Jeff Fagnan of Atlas Ventures has announced a new $200 million fund dedicated exclusively to financing technology startups. The fund is currently operating as FKA (“formerly known as”) and will be the first time that Atlas Ventures has split its tech/life sciences fund into two separate funds, with life sciences keeping the Atlas Ventures brand name. The firm announced the split back in October.
However, the fund won’t be called FKA for long.
FKA will be crowdsourcing the name for the fund from the community, offering a $50k investment in the new fund on the behalf of the winner, as though they were an LP. The carried interest will be divided in half, with the returns on the first $25k going directly to the winner and the other half going to any Tugg.org non-profit of the winner’s choosing.
For all intents and purposes, the winner is an investor in the new FKA fund. They could come to the annual investor meeting if they wanted to. They’re investing alongside universities, family funds, endowments, foundations, and pensions. The unique aspect of this campaign is that the person who contributes the winning name gets to be an investor.
You can submit a name here.
It’s an unusual way of going about finding a name, but Fagnan tells me that this Atlas has always taken a great interest in the opinions and contributions of the community. They already have about 200 people who have submitted names before the site has even gone live. Ryan Moore, Chris Lynch and Jon Karlen will all be joining Fagnan as partners in the new fund.
“We think the best ideas come from the community, not from a handful of blue blazers in a boardroom,” said Fagnan. “We believe in your creativity and your fresh perspective. After all, our brand is not what we say it is: it’s what you think it is. Besides, we believe that the venture capital community should be more transparent.”