An entrepreneur in Los Angeles is merging her background in marketing with her expertise in venture capital.
As CEO of marketing firm Elevate My Brand and a limited partner in venture capital, Laurel Mintz was looking for her next endeavor when she forged a connection between the two industries, putting her on a path to start a VC fund with a marketing mindset.
At the urging of a colleague, Mintz last year started Fabric VC, a U.S. seed fund aiming to raise $10 million to invest in consumer-tech brands led by diverse teams. With Fabric Principal Jawhara Tariq, Mintz and a team of 12, Fabric announced the close of its first $2 million fund this month.
“Fabric is a proof-of-concept fund with the intention of creating more equity and parity in this space,” Mintz told L.A. Business First. “We only invest with a diverse lens, and we believe that the venture model is very broken. We have this unique approach that I think is what our limited partners have been most excited about, even in this super challenging environment, which has gotten us to this close.”
The path to Fabric led Mintz away from traditional venture spaces, which she described as “pale, male and stale.” When she started the fund last year, Mintz said she had heard that less than 2% of funding goes to diverse-led companies, a statistic that spurred California to pass a law requiring VC firms to disclose diversity data about funded companies.
Instead, Fabric raises funds with the goal of giving founders who are female, people of color and LGBTQ a leg up over systemic barriers in VC.
In more than 15 years operating her marketing agency and with a legal background in private equity, Mintz has facilitated the growth of more than 200 diverse-led companies, with 37% raising capital, she said. Mintz looked at the proprietary marketing research software she was using for her company and realized the technology could be used to “de-risk” Fabric’s portfolio to ”pick better winners from the beginning,” she said.
The process, dubbed Fabric VC Thread Count, puts companies through an “omnichannel” marketing review to discover the company’s marketing potential and therefore a level of its likelihood of success.
“That's honestly the piece that I think has differentiated us the most,” Mintz said. “To me, it's both a differentiated model and the diversity program, which can be a hard sell right now.”
Going forward, Fabric is looking to invest in seed-stage startups owned by underrepresented founders, primarily developing Gen Z and Gen Alpha-focused fintech; consumerized health care and digital health tools; platforms for the future of work; and Web 3.0-driven consumer tech. For companies looking to pitch to Fabric, Mintz said the fund is holding online pitch days for business owners looking for resources and connections.
Mintz’s advice to women looking to get into venture capital is simple: write your first check.
“You have to start writing checks and talking about money the same way men in their good old boys clubs do,” she said. “What's been really eye-opening for me in this experience is how many more conversations it takes for a woman to write a check than a man. We've got to start pushing through that. Write a check. Be loud. Get into the conversation.”
