Recast Capital launches Recast Accelerate, a program supporting early-stage, women-led venture funds

Recast Capital, a platform dedicated to investing in and supporting emerging managers in venture, founded in 2020 by Sara Zulkosky and Courtney McCrea, launched Recast Accelerate, a new catalytic program to drive the success of women-led, early stage US funds in venture capital.

The program, which has early support from Pivotal Ventures, a Melinda French Gates company, is rooted in the hypothesis that by increasing the number of emerging general partners (GPs) that identify as women or non-binary, particularly those focused on investing at the earliest stages of company development, you will also increase the percentage of VC funding to founders from underrepresented backgrounds. Recast Accelerate is a fiscally sponsored project of New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity.

Sara Zulkosky, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Recast Capital: "While we've witnessed momentum for women and other underrepresented GPs in venture capital, structural inequities and barriers still exist. A huge issue that still remains is the fact that it takes women and underrepresented GPs twice as long to raise their venture funds and building the back-office infrastructure to run a fund is highly time and resource intensive. We saw an opportunity to launch a program that would leverage catalytic capital to help accelerate this progress, providing education and financial support to new female-led funds to extend their runways and improve their staying power in industry. We believe this will more efficiently enable a pathway to greater diversity in venture for both funders and founders."

Recast Accelerate will support women-led emerging venture funds by providing access to Recast's established Enablement Program, including key educational content, professional development and community-building resources, complimentary executive coaching, and capital to be leveraged in support of each fund's backend operations. This capital could be used for the fund's legal or fund administration expenses, and/or technology stack, some of which will be available as discounted offerings through Accelerate's menu of subscriptions and services. Recast plans to work with 30 funds in the inaugural Accelerate cohort in 2023.

The intent of Recast Accelerate is two-fold: first, by providing this support and capital for the services fundamental to a VC firm's success, the dollars previously budgeted to these areas will be available to the managers to redirect to other considerations and help to extend their fundraising runway. Second, by catalyzing the long-term success of the female emerging managers (EMs) in the program, you will create the opportunity for more companies led by female founders and founders from other underrepresented backgrounds to receive funding.

Courtney McCrea, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Recast Capital: "In order to drive change and break barriers within the venture landscape, we need to be able to provide the right set of resources. We look forward to supporting new fund managers that we believe will be successful - that will leverage their unique expertise and networks to identify and win allocation in some of tomorrow's greatest companies. These are managers we believe have the potential to create industry-leading franchises. It's this out performance that will help to ensure their staying power in the industry, and help to ensure more underrepresented founders have more opportunities to receive the capital necessary to scale."

In exchange for participating in the program, Recast will ask each fund manager to share the demographics of the founders in which they invest in order to gather the data necessary to test their hypothesis. Recast commits to sharing their findings in a public report. This is just the first step for Accelerate. Looking ahead, Recast plans to bring on additional funding partners to support more underrepresented EMs and provide direct investment capital to the managers in the program. These funds would allow the EMs to build their investment portfolio and track record while fundraising, working to further accelerate their success in the market. 

www.recastcapital.com