Venture capital determines which companies receive institutional backing, how markets develop, and who accumulates ownership at scale.
The firms listed here operate at that allocation layer, leading investments, setting terms, and building track records across seed, early stage, and growth markets in the U.S. and Canada.
Fund sizes, limited partners, and portfolio outcomes are drawn from verified public sources.
Base10 Partners
Adeyemi Ajao and TJ Nahigian co-founded Base10 Partners in 2017 with a focus on automation across the largest sectors of the real economy, including food, logistics, retail, healthcare, construction, and operations.
The firm concentrates portfolios of roughly 25 companies per fund around three to four core trends, investing in founders building software and automation platforms for industries that remain underserved by technology relative to their scale.
In 2022, Base10 became the first Black-led venture capital firm to cross $1 billion in assets under management, closing its $460 million Fund III with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System among its confirmed limited partners. The firm manages over $1.3 billion across multiple vehicles, including The Advancement Initiative, a growth-stage fund that donates 50% of carried interest to HBCUs to fund student scholarships and university endowments.
Portfolio companies include Figma, Notion, and Incredible Health, which reached unicorn status in 2025. Ajao was named to the Forbes Midas List in 2023. The firm made its most recent investment in March 2026.
645 Ventures
Nnamdi Okike and Aaron Holiday founded 645 Ventures in 2014, focusing on seed and Series A investments in software companies.
The firm applies its Venture Investment Triangle framework to build conviction across current market conditions and emerging technology trends, investing ahead of broader institutional recognition in emerging software categories.
645 closed Fund IV and Select Fund I in December 2022, totaling $347 million and bringing assets under management to over $550 million across five vehicles. Over 90% of capital comes from institutional limited partners, including endowments, foundations, fund-of-funds, and family offices.
Existing limited partners increased their allocations based on top-quartile performance across prior funds, with additional institutional investors joining the roster.
The portfolio has produced two unicorns, one IPO, and 22 acquisitions. Notable exits include Eden Health, Emburse, and FiscalNote.
Cherryrock Capital
Stacy Brown-Philpot and Saydeah Howard founded Cherryrock Capital in 2023 to address a persistent gap at the Series A and B stages, where few firms are positioned to lead rounds, take board seats, and write the largest checks.
Cherryrock closed its debut fund at $172 million in February 2025, the first Black woman-founded venture firm to raise a multi-hundred-million-dollar fund focused on underinvested founders, including Black and Latinx entrepreneurs. Limited partners include JPMorgan Asset Management, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, MassMutual, Bank of America, Pivotal Ventures, Reid Hoffman, Mellody Hobson, and Sheryl Sandberg. The fund targets 12 to 15 investments with check sizes between $6 million and $10 million, leading or co-leading each round.
Portfolio companies include Coactive AI, where Cherryrock co-led the Series B alongside Emerson Collective, and Vitable Health, where the firm led the Series A alongside Citi Impact Fund and First Round Capital. The firm has begun deploying capital from Fund I across a concentrated set of investments.
Illumen Capital
Daryn Dodson founded Illumen Capital to address bias in investment decision-making and its impact on performance. The firm operates as a fund-of-funds, investing in venture, growth, and private equity managers, while working directly with those managers through a research-informed system developed in partnership with Stanford SPARQ.
This positions Illumen at the allocator level, influencing which fund managers receive institutional capital.
Fund II closed at $170 million in 2023, anchored by the Ford Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and backed by over 100 investors. The Catalyst Fund, closed at $32.75 million in November 2024, targets first-time managers from underrepresented backgrounds and is anchored by the Ford Foundation and Health Forward Foundation. Total assets under management exceed $285 million across three vehicles.
The Catalyst Fund introduced a direct investment component, marking the firm’s expansion into company-level investing sourced through its manager network.
MaC Venture Capital
Marlon Nichols co-founded MaC Venture Capital through the merger of Cross Culture Ventures, which he launched in 2015, and M Ventures. The firm’s investment model centers on the convergence of cultural trends, consumer behavior, and emerging technology, applied across seed-stage companies in North America and select international markets.
Three funds closed between 2019 and 2024: $110 million, $203 million, and $150 million respectively, bringing total assets under management to over $600 million. Fund I limited partners include Goldman Sachs and Fairview Capital. Approximately 10 percent of capital is deployed internationally, with active investment in Nigeria, Kenya, and Senegal.
