Alice Loy remembers putting in a call to an established, Native-led venture capital firm out of Nashville, Tennessee, in the fall of 2022, when she and business partner Kelly Holmes (Mnicoujou Lakota) were first considering launching their own venture firm focused on investments in the Southwest.
"I was reading news articles and I came across a story about the nation's largest, first Native-led fund based in Nashville," Loy said. "I thought, 'Maybe these guys would mentor us and help us out?'"
Little did Loy know that almost two years on from her October 2022 call she and Holmes would join that Nashville-based firm, folding in the work the pair had officially started with their own firm more than a year earlier.
Loy told New Mexico Inno Monday she and Holmes joined Nashville-based Relevance Ventures, Loy as a general partner and Holmes as an entrepreneur in residence and Tribal outreach ambassador. The pair will lead Relevance's seed and early-stage investments.
Skoden Ventures, which Loy and Holmes launched in April 2023 with a focus on investing in Indigenous and creative entrepreneurs throughout the Southwest, has been absorbed by Relevance Ventures, Loy said.
Seed-stage, Indigenous investments part of new focus for Relevance Ventures
Cameron Newton, Relevance's managing partner, told New Mexico Inno the firm plans to expand its investments into younger, Native-led startups with the help of Loy and Holmes. Historically, Relevance has focused on Series A and Series B investments in the $1 million to $10 million range to help more established startups scale.
A "glaring omission" among Relevance's investment portfolio aligns with Loy and Holmes' experience, as well, Newton added. To date, he said Relevance hasn't invested in any Native-founded startups.
When he and brother Dean Newton — both members of the Patawomeck Indian Tribe — discovered that omission, the pair teamed up with Loy and Holmes to form the Native American Capital and Investment Alliance, or NACIA, a nonprofit launched in November to extend more resources to Indigenous founders across the country.
Now, as Relevance raises a second investment fund targeting $150 million — a big jump from the firm's first $50 million fund that closed in December 2022 — Newton said Loy and Holmes provide a "perfect fit" for Relevance's investment goals.
"As we thought about it more and more, it just made sense to bring them on board as part of the team so they could focus not only on Native American founders but all early stage and pre-seed founders," he said.
Specifically, Loy said 15 to 20% of Relevance's second fund would go toward pre-seed, seed and other early stage investments, with deal sizes between $250,000 and $1 million.
Newton added Relevance expects to invest in around 20 companies with its second fund and anticipates a first close sometime this fall. The firm has 26 portfolio companies listed on its website and focuses on health and wellness startups.
Loy and Holmes will remain based in Santa Fe and Denver, respectively, as they lead seed-stage investments out of Relevance. The Nashville-based firm has additional offices in Atlanta and Charlotte; Loy said she and Holmes will help the firm build a "Western-facing team."
Cameron and Dean Newton became majority partners of Relevance in 2018, when the pair hired a new team and began raising its first investment fund. The firm has 11 employees and two board members listed on its website.
New investment focuses part of 'long-term' effort to grow Native ventures
Native American participation in venture capital markets has been "abysmally low," Newton said. With Loy and Holmes on board and a new emphasis on early stage and Indigenous-led startups, he hopes to add to what he sees as growing momentum around scaling Native entrepreneurs.
"We view it as a long-term kind of effort," Newton said. "Hence the 501(c)(3) and our opinion that whatever we do is going to move the needle, so let's get started, but it's going to take a long time."
New Mexico has in some ways been at the forefront of what Newton observed as the growing momentum around fostering Indigenous entrepreneurship, with organizations like Roanhorse Consulting, New Mexico Community Capital and Native Women Lead, to name a few, extending their work nationally.
Loy, whose experience includes co-founding Santa Fe-based nonprofit Creative Startups, an early investor in companies like immersive art and entertainment company Meow Wolf, said New Mexico and Arizona are "extremely well poised" to promote more Indigenous financial and startup leadership.
"There's been a shift, I think, in innovation ecosystems," she added, "understanding that mainstream culture, let's say, doesn't have all the answers and is struggling to figure out solutions to really overwhelming problems like climate change.
"So, turning toward Native communities that have for thousands of years figured out how to live sustainably in these places is a natural way to say, 'We have to broaden our knowledge base, we have to change our epistemologies, we have to think differently,'" Loy continued.
Holmes brings her own entrepreneurship experience to the table, founding a publication focused on Native fashion called Native Max Magazine when she was 20 years old. She told New Mexico Inno in September she brings experience "in wanting to provide what I needed as a creative entrepreneur myself at the very beginning of my business journey."
