Brandon Brooks hopes he'll be able to make it easier for other people to invest in startups beyond traditional high-net-worth investors, and he's launching his new company in Pittsburgh to help make that vision a reality.
It's the first time Brooks said he's spoken to a media outlet about the upcoming launch of Zinsu, a firm that will work to provide educational resources as well as a platform for investors of all wealth backgrounds to find and invest in startup companies. He likened Zinsu, a name that ties back to his ancestral heritage, as being similar to AngelList or Carta.
Brooks is back in his native Pittsburgh to build and launch this startup after previously living in South Carolina, San Francisco and elsewhere. It'll be the second startup he's founded in the region following the launch of Inventrify almost a decade ago, which serves as a crowdfunding platform for small businesses in distressed or underdeveloped neighborhoods.
His arrival in Pittsburgh also comes as he takes a step back from his responsibilities at Overlooked Ventures — a Columbus-based venture capital firm he co-founded that has worked to raise a $50 million fund for underrepresented founders from diverse backgrounds — so that he can further build Zinsu.
He said the company has raised some initial preseed funding from angel investors, though Brooks declined to disclose specific figures at this time.
Zinsu employs six people full-time time including Brooks and his co-founder, Tim Morris. He envisions having between 15 to 20 people on the startup's payroll when it formally launches in Q1 2024 with an office likely being established in the Homewood area.
"Homewood is just a tremendous opportunity right now," Brooks said. "We think it's a growing area, the view is obviously gorgeous and we think that there's a huge opportunity there for us to grow our firm."
For Brooks and his team, building those educational resources and the website itself will likely prove an easier feat for Zinsu than actually accepting investments on its platform, at least initially, as current federal regulations with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission require that accredited investors generally must have a net worth of more than $1 million (not counting the value of a primary residence) or have an annual income of over $200,000.
The SEC said it instills these requirements to protect investors and companies from fraud.
But Brooks alleged that such high barriers prevent median- and lower-income investors from being able to potentially reap the benefits of early-stage investing, barriers that don't exist for those same people who may wish to gamble their money away at a casino. He's testified before the U.S. Congress this past April saying as much and expressed a continued commitment to work with federal regulators to see these restrictions eased in the future.
"To me, that's asinine; that shouldn't be allowed," Brooks said. "I think that we need to educate the people first, give them the knowledge to be able to do due diligence, to be able to say like, 'hey, these people that I trust that are doing due diligence and are a part of this,' and that's part of what we're building with our new startup."
