VC, deals, Entrepreneurship

Founder Collective Debuts with $40M

Wade Roush 11/9/09

The new Somerville, MA-based venture fund Founder Collective made a public debut today in a blog post by founder Chris Dixon, the CEO and co-founder of New York-based Hunch. Joining Dixon in the collective are serial entrepreneurs Eric Paley (Brontes Technologies), Dave Frankel (Internet Solutions), Mark Gerson (Gerson Lehrman Group), Zach Klein (Vimeo), Bill Trenchard (LiveOps), and Micah Rosenbloom (Brontes). Xconomy reported in June that the firm had obtained investments and commitments totaling about $30 million; according to Dixon’s post, that number is now $40 million. That’s small for a venture fund, but Founder Collective intends to help New York- and Cambridge-based startups with seed funding only. “Hence our interests and the founders’ interests are aligned,” Dixon writes. “This also means we are happy with smaller exits if that’s what the entrepreneur wants to do.”

Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com, call him at (617) 252-7323, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wroush.