Four months after testing the venture capital waters with 20SALES, 20VC is back with another offshoot fund called 20GROWTH that grabbed $5 million in capital commitments.
Harry Stebbings, who founded 20VC, told TechCrunch that the 20GROWTH fund will be similar to 20SALES in that the fund will write checks of $100,000 and more for pre-seed, seed and Series A companies and won’t do follow-on investments. The fund has made one undisclosed investment so far and intends to invest in about 50 companies.
Stebbings is a limited partner and advisor to this fund as well. He also brought in LPs, including Harvard Management Company, SCS and Arcano.
The origins of 20GROWTH came from Stebbings bringing together, for example, the heads of growth and product from various companies to talk to his portfolio founders. As this community grew, he wanted to harness that experience.
“Venture value-add is a great myth,” Stebbings said. “Operators, those are the people who are incredibly valuable. We did it with 20SALES first, which is eight amazing sales leaders.”
20GROWTH’s fund managers. Image Credits: 20VC
20GROWTH is formed with nine growth and marketing experts. They come from the likes of Shopify, Dropbox, Pinterest, Airtable, DoorDash, Eventbrite, Facebook and Ro.
The founding partners include Luc Levesque, Brian Hale, Casey Winters, Elena Verna, Hila Qu, Adam Fishman, Rob Schutz, Darius Contractor and Sri Batchu. All will be staying at their current jobs and participating in the fund on a part-time basis.
“I think about the next generation of venture capital, and in many ways, we are unbundling a lot of what traditional venture was,” Stebbings said. “This is true operator value in a way delivered like it hasn’t been before. You’re getting nine of the best growth leaders with one check.”