There’s a new women-led venture capital firm in town, and it has a very familiar name for those in the Boston startup community.
It’s called Converge, and no, it’s not Converge Venture Partners, even though they share one of the same partners, Maia Heymann. After longtime Converge VP managing director James Geshwiler stepped down last May, Heymann has been the sole partner of the firm, which began its life as an angel investor group called CommonAngels in 1998 and slowly evolved into a VC firm over the last few years.
But with Converge, the new firm, Heymann is starting from an empty slate with a longtime Boston VC, Nilanjana Bhowmik, who has been a partner at Waltham-based Longworth Venture Partners for over 10 years. Together as founding partners, the two set out to invest in young startups focused on business-to-business technologies at the Series A stage, with plans to continue supporting them for the long term.
Heymann and Bhowmik will maintain their prior investments, which include Boston-area startups like Swirl Networks, Help Scout, RapidMiner, Podium Data and RocketVisor.
"What makes it different is our partnership."
So why start out with a new firm instead of adding Bhowmik to the previous one? The way Heymann puts it, they wanted to start with a “clean sheet of paper to build the type of firm we envisioned.”
“What makes it different is our partnership,” Heymann said.
Heymann and Bhowmik were unable to discuss any details surrounding their first fund, including whether they are looking to bring over limited partners from the previous firm’s funds. The firm has not filed any documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that would reveal any fund details.
Converge’s entry comes at a time when there is still a dearth of women in decision-making roles at VC firms. A recent analysis by Axios found that women only represented 7 percent of decision-making roles at 227 VC firms in the U.S. Three years ago, a highly-cited study by Babson found that only 6 percent of partners at VC firms are women.
Bhowmik said the firm is looking to fund early-stage companies that require more long-term capital for engineering and other resources. She said checks may start at $3 million or higher, and that Converge will focus primarily in Boston, along with other regions where Bhowmik and Heymann have networks, including New York and Ottawa, Canada. Areas of interest include artificial intelligence, distributed computing and the Internet of Things.
“We’re looking to forge long-time partnerships with businesses solving hard problems,” Bhowmik said.
Heymann said she and Bhowmik bring together complimentary skillsets and experiences — business and finance for Heymann and engineering for Bhowmik — which creates a “one plus one equals three” partnership.
“It’s been an advantage,” Bhowmik said of her engineering experience. “Entrepreneurs really care that you understand what they’re building in that first conversation.”
