Emergence

Emergence

All four of our company's partners are African-American. Before we started our own business, we were all senior executives at investment banking and private equity firms. All of us would run across attractive investment opportunities,So we decided to pool our own financial resources and invest in private companies. As word got out in the market place that there were four African Americans willling to put their own rizk capital to work and aggregate the capital of others (some times amounting to more than a milllion dollars), before we knew about it, we had a portfolio of sixteen companies. We decided to leave our firms and form the Ascend Venture group.

The biggest way that money has changed things for us is that, because all four of us had been financially successful in our individual careers before we started the firm, we were able to take capital and deploy it in other situations. 

We could have done other things that were not nearly as risky, but the money gave us the flexibility to take rizks. If we hadn't had the capital to lose, we would never have considered it. If we hadn't first been financially sucessful, there is no way we could have thought about making these investment in early-stage technology companies.

What distinguishes us from other venture capital firms is that we leverage our own network of women and minorities to find good investment opportunities. For example, we'll find an investment opportunity because we have a relationship with a minority entrepreneur, 

or we'll hear about a new company because we're close to an African and American student business association, or we come across a company through an organization that is promoting female entrepreneurship. 

This network allows us to identify attractive business opportunities to which other venture capital firms would probably not have access. The companies we invest in still have to be held to the same standard as other businesses.

Our business model is investing in good businesses. The value of creating successful new businesses can't be underestimat. For us to play a small part in establishing new small companies that will employ hundreds of people and assist many other businesses to become more efficient is important in and of itself. A by-product of our sourcing strategy is that many of the businesses we help create are led by women and minorities. Of far greater importance, 

however, is that we have to make profitable investments for our limited partners. Otherwise we won't continue to have capital to invest. It is so important for us to have capital to enable others to pursue their dreams.