Panoramic Ventures — a joint venture by Paul Judge and BIP Capital co-founder, Mark Buffington — has announced its formation with a $300 million fund, according to a press release that dropped today. The fund, according to the founders, will be used as a way to help “overlooked geographies,” racial and gender diversity of founders and teams, and opening more doors for often underrepresented founders.
“After years of building companies as an entrepreneur and angel investor, I felt that I could have a greater impact by working with more founders, which is why we created Panoramic Ventures,” said Paul Judge, in the press release statement. “As a minority who has built companies outside of the traditional tech hubs, I know what it is like to be an overlooked founder. From Atlanta to Miami, from the Southeast to the Midwest, Panoramic wants to back promising founders and extend capital opportunities that may not have previously existed.”
As stated in the press release, Black founders receive less than one percent of venture capital funding, and women founders receive less than three percent of venture capital funding. With hopes of bridging the gap evident in these statistics, Panoramic Ventures has already invested in minority-owned companies such as LeaseQuery, Cove.tool, OncoLens, and Eventeny.
For his part, too, Paul Judge has a long and storied career in tech-based companies and startups. He is a co-founder and executive chairman of Pindrop, and was previously the co-founder of TechSquare Labs, co-founder of Purewire (acquired by Barracuda), and CTO of CipherTrust (acquired by Secure Computing). He has also invested in more than 60 tech-based startups, in the past.
This $300 million war chest makes Panoramic Ventures the largest tech fund in the Southeast and will go toward companies founded by graduate students, professors, and college and university undergrads. The fund also has more than $550 million in assets under management.
