Demetrius Curry draws on his teenage experiences – foster homes, homelessness, dropping out of high school – as inspiration for startup ideas and the persistence to bring them to life.
Curry also has been proud his businesses are Black- and veteran-owned. But he said he didn't come out as bisexual until 18 months ago.
That's when he met Columbus-based Loud Capital LLC and offshoot Pride Fund LLC focused on LGBTQ+ founders.
Curry's startup College Cash got traction "because they helped me as a person" by welcoming and supporting marginalized identities, Curry said at the Venture Out celebration of the Pride Fund's second year.
"You have no idea what you've done to let me be me," Curry told the crowd of founders and supporters. "My company would be nowhere if I couldn't be me. Everyone said the same thing: 'Go be great, we love you.'"
Pride Fund is a joint venture of Loud and Atlas Venture Partners LLC, a Columbus VC consultancy. It's one of 10 social impact funds the partners plan to deploy, one yearly through the decade, to make the venture world accessible to overlooked and underrepresented populations, Atlas CEO T. Wolf Starr said.
"We’re trying to change the industry," Starr said. "As mission-focused as we are, this is really a business, and we need it to be extremely successful so other firms will follow us."
Ohio Impact Fund LP was added last year, targeting $5 million to invest in for-profit social enterprises. Next year comes a fund for refugees and new Americans. Future foci could include hearing impairments and dyslexia, Starr said.
Pride and Impact funds are deploying capital while still raising the pools from limited partners.
What has Pride Fund done?
Pride Fund has six investments so far, said CEO Densil Porteous, also executive director of Stonewall Columbus. He said he could not disclose how much it's raised of the $10 million target.
"As we're talking to LPs, they say, 'We see you're making sound choices,'" Porteous said.
Portfolio companies include CBD beverage maker W*nder and Revry, an LGBTQ+ streaming service.
Portfolio company College Cash, an app for paying down college debt through employer benefits and participating in brand social media campaigns, is based in suburban Dallas. CEO Curry lived several years in Columbus and ran a previous college-preparatory startup here. Another local investor is VC fund Overlooked Ventures.
"Life is hard as hell already when we wake up," Curry said. "Starting a business is like volunteering for the boxing ring. We couldn't do it without cornermen like Loud and Pride."
How does Impact Fund work?
Impact Fund, raising publicly through a different federal investment category, is tracking to exceed its $5 million funding goal, CEO Jenny Lane said. Industry agnostic, it seeks startups that foster environmental sustainability or increase equity and access to healthcare and financial systems.
The fund has joined larger investors in three later-stage growth companies: mobile surgical company Offor Health Inc. and menstrual products vendor Aunt Flow in Columbus, and California hydrogen car company Hyperion, building a 700-job factory in Columbus.
"They provide a little bit of a safety net for our earlier (stage) investments," Lane said. "Impact investing straddles the lines of investing and philanthropy: You can actually do good and get returns."
Earlier-stage startups include Columbus-based 119, an app founded by Jen Schlegel that helps guide bystanders through appropriate steps when the user has a seizure or other medical event.
Neither fund has suffered yet from the nationwide pullback in VC, Porteous and Lane said.
"It's easier to get the excitement and buy-in, but just like any fund, it's not a quick raise," Lane said.
While investors do expect a return, Porteous said, many are moved by the mission to support diverse founders.
"The greatest impact has been being able to tell the story of phenomenal queer entrepreneurs across the country – especially Ohio and Texas," Porteous said.
Supporting LGBTQ+ businesses
The Venture Out celebration, hosted at Stonewall last week before Columbus Pride festival and march, drew founders, investors and other supporters from California, Texas and England. Impact Fund also had a showcase event last week.
"We have people flying into Ohio who couldn’t find the state on the map," Starr said.
Revry, based in Los Angeles, is available in 50 million households.
"The impetus for this business literally came from not seeing ourselves," , co-founder and COO Alia Daniels said at Venture Out.
"We wanted to be a place someone could hear a love song, and not change the lyrics to represent their lives. ... It was very important to us to create a platform where everyone could feel centered."
Alicia Roth Weigel joined Pride Fund as partner this spring from Austin, where she's also a human rights commissioner.
"Our communities are under attack around the country," she said at the event.
For five years she's been an activist for people like her who are intersex, born with reproductive organs or physical traits that don't conform with their chromosomes or other binary gender expectations.
Organizing is one way to support the LGBTQ+ community, Roth Weigel told the crowd. Money is another.
"Really what we're building is community power," she said. "Support businesses founded by people who thought they were alone.
"The Pride Fund, we're doing the damn thing, and we're doing it in the areas of the country that need it the most."
Porteous gives this advice for how to show allyship:
"If you can do anything to help LGBTQ+ identities," he said, "it's to learn someone's story, and learn it so well you can tell it like it's your own."
