What we’re learning as the harvest begins.
Our thinking on the inclusive-returns thesis, capital efficiency, and what the data says about backing overlooked founders — reported straight, wins and misses alike.
1st exit realized — the fund enters harvest
5 of 13 companies now profitable
8% loss rate vs. an est. 30–50% industry norm
Portfolio at a glance · By sector
- Climate 4
- Deep Tech 2
- HealthTech 1
- AgTech 1
- Media 2
- Fintech 1
- EdTech 1
- Gaming 1
Thirteen companies across eight sectors and cities nationwide — most built far from the coastal venture hubs.
Ed Talk · Featured
“One moment of access can compound across generations.”
How a Harvard recruiter crossed the tracks in Dayton, opened a door Ed couldn’t yet imagine, and showed why seeing potential others overlook creates advantages that compound over a lifetime.
- 1,000+
- opportunities reviewed a year
- 40 yrs
- of proof behind the wider lens
Ed Talk
The best founders often build from problems they’ve lived.
Dennis Cail II turned firsthand experience with predatory lending into Zirtue, formalizing the $184 billion world of informal family loans that most fintech investors had learned to overlook.
Ed Talk
She started as a nurse. She delivered a 100X return.
The overlooked career of Slivy Edmonds, whose path from nursing to Wall Street, Air Atlanta and private equity became proof that unconventional backgrounds can signal extraordinary adaptability and execution.
Ed Talk
I’d fund him again tomorrow.
Michael Hollis raised $90 million and built an airline passengers loved before a broken Wall Street financing promise brought it down. Ed on recognizing the complete entrepreneur even when the outcome says failure.
Ed Talk
IRR doesn’t measure everything an investment creates.
Chester Davenport’s $500 million outcome delivered returns, but Ed argues its deeper legacy was generational wealth, jobs, opportunity and doors opened for the founders who followed.
Ed Talk
Same question. Different lens.
How venture capital can mistake pedigree for capability, reading Stanford and familiar networks as signals while treating experience, resilience and unconventional paths as risk.
Ed Talk
Access comes with an obligation.
Why Ed turned a seat among Massachusetts’ most powerful CEOs into The Business Collaborative, generating opportunities by using access as a bridge rather than treating it as a privilege to keep.
Ed Talk
Power doesn’t have to come at the expense of partnership.
What Courtney Vance told a room of Black fund managers about supporting powerful women, maintaining your own identity, and redefining what shared success looks like.
Ed Talk
“Do business with everyone in this room.”
Fifteen Black founders, one room of Stop & Shop senior executives, two minutes each — how The Business Collaborative turned access into contracts.
Ed Talk
The overlooked market Wall Street glimpsed in 1988.
Ed on the flight to meet Michael Milken — and the untapped opportunity in founders of color the market still misprices.
Essay
Investing in the Third Reconstruction.
The long arc behind the thesis — Ed's first-person essay on capital, ownership, and what backing overlooked founders builds over generations.
