How We're Building The Club Fund
Estimated reading time: 4 mins
A few weeks ago we announced the Community Club Fund (The Club Fund), an investment fund dedicated to investing in the future of community through community-driven companies, infrastructure and tools. TL;DR of the fund:
- We look for products and tools that will improve how communities are built, grown, and engaged
- We invest $25k-50k at seed, pre-seed or even earlier. We don’t need anyone else to be ‘in first’, we’re happy to be your first check.
- We’re investing globally (yes, really!); we believe talent is universal
Every new fund talks about how they’re ‘different’, but the vast majority simply continue the current status quo. Rather than just saying that the Club Fund is different, we’re laying it all out. We’re not just building a fund, we’re building a community for the future of community.
By Community, For Community
We are not professional investors — we are community builders, backed by community professionals, who are investing in the future of community. Community-driven companies are the future, and they’ll need new tooling and infrastructure to maximize their success.
That’s why we’re creating the Community Council — a group of top community leaders across various industries that can help companies building great community products. The council members are (financially and emotionally) invested in the future of community and tooling, which means that when The Club invests in your company, all of these experts are on your team.
The Community Council is made up of the LPs and advisors to the fund. They’ll be a part of our investment process with full access to our deal flow and the ability to provide their thoughts and feedback on any company we’re looking at. We’ll be announcing the founding members of the council when the fund officially launches on October 1st!
Transparency
Venture capital has traditionally been an incredibly opaque industry, but hey, we’re not professional investors so we can throw those games right out the window! We’re here to help people build great communities, tools, and products, and we’re going to do it transparently. This means we’ll be sharing our Community Council, our LPs, and our investment memos with the world.
It also means we’re sharing companies we come across with other interested investors — we won’t be playing those games of hiding deals in order to win them for fear of them being ‘stolen’ by others. We want to make sure founders are working with the right investors for them, and if that isn’t us, then that’s ok!
In addition to this, we also aren’t playing any games with founders seeking funding. You don’t have to find a warm intro to us, or worry about sending a docsend vs an email attachment. Our application process is fully open — apply here!
Interested in being part of our bi-weekly deal flow memo? Shoot me an email.
Commsor Pool
It’s pretty common (if not the norm these days) for founders to become investors as their companies grow, either as angels or through a proper fund. That’s always felt weird to us — founders leveraging the success and work of their teams to give themselves more options. But we wanted to do something different with The Club Fund, and that’s why we’re structuring the carry to be shared amongst the full Commsor team; the people who help make the Community Club possible.
Each quarter, half of the fund carry (any profits the fund makes) will be granted to those who are working at Commsor during that quarter. When companies in the Club Fund are successful, the whole team will benefit.
We hope the rest of the industry takes this to heart — founders raising funds, you should keep in mind who helped you get your startups to where they are now. Make a commitment to the futures of your team, and give them a chance to be involved in the potentially life changing results of investing.
Initial Commitments
We’ve already committed to a number of great companies which will be included in the first quarter of the fund.
Toucan - rethinking video for virtual social events. Founded by a brother-sister team, we’ve already been using them for our community happy hour events!
ZebraIQ - The ultimate community tool for creators and celebrities. Incredible team working on this.
StartPlaying.Games - Y Combinator S20 graduate, creating the infrastructure for the tabletop gaming community. Our inner nerds loved it the moment we saw it.
2 other companies that are yet to be announced.
The Club exists because we want to see more cool shit exist in the community space. Interested in helping us make this happen? Become an LP via AngelList and join the Community Council.
Looking for funding from The Club? Apply here!
