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It’s no secret that Hip-Hop’s first billionaire Jay-Z is always where the money resides, and that goes for Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners as well. TechCrunch reports, The “Hard Knock Life” rapper’s venture capital firm Marcy Venture Partners — co-founded with Jay Brown (former Roc Nation CEO) and Larry Marcus (Walden VC general partner) — has just closed its second fund with an impressive $325 million. As AfroTech previously reported early last year, the firm’s first fund was a whopping $85 million and signaled the start of new investments. Now, according to TechCrunch, Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners is “now managing $600 million in assets altogether,” says the group’s co-founder Larry Marcus. The trio’s mission is to drive the consumer and mass-market to allow culture to transcend across products, services, media and technology. Marcy Venture Partners prides itself in filling its portfolio with companies that are run by minorities and women pushing forward its key values, which...
The NFT (non-fungible token) boom over the last few weeks has taken over the cryptocurrency game for artists around the world, and now Black women are leading the charge to elevate the space just for them. Photographers Lauren Washington and Diana Sinclair — both associated with digital database Black Women Photographers (BWP) — have been integral players in ushering more Black women into the NFT space through online discussions on Clubhouse, Twitter and an onboarding process onto cryptocurrency platform, Foundation. According to Sinclair, Washington — who also specializes in film, screenwriting and directing — was the first Black woman photographer to join the platform with intentions of innovating the space for artists and women who look just like her. “I knew about crypto and investing because a friend of mine (Darrian Aldridge, a Black digital asset investor) who runs The Crypto Clubhouse room,” she tells AfroTech. “So I was learning about what that all means and what blockchain...
The reign of Jay-Z continues. In two separate announcements, it was revealed that Hova has made not one, but two, major business investments that are well putting him onto a path of business superstardom. According to Revolt TV, Beyoncé’s husband has revealed that he invested in NFT (non-fungible token) marketplace Bitski and that his initial investment — and the announcement surrounding it — helped the company raise $19 million in its Series A funding round. The outlet suggests that this investment is, in part, tied to the rapper-turned-businessman’s business deals with Twitter head honcho Jack Dorsey. Their Bitcoin development fund — in which the pair invested 500 Bitcoin each — and the trademark was filed for “entertainment services in the nature of creation, development, and production.” As AfroTech previously explained, NFTs are a form of digital authentication for things like artwork. While some experts believe that NFTs are the wave of the future, others are not so sure. In...
Just two years after they announced their debut, $56 million fund, Kindred Ventures has announced the formation of their second, $100 million seed venture fund, according to an announcement via Medium. “We’re thrilled to announce today that we’ve raised a new $100 million seed-stage venture fund,” they said. “Our mission for this fund is to invest in brilliant and dedicated founders at the earliest stages of building their startup and, ultimately, our collective future.” Founded by Steve Jang and Kanyi Maqubela, the two men behind Kindred Ventures have made a variety of wise investments, including Heartbeat Health, Bitski, and Schematic Labs. For his part, too, Jang was an early investor in Uber. However, Kindred Ventures insists this latest seed fund will be used to fund up-and-coming diverse founders on a mission to create products that solves our world’s problems. “At the core of this next phase of transformation, we want to meet mission-driven founders solving important problems...