A new Chicago-based venture capital firm closed more than $80 million in total assets, making it the largest female-owned debut venture fund between the coasts.
With only 2% of all venture capital going to female founders and only about 1% of institutional capital managed by female-led funds, Buoyant Ventures, led by Amy Francetic, wants to do its part to move the needle on those numbers.
The new fund closed $76 million in commitments with an additional $5.7 million raised in co-investments, giving the fund $81.7 million in total assets under management.
Francetic, who previously ran Energize Ventures — a fund that focuses on bringing tech to the energy and industrial sectors — has been in the climate and clean energy space for nearly two decades, or “long before it was fashionable,” she said. Now on her fourth company, it’s been a bit of a bumpy road to get to this point.
“The hardest thing was that 2021 and 2022 were two of the hardest years for Fund I to raise because all of the existing fund managers were out raising subsequent funds,” she said.
Francetic previously raised $150 million for Energize's first fund from backers like Michael Polsky’s wind-power company Invenergy, General Electric and the Wisconsin Energy Group. This time around, however, she frequently heard from multiple limited partners that they weren’t making any new venture investments.
“We had to get in line behind all of these existing managers that already had relationships with limited partners, so it was challenging to break through,” she said.
Buoyant Ventures completed its first close in May 2021 with largely friends and family, which Francetic said helped demonstrate the firm’s thesis to larger limited partners.
“We were sort of flying the airplane while building it,” she said.
Buoyant was able to secure investor participation from big names like Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Xcel Energy, Bank of America, NiSource, WovenEarth Ventures and the Office of the Illinois State Treasurer.
The fund will invest in tools and digital solutions that help industries manage and mitigate climate change. It will focus on pre-seed and Series A funding rounds with investments ranging from half a million to around $4 million.
“One of our points of view is that we're not looking for things that might take years to prove out that their technology works,” Francetic said. “We're looking for things that are ready for commercial scale, just to address the urgency of the problem that we see.”
