Halcyon Venture Partners, a firm spun off from Georgetown startup accelerator Halcyon, has raised its first investment toward a $50 million fund to support social impact startups.
The firm closed a $5 million raise for Halcyon Fund II LP on Jan. 30, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The documents show HVP aims to raise an additional $45 million.
Halcyon Venture Partners formally launched as a stand-alone organization at the start of the year. In addition to the new fund, it manages the $5 million Halcyon Fund I — a portfolio of 18 companies that have been backed by Halcyon — and the Halcyon Angels, an angel network that invests in startups that have used Halcyon's services as well as other impact-driven companies.
Kate Goodall, who co-founded Halcyon a decade ago and served as its CEO until Daniel J. Barker assumed the top post Jan. 1, is managing partner at HVP alongside Dahna Goldstein, the previous chief investment officer of Halcyon. Phoebe Van Duinen is a principal at the fund.
Goodall declined to comment on the fundraise specifically, but in an emailed statement, she trumpeted the successes of Fund I and Halcyon Angels, which combined have realized four exits since 2021 and now report $7 million in assets under management.
Goodall also noted that when she co-founded Halcyon House, which started as an incubator in 2014 before becoming a nonprofit in 2017, the organization could support 16 startups per year. It's now backing about 80 companies annually and has 500 firms among its alumni.
"We are building a firm that will invest in the most promising climate, health, and equity-tech — technology that closes a social or financial gap — seed-stage startups from Halcyon and beyond," Goodall told me in her email statement. "These sectors align with the incubator’s new programmatic direction, and are the sectors where we have the greatest deal-flow, expertise, and conviction for future performance."
Goodall said Fund I saw 80% of its investments go toward companies that had a female founder and that over 60% of investments went to companies that had a non-white founder. She said HVP will keep this vision going forward.
"HVP is continuing Halcyon’s legacy of disrupting the status quo, built on the belief that while innovation is universal, opportunity is not," Goodall said. "Matching innovation with opportunity yields powerful results."
