platform that helps retailers and brands sell unsold products. and online divorce platform Hello Divorce.
The company plans to continue investing in economic issues, Campbell and Murakhovskaya say, saying other venture capital is being written off too quickly.
“Uncomfortable things are so pervasive in our lives, yet many people don't like to talk about them,” Campbell says. “We are seriously addressing many of the fundamental issues that affect far more people than people realize. They also don't seem to like it. Instead, we talk about how difficult they are and that there should be solutions to solve them.”