Newly formed NYC-based venture capital firm Oceans Ventures closed its first fund – the Oceans Ventures Fund I – totaling $11m.
The new investment vehicle will specifically focus on seed-stage investments.
Founded by Steven Rosenblatt (prev. the president of Foursquare, Director of iAd @ Apple), Joshua Rahn (prev. Facebook), Glenn Handler (prev. Morgan Stanley, Google & Facebook), Sara Barek (prev. ClearForest, acquired by Thomson Reuters) and Brian Lew (prev. Time Inc.), Oceans is hyper-focused on seeking seed stage deals with historically under-represented founders, and they work to prioritize a game plan for implementing D&I into any company they back from the beginning.
They have already built a portfolio of 18 companies, two-thirds of which are in New York. Key Investments invlude:
- IFundWomen, founded by Karen Cahn (ex-Google, YouTube) with the purpose of creating funding platforms for women entrepreneurs;
- Play, which was founded by Dan LaCivita who was previously CEO the award-winning agency Firstborn (acquired by Dentsu);
- Teal, founded by Dave Fano who sold his first company, CASE, to WeWork;
- and SpikeTrap, founded by Kieran Fitzpatrick.
Read more about the close of the fund here
FinSMEs
03/11/2020