Sean Kelly has founded several firms, including Caroo, formerly named Snacknation. Josh Wand is the founder and CEO of two companies in the recruiting and hiring industries. Kurt Seidensticker is the founder and CEO of Vital Proteins.
Individually, these three know the motivation and perseverance it takes to make a successful founder.
Collectively, they’ve harnessed their entrepreneurial passion and founder expertise in the consumer tech and consumer packaged goods industries to create a $25 million VC fund.
The Family Fund & Founder Community officially launched a year ago and was just recently publicly announced. One of the main goals of the fund is sharing lessons learned.
“There comes a point in a founder's life where mentorship matters, where you want to give back, not only through better access to capital, but in guiding and sharing valuable lessons that you’ve learned along the way,” Kelly, one of the general partners of the fund, told L.A. Inno. “As we became more active in angel investing and started supporting up-and-coming entrepreneurs, we spoke to dozens of founder friends who wanted to do the same.”
Foundation
After taking multiple international trips together for business and leisure, the trio realized they all had the same dream of creating a VC fund to help other founders.
As they're all active founders, they shared common experiences and the belief that they could pool together their network and resources to serve other up-and-coming founders and brands, Kelly said.
“There are certain inflection points that each of us can remember, like a cup of coffee with a peer or a meeting with an advisor that changed the trajectory of our business in a moment’s notice,” Kelly said. “Our goal with The Family Fund is to provide more of these same epiphanies, through meaningful interactions with industry leaders, networks and mentors that we wish we had more access to throughout our own entrepreneurial careers.”
The three general partners all work remotely from various locations in L.A.
How it works
The Family Fund has been making investments since early 2022.
It primarily invests in companies at the late seed and Series A stages, with checks ranging from $1 million to $2 million, Kelly said.
It focuses on consumer-facing brands and the technologies and infrastructure that support them, in industries including health & wellness, food & beverage and e-commerce.
Initial Investments
Because more than 50 founders, CEOs and other C-level execs wanted to join as limited partners, the three co-founders decided to wait a year to formally announce the fund.
The funds LPs represent brands like Supergoop, Skinny Pop and Essentia Water.
It's this LP community that differentiates The Family Fund from other VC funds, Kelly said, by providing "strategic direction, mentorship and access to their own expansive networks of suppliers, partners and vendors to help the portfolio companies along their startup journeys," he said.
While they were bringing LPs on board, the general partners started making investments with the fund.
Nine have been made over the past year, including in L.A.-based Flossy, a pay-as-you-go dental services company.
