Alexandria Lafci is now behind one of the largest raises for a Black female general partner.
“The startups needed money, and I wanted to invest in them. I thought they could have impact,” Lafci told Fast Company. “I thought I could influence them. So, I started just talking to some of our advisors, some of our donors, like ‘Hey, what do you think about the idea of a venture fund?’ It was a little bit of an identity crisis for me honestly, for a couple of months. Venture capital always, for me, just felt so financially oriented and not impact oriented. But my conclusion was, I actually think I can maybe have some of the largest impact on housing through finding companies that can really transform how we construct buildings.”
While she initially set out to raise between $5 million to $10 million, the outlet reports Hometeam Ventures’ efforts were bolstered by an $18 million raise, which included investors like Alexis Ohanian.
“I was truly just asking for advice, because I’m trying to think through, is this viable? Does this make sense? Would people want to support this? And many of those early conversations led to checks. So, pretty organically we were off to the races. I wanted to raise $5 to $10 million. We raised $18 million,” Lafci explained to Fast Company.
While Lafci acknowledges the milestone, she recognizes there is still great work to be done to ensure more Black leaders can secure investments to better the overall ecosystem.
She continued, “I didn’t know at the time, because I didn’t know anything about venture capital, but there’s so few Black women venture capitalists, let alone who have their own fund, that unfortunately, this is one of the largest funds raised by a Black female.”
