Uncrowd Inc., a venture capital fundraising platform founded in Milwaukee, was acquired by Toronto-based entrepreneurship network StartupFuel Inc. in a six-figure deal, Uncrowd co-founder and CEO Forest Richter said Tuesday.
StartupFuel, a professional innovation network for startups and related service providers and organizations, has more than 2,000 users across 65 countries, according to an announcement from the company. Uncrowd was fully bootstrapped and is not profitable but has a small amount of revenue from affiliate links, Richter said.
The trajectory of Uncrowd, which was designed to increase equity in startup fundraising, is "a love story for the Milwaukee startup ecosystem," Richter said. The acquisition’s close also came at a personally challenging time for Richter, who recently lost his mother to cancer.
Richter began his foray into the local startup scene in 2016 through a job with Bright Cellars Inc., a data-driven wine subscription company based in Milwaukee. He started in business development and then directed operations for the fast-growing startup until shortly before it closed an $8.5 million fundraising round.
Working at Bright Cellars exposed Richter to the inefficiencies and inequities for underrepresented founders in the venture funding ecosystem, he said, giving him the idea for a platform that would connect founders and investors based on merit instead of personal introductions to improve opportunities for entrepreneurs and strengthen deal flows for venture firms.
Richter began working on Uncrowd in 2019 and was soon joined by his friend Adam Heppe, who became a co-founder and the startup's chief operating officer, Richter said.
The co-founders built Uncrowd while juggling other endeavors: Richter runs the technology consulting business Fresh Coast Labs and is co-founder of the battery startup Joy Boost, and Heppe is a senior manager of data analytics at Boeing.
Uncrowd launched in March 2020, Richter said. Around that time, he and Heppe took the company through FOR-M, a startup incubator created by the MKE Tech Hub Coalition and run by local technology organizations We Pivot and The Commons.
That summer, Richter approached Nadiyah Johnson — CEO and co-founder of the local software firm Jet Constellations and its social impact arm the Milky Way Tech Hub — and asked her for a referral for a technical leader to join the team. Johnson offered to take on the role herself and joined as Uncrowd's co-founder chief technology officer, Richter said.
"I was totally blown away," he said. "It was very flattering that she genuinely believed in what we were trying to accomplish."
This past spring, Richter learned that Uncrowd had not been among the six startups selected for FOR-M grant funding, he said. However, good news came soon after: The company won a pitch competition through the Global Inclusion Online Forum, a worldwide event that recognized Uncrowd as the winner in its financial inclusion category.
The catalyst for Uncrowd's acquisition came around the same time in April, when Richter and Uncrowd participated in Impact Innovation Academy, a four-week entrepreneurship program run by gener8tor, a Madison- and Milwaukee-based organization that facilitates dozens of accelerator programs nationwide.
The program's director Mfoniso Ekong introduced Richter to StartupFuel co-founder and CEO Ashley Martis, and the two entrepreneurs immediately saw alignment.
"We were essentially building the same thing with the same mission," Richter said.
The acquisition moved quickly from there. When Richter signed the final paperwork to close the deal on June 14, he was in a hospice center with his mother, who was in her final days of battling ovarian cancer, Richter said. She died two days later.
"She was very happy to see our success," Richter said. "Founders are always dealing with more than they can show. There are no sick days. I genuinely care about founders and we don't talk about the background stuff enough."
Throughout Uncrowd's short lifecycle, Richter also received support and encouragement from other members of the Milwaukee startup community, including Que El-Amin, Richter said. El-Amin is co-founder of Young Enterprising Society, or YES, which runs The Blueprint startup accelerator in Milwaukee and Green Bay.
Going forward, Richter, Heppe and Johnson will remain involved with StartupFuel as advisers focusing on operations, data analytics and product, respectively, Richter said. Uncrowd will move over to StartupFuel but the Uncrowd brand may live on in some capacity, he said.
