Two big names in the Atlanta technology ecosystem partnered to form a venture firm with a goal to fund innovation from underrepresented regions and founders.
Paul Judge, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of TechSquare Labs, and Mark Buffington, CEO of Atlanta’s BIP Capital, founded Panoramic Ventures to go “wide and deep” in the search for innovative startups.
“We’re really building the foundation of a long-term, narrative-shifting firm that can help fuel the next couple decades of what technology looks like in this region,” Judge said. “How do we build more unicorns? How do we help uncover more founders to go chase their dreams instead of moving out of the region?”
The goal for its first fund is $300 million, according to the partners, and will focus on funding startups from their seed stage to Series B.
Judge and Buffington built a team of 25 members that have different areas of expertise, which will be the industries on which the firm funds. Cybersecurity, health-care information technology, financial technology, enterprise software as a service, media technology and frontier technology, which includes advanced computing and augmented reality will be the firm’s focus.
The most common critique of Atlanta’s technology ecosystem is the city’s lack of local capital, and the partners hope this firm alleviates some of that problem.
"Atlanta punches way over its weight class in terms of the quality of ventures it’s producing,” Buffington said. “Success begets success in ventures. Atlanta is really on that roll now, but you also have to have all the ingredients to lead to that success, and one of those is access to capital.”
A little over $100 million has been raised for the fund, and the partners said they have made five seed investments so far, starting about a month ago. They declined to name the companies but said one is a cybersecurity started in the Southeast.
Judge said the interest in the fund before its public announcement shows just how needed it was in the region.
Panoramic Ventures has much of the same goals as BIP Capital, Buffington said, but they wanted to form a new, top-tier venture capital firm based in the Southeast.
“There’s not a world-class VC firm to support the ecosystem here,” Judge said. “So we looked at what BIP has excelled in and what I’ve been really good at and formed a strong team around that.”
But the firm isn’t just investing in the Southeast.
Panoramic Ventures plans to search for innovation across any area that’s not a top-tier innovation hub such as Silicon Valley or Boston and from founders who often get overlooked by venture capital firms. Buffington said they’ll also scour universities for research that solves specific problems.
“I really like founders who have a chip on their shoulder and something to prove,” Buffington said. “Paul and I both came out of the middle, lower-middle class, and I was determined to succeed, which I look for in founders. I also look for deep expertise in a certain challenge or problem.”
Buffington said the pandemic has changed the landscape for raising capital in that investors and founders no longer have to meet in person to strike a deal. Buffington said he’s invested in a handful of startups through BIP Capital without ever meeting the founders in person.
As it becomes less important to be based in a specific city, the partners don’t want to miss out on the innovation happening around the country.
Buffington and Judge said the pandemic has drastically accelerated the adoption of technology, especially related to workplace collaboration and the consumerization of financial technology.
Judge said he also sees the intersection of culture and technology as a space ripe for innovation and one in which Atlanta is poised to succeed.
