Bright Ventures

We are a nationally-ranked venture capital firm and accelerator that brings together startup founders, investors, corporations, job seekers, universities, musicians and artists. The gener8tor platform includes more than 75 programs spanning startup accelerators, corporate programming, speaker series, conferences, skills accelerators and fellowships. gener8tor believes that everyone deserves opportunities, regardless of race, place or gender. And that is what we consider our mission. Why do we do it? Our mission is to be the best partner for a community to invest in its best and brightest. We envision communities achieving measurable and transformational growth through programming that enables equitable access and opportunity. We do what we do because we care about our communities. At gener8tor, everyone belongs. We don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. Our goal is to close equity gaps for founders, continually improve the workforce, and foster relationships with diverse communities and organizations that are dedicated to DE&I. From the culture of our own company to the experience of our programs and participants, we strive to create an inclusive and safe environment for everyone.

Founded in 2006, Techstars began with three simple ideas - entrepreneurs create the future, collaboration drives innovation, and great ideas can come from anywhere. Today our mission is to make innovation accessible to everyone, everywhere. We do this by connecting startups, investors, corporations, and cities to create a more sustainable and inclusive world. Since 2006, Techstars has invested in more than 2,200 companies and today has a market cap of $27 Billion.

As an impact-driven organization serving remarkable entrepreneurs & ecosystems, we leverage corporate partnerships, specialized programming, meaningful mentorship, and capital investments to drive growth within the minority innovation economy. Lightship provides remarkable founders the resources and direction their businesses need to scale.

Since its founding in 2009, H/L Ventures has forged a new way to build companies. H/L Ventures’ unique approach combines Daily Active Engagement with every portfolio company and a focus on investing in growth, impact, and diversity. Today, H/L Ventures manages a family of companies and funds that together comprise a holistic company-building ecosystem. At the heart of this system is H/L Studio, which was among the first venture studios to include social impact in its investment thesis. That venture studio is now supported by our opportunity fund, CityRock Ventures, and our managed services group, H/L Strategies, among other entities. Our team has pioneered an innovative, effective model that aligns the interests of entrepreneurs, investors, other stakeholders, and society to succeed together. At H/L Ventures, we apply these three key elements across our studios and funds: DAILY ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT WITH FOUNDERS H/L Ventures’ involvement with our portfolio companies is as hands-on and supportive as possible throughout the entrepreneurship journey. This is the hallmark of H/L’s approach: we hold ourselves to a standard of virtually daily contact with every company in our portfolio, on an open-ended basis. This is not the empty promise of a website value-added page, but the core of our investment thesis. We host weekly calls with our senior portfolio team and each team of founders, which leads to daily activities involving our staff, Venture Partners, EPIRs, advisors, and network of service providers. All of this is in a supportive mode, meant to ensure that whatever needs our portfolio companies have, we remain actively relevant and helpful, every day. This care is given to all portfolio companies, regardless of which H/L Ventures vehicle is engaged. A POWERFUL ECOSYSTEM We respond effectively and proactively to our portfolio companies via a powerful team and community. Organized in a hub-and-spoke model around our core portfolio staff, four key communities help us co-build companies: Venture Partners & EPIRs, Advisors, Member Partners, and our affiliated Trusted Partner Network. Our team is shared across all our family of studios and funds. ACCESS TO CAPITAL From inception to exit, we provide many different forms of capital. Pre-Series A start-ups benefit from the H/L Studio model, where they enjoy access to virtually every form of capital, including human capital, social capital, networks, experience, and time. H/L does not normally invest in Pre-Seed rounds, focusing on our broad range of value-add services as we build a deeper relationship together via our Studio. We do however offer $100,000 in funding at the formal Seed round stage for our Studio companies [1, see Footnote], as well as an opportunity to leverage our extensive networks of co-investors to benefit the team’s fundraising efforts. Our opportunity fund, CityRock Venture Partners, invests at Series A and Series B. CityRock funds both qualifying studio portfolio startups and companies that come to us from outside of the studio pipeline, provided they fit our thesis and pass our standard due diligence process. Regardless of placement in the H/L Ventures ecosystem, all of our portfolio companies enjoy full access to our venture studio resources.

We invent + invest in companies that unlock human potential. We create new business concepts, enable traction, provide seed funding, and drive acceleration through strategic partnerships with top influencers, corporations, and investors. Building one company is hard. We are building multiple ventures and the infrastructure to repeatedly discover, ideate, experiment, build, and scale them. We do not take on this challenge lightly. Core to our thesis is that we work with exceptional talent using systems, methodologies, and networks that act as force multipliers, letting us do more with less. We know that changing the way companies are created, in a space as impactful as the future of living and work, is a big undertaking. That’s why we build from a place of curiosity and we work with intentionality. We ask ourselves how to: Make entrepreneurship more inclusive and hire exceptional talent Uncover solutions to substantial, but overlooked problems Collaborate with corporations, institutions, and influencers Use data and technology for determining deployment of resources into starting, building, and scaling ventures Build systems and methodologies that enable teams to do more with less

Our practice focuses on promoting new businesses with a positive social vision and impact. As we launch, grow and promote businesses, we create new realities for entrepreneurs, customers and all stakeholders around these new ventures, whether they are aware of it or not. The way new ventures impact society has enormous consequences and we chose to take a disciplined stance in collaborate with entrepreneurs whose work and vision adheres most closely with our own values: Equality Sustainability Freedom One way to learn more about the type of activites closest to home for us is to visit the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals website. Through these 17 goals we believe that our own values are very vividly exemplified and thus choose to work with entrepreneurs leading projects in the same direction.