Another Atlanta investment firm closed its first fund.
Overline, led by partners Michael Cohn and Sean O’Brien, raised $27 million, surpassing its initial goal for the first fund.
Cohn and O'Brien have made 11 investments so far, including in Atlanta financial technology startup Relay Payments, which was named one of Atlanta Inno’s Startups to Watch. The firm is industry agnostic, focused on funding pre-seed to seed-stage startups in the Southeast.
More than 90% of the investors are local and include Atlanta unicorn Mailchimp, Cox Enterprises and Atlanta Tech Village founder David Cummings.
“Investing in great companies gives them the opportunity to build here in our community, which creates this flywheel effect,” O’Brien said. “The more the city has success in startups and innovation, the more it’s going to create success.”
The firm writes $250,000-$500,000 checks for pre-seed companies and $1 million-$1.5 million checks for seed companies, Cohn said.
“It’s turned out that in order to hit some of the ownership targets that we’re looking for in companies, we’re having to invest earlier,” Cohn said. “We’re placing more pre-seed bets with the anticipation of following in the seed stage.”
Overline’s announcement comes at a time of high activity in the investing ecosystem. Fulcrum Equity Partners, a growth-stage firm, closed its fourth, $275 million fund earlier in March. Three early-stage firms brought in new partners, and others announced initial closes.
The growth in local capital is a response to the innovation happening in the region. For years, eyes have been on Atlanta, the epicenter of the Southeast, for its burgeoning technology ecosystem that has attracted global tech giants — the latest of which is Google with its massive midtown expansion.
“We’ve got a lot of highly qualified graduates that are coming out [of the Atlanta community] every year,” O'Brien said. “Many of them didn’t see opportunity to stay in the city that they grew up in or that they loved because they wanted to get into the tech industry or get into a VC-backed business.”
Through Overline, Cohn and O’Brien hope to give founders the chance to build a business and scale in the city.
The two partners started angel investing together in the beginning of 2019 before starting Overline. Cohn previously worked as managing director of the Techstars Atlanta accelerator, and O’Brien was chief strategy officer of web conferencing company PGi.
They made an initial close of $17.4 million as the pandemic started and finished the rest of the raise virtually.
They plan for Overline to become a staple investment brand in Atlanta’s ecosystem and will continue creating new funds as they deploy capital. About 20% of their first fund is invested, Cohn said.
The partners said they’re looking for “exceptional founders,” meaning leaders who are authentic and have a clear passion for the problem they’re trying to solve.
“We’re looking for authentic and transparent,” O’Brien said. “We want to be the first call for founders whether it’s bad news or good news.”