Portfolio companies include MongoDB, Gimlet Media, acquired by Spotify, Blavity, Thrive Market, Pipe, and Airspace.
Harlem Capital
Henri Pierre-Jacques, Jarrid Tingle, and Brandon Bryant founded Harlem Capital in 2015 as an angel syndicate with a commitment to backing 1,000 diverse founders over 20 years.
Fund II closed at $134 million in March 2021, oversubscribed from a $100 million target, backed by 14 institutional investors, 4 global corporations, and 6 family offices. Apple committed $25 million to minority-owned VC firms, including Harlem Capital in 2023. The firm manages $174 million across two funds, with 42 percent of individual limited partners identifying as women or people of color.
With 66 portfolio companies and 10 acquisitions including Expectful, Assemble, and MoviePass, Harlem Capital has built one of the more active early-stage portfolios among Black-led firms. The firm’s most recent investment was in AccessGrid in November 2025.
Zeal Capital Partners
Nasir Qadree founded Zeal Capital Partners in Washington, D.C. in 2020, focusing on financial technology, healthcare, and the future of work, sectors where structural inequality has produced undercapitalized markets.
Before founding Zeal, Qadree ran AT&T’s $400 million Aspire Social Investment Fund and held roles at Goldman Sachs and State Street. Hampton University, his alma mater, became one of the firm’s first institutional limited partners.
Fund I closed at $62.1 million in 2021, one of the largest debut funds raised by a solo general partner at the time. Limited partners included PayPal, Hampton University, Truist Ventures, and Capricorn Investment Group. Fund II closed at $82 million in May 2025, bringing total assets under management to $186 million. Nearly 80 percent of Fund I limited partners returned for the second fund, with new investors including Citi Impact Fund, MassMutual, Wells Fargo, M&T Bank, Zaffre Investments, and Spelman College.
Zeal has backed 40 companies across both funds. Portfolio highlights include Esusu, one of the few Black-led technology companies to reach unicorn valuation, alongside Seven Starling, Debbie, Humanly, Stratyfy, and Kanarys.
Collab Capital
Jewel Burks Solomon and Barry Givens founded Collab Capital in Atlanta in 2020, around a specific market read: Black founders represent one of the fastest-growing entrepreneurial segments and remain among the most underfunded.
The firm developed the SPACE agreement, a structure that blends profit-sharing with equity and allows founders to repurchase equity as their companies generate revenue, returning capital to limited partners as early as year three without requiring a traditional liquidity event.
Fund I closed at $50 million with limited partners including Apple, Goldman Sachs, Google, PayPal, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Kapor Foundation, and Mailchimp. Fund II closed at $75 million in June 2025, backed by Apple, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Leon Levine Foundation, and California IBank, bringing total assets under management to $125 million.
Fund I invested in 38 companies. Portfolio companies include Hairbrella, Goodr, Revry, Intus Care, Culina Health, and SparkCharge. Options MD was acquired by Resiliencelab in October 2024.
Precursor Ventures
Charles Hudson founded Precursor Ventures in San Francisco in 2015 on the premise that founders should have access to institutional capital at the earliest stage. The firm backs 30 to 40 companies per year before there is traction or product maturity, functioning as a systematic first-check investor across software, hardware, consumer, and enterprise markets.
Fund V closed at $66 million in April 2025, the firm’s fifth fund in ten years. Precursor has invested in 321 companies to date, producing two unicorns, Juniper Square and Incredible Health, and 41 acquisitions including Superhuman and Limitless.
Active investments extend across the U.S., Canada, Latin America, the UAE, and Africa. The firm made 12 investments in 2025
BKR Capital
Lise Birikundavyi and Isaac Olowolafe Jr. founded BKR Capital in Toronto to build institutional venture capital infrastructure for Black entrepreneurship in Canada.
The inaugural fund raised over $22 million against an original $10 million target and is tracking as a top-quartile performer for its vintage. Fund II opened with a $20 million first close in March 2026, targeting $50 million, with institutional commitments from the Royal Bank of Canada, Business Development Bank of Canada, and Export Development Canada.
BKR invests in Black-led technology companies across fintech, edtech, and proptech, with 90 percent of capital deployed in Canada and 10 percent reserved for international opportunities. The firm evaluates companies based on a credible path to $100 million in revenue and its ability to support that growth.
Venture firms and companies operating within the capital allocation process engage with Shoppe Black to position how they are evaluated before capital is deployed and partnerships are formed.
Inquiries can be submitted here.
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