Spending time in college inevitably you will come across someone who has a plan to save the world, or at least someone who will make a small part of it better. It might just be young optimism, but sometimes they are actually working on something.
Key venture partners bet that young founders, fresh from the university, can solve some of the world's most challenging issues, including climate change, healthcare and economic opportunities. The company was founded by a trio of recent graduates from the University of Pennsylvania.
“We are young people, we are young people, we are investing in other young people,” said Sam Strickberger, co-founder and general partner of Critical Venture Partners.
Strickberger and his co-founder Seungkwon and his brother Max Strickberger have raised the first fund of $5 million to plead with check sizes ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 to plead with the portfolio for the first fund of $5 million. A quarter of the fund is reserved for subsequent investments. Limited partners include Aarti Chandna, a partner in Silicon Valley Social Venture Funds. Seth Goldman and Beyond Meat board chairs. Andrew Kaplan and Bain Capital partner.
To attract fresh talent, our critical venture partners are working with Yope. This is the Accelerator, previously known as Founder.org, started by Splunk co-founder and CEO Michael Baum, and will launch a $100,000 startup competition.
So far, the company has invested in three startups. General Galactic converts CO2 to methane. Mobius Industries recovers metals from waste. Stratagen Bio adds quantitative data to your MRI scans.
“We're really inspired by the history of young founders building very large category definition companies,” says Strickberger.
In that sense, critical venture partners are good friends. Venture capital evaluates young founders to an obsessive level. Still, I feel intuitively that it may take fresh thinking to solve difficult problems. The optimism of the new company may be about young people, but they are certainly good companions.