One venture capital firm is putting all of its cards—and $100M—on the middle of the country
Atento Capital is unusual by any measure.
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The firm, affiliated with the George Kaiser Family Foundation, is based out of Tulsa, Okla., and it’s one of only a handful of venture capital funds focused on investing in companies outside the coasts in the middle of the country. That is, the early-stage startups that aren’t in San Francisco, New York City, or, as of recently, Miami.
But Atento looks different than other venture firms, too. Three of Atento’s five senior investors are women and people of color, as well as a majority of the rest of the firm. A core tenet of Atento is to be what venture capital often isn’t: inclusive. For the firm, that means open-door (and open-bar) DJ parties the first Friday of every month. It's striving to meet with founders in pairs—so investors can check one another to guarantee they are leaving behind the VC-jargon during pitch meetings. It means investing in emerging general partners like Forum Ventures or Visible Hands. It means investing in founders who have been overlooked for some reason or another—whether because of where they live, what they look like, or the problems they are trying to solve.
Atento has been investing off the GKFF balance sheet for approximately three years, deploying $128 million into a portfolio of 49 companies and 24 other VC funds. Now, Atento has raised $100 million for a new fund from its sole LP—$20 million for pre-seed investments and $80 million for early-stage and fund-of-fund investments.
Atento’s first vintage fund will offer legitimacy. But the more alluring feature is the new compensation model. Where most of the team had been paid on salary and bonus previously, nine of Atento’s team members will now have carry in the fund. As I wrote today in a piece for Fortune:
This is transformational for team members like Josephine Nelms, Director of Operations at Atento, who grew up in a single-mother home in public housing in Tulsa. Nelms is still paying off debt from putting herself through college, and says she has worked multiple jobs her whole life: from selling chronicles in public housing, to doing hair in middle school. Now, she says, her children will start out much further ahead than she could.
“For my kiddos, the possibilities are endless,” Nelms says. “We're talking about what college you want to go to; what do you want to do in your future? What type of business do you want to have now?”
“She’s my inspiration,” Michael Basch, cofounder of Atento, told me. “It makes me proud that she's a partner at Atento Capital and will have carry in that fund. That’s what this is all about. I'm most proud of that.”
You can read the full piece here.
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See you tomorrow,
Jessica Mathews
Twitter: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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