Greg Raiz has announced his next move since stepping down as managing director of Techstars Boston.
Raiz plans to launch his own venture fund, Raiz Capital, according to a post he shared on LinkedIn Monday morning. His goal? To dramatically increase the number of early-stage startups that he supports, Raiz told BostInno.
After selling Raizlabs, a mobile app development firm that Raiz founded and led from 2003 to 2017, he personally invested in more than 50 startups. As managing director of Techstars, he supported 24 companies in that accelerator. But Raiz wants to think bigger and support more companies.
“I was seeing thousands of companies that really need help, and some of the platforms, some of the things that I was doing before were somewhat limiting, meaning I was helping a number of companies, which I very much enjoyed, but there’s a lot of companies I felt I wasn’t able to help,” Raiz said.
While at Techstars and after, Raiz has stated the goal of supporting 1,000 startups. He said he doesn’t mean that he’ll be checking off boxes until he hits 1,000, but rather that he just wants to think big about his potential impact.
Raiz said he’s still in the formation phase of building Raiz Capital. For now, he’s largely focused on researching what elements of early-stage startups are predictive of long-term success. Raiz said he has seen a lot of subjectivity in investing and he wants to bring a different approach.
“Many early-stage investors, accelerator programs, venture capitalists, do it fairly subjectively. Meaning, do I like this person? Do I not like this person? Do I like this idea? Do I not like this idea?” Raiz said. “So, I’m starting to research what actually increases the probability of success.”
Raiz said he has been reading research papers and meeting with people who are using data and science to better understand what makes for successful companies. He talks more about his vision for starting Raiz Capital and his purpose in this venture on his YouTube channel.
Some of the factors Raiz is focusing on are culture, cash flow and capital. That means identifying what internal cultures at world-class companies have in common, Raiz said, and figuring out how they were built. Raiz said he has also seen companies who understand finance, capital and cash flow have greater potential and be strong candidates for venture capital.
As a founder, Raiz said he brings to startups the experience of having “walked in their shoes.” Raiz said he also has expertise in combining technology and human centered-design, which he did from his undergraduate education at Tufts University to working at Microsoft to founding his own company.
Raiz Capital will focus on funding pre-seed and seed stage companies. Raiz said he has a natural inclination toward companies that “make an impact on the way we live,” including medtech, healthtech and greentech. But he’s also branching beyond his own subjective interests in this learning process.
“I’m chatting with folks and going to robotics demo days, learning about biotech. But I’m trying to understand what are those things that tend to lead to a better probability of success,” Raiz said.
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