Wellington Access Ventures Raises $150
Million To Back Underrepresented Founders
Led by four Black investors, WAV looks to help early-stage startups with $1 million to$6 million checks and access to Wellington’s wider network.
ALEX KONRAD

October 23, 2023

W

hen Meroxa founder DeVaris Brown was looking toraise more venture capitalfunding for his data infrastructure startup for developers, he quickly focused on one newer,
under-the-radar fund: Wellington Access
Ventures.
Meroxa had already raised $19 million
from established firms, but for Brown,
who has known Wellington Access
Ventures’ partners from overlap at SalesforceCRM 0.0%, industry non-profit BLCKVC and through his previous lead investor, it was an easy choice. “It was a foregone conclusion that I was going to talk tothem,” said Brown. “We’re both at a stage
that we can rise together.”
Known as WAV (pronounced “wave”),
Wellington Access Ventures is looking toestablish itself as such a go-to investor
for early-stage founders from underrepresented backgrounds. A new dedicatedfund and brand within $1.1 trillion-in-assetsWellington’s $8 billion private investing
platform, WAV has raised $150 million for
its debut, with the backing of limited partners including state pension plans andbanks.
“We feel really strongly that talent isuniversal, but opportunities and capital
have not been equally accessible across

WELLINGTON ACCESS VENTURES

WAV deal leads Frederik Groce and Sasha McKenzie, head Jackson Cummings, and deal
lead Van Jones.

the VC ecosystem,” said the fund’s leader,Jackson Cummings. “So, what we’re looking to do here is invest in who we think willbe the next industry-defining companiesand leaders.”
A Forbes Under 30 list alum, Cummings
is joined by three deal leads: Frederik

Groce, Van Jones and Sasha McKenzie.
The four partners, who are based acrossthe country (Cummings in New York,
Groce in Seattle, Jones in Los Angelesand McKenzie in Cincinnati), will invest
in early-stage rounds from the seed toSeries A stages, focusing on startups led

by founders whose race, gender, ethnicity
or other background don’t fit the typicaltech ecosystem tropes. While WAV doesn’t
have specific requirements to that effect,“we tend to look to back those founders
who have been overlooked and have thatchip on their shoulder,” Cummings added.

“We need moreculturally applicable capital.”
Meroxa CEO DeVaris Brown
While the number of Black-led VC
firms has increased in recent years — including Base10 Partners, Harlem Capital and Kapor Capital, among others— many of the bigger such funds don’t
invest with a mandate to back underrepresented
founders
specifically.
Among those that do, emerging managers have reckoned with a pullback
among corporate backers that has
disproportionately affected Black andunderrepresented VCs, including when
Elon Musk’s Twitter stopped wiring committed capital to a number of such funds
earlier this year. The numbers aren’t
better for startups: Black founders raised
just 0.13% of U.S. funding in the third
quarter of 2023, and women-foundedstartups raised only 1.9% of venture
dollars last year.
At $150 million for its first fund, WAV’spartners believe it can help bridge thegap by leading or co-leading funding
rounds immediately following such specialist funds, which often invest a smaller,
initial check. Then, they hope, the fund’s
affiliation with Wellington’s other, laterstage private investing funds and public market analysts can help guide suchcompanies through their journey to IPO.
WAV isn’t explicitly an impact investor:
the fund is expected to deliver top quartile returns, its partners said. But with its
resources and approach, they also thinkit’s the first fund of its kind. “We are reallyexcited to take advantage of a huge whitespace in the market,” said McKenzie. “Anytime an investor sees white space, theysee opportunity.”
WAV got started in 2021, when Wellington’s co-head of private investments,
Michael Carmen, convinced Cummings
to give up a promising spot at Salesforce
Ventures to spearhead a new fundenabling Wellington’s clients to backdiverse founders earlier in their company
journeys. Jones, a former entrepreneur,
joined from Ohio-based Drive Capital,
where he’d reached a partner role (andhelped lead the Series A for Meroxa). McKenzie, a former investment banker andprincipal at H Venture Partners, joined asa principal and was promoted last year.
Groce joined from a partner role at Storm
Ventures.
All four investors were involved in some
capacity in BLCK VC, the non-profit forBlack startup investors cofounded byGroce and Sydney Sykes in 2018, efforts
that Forbes profiled for their appearance
on the 30 Under 30 list for 2021. Cummings,
who made the list the same year, serves on
BLCK VC’s board, where Groce remains aco-chair; Jones and McKenzie were key
members in the group’s expansion into
the Midwest. (McKenzie’s on a committeefor the Black Women in Venture Capitalcommunity, too.)
And all four were Wellington’s top choices for each role, claimed Carmen; partners from across Wellington committed$50 million of their own capital to back
WAV, alongside insurance and healthcare companies and foundations. (Wel-lington declined to comment on which,specifically, citing a lack of permission.) “I
always tell them that their roster of institutional LPs is stronger than the original roster of institutions in my fund when I started
a decade ago,” Carmen said.
As part of Wellington, WAV, and by extension its portfolio, have access to theorganization’s other investors and equityanalysts, its partners said. But the fundoperates with a fair degree of autonomy, and must prove its financial performance on its own. “We’re big believers
that the business case is there, full stop,”
said Groce. “Underrepresented does notmean that we’re providing charity,” Jones
agreed.
WAV already started investing while it
was fundraising. Among the dozen investments in WAV’s portfolio are Movn Health,a virtual cardiac intervention program inwhich WAV led a $20 million Series A lastyear, and Clerkie, a debt repayment business in whose $33 million Series it participated in April. The firm plans to invest
broadly in business software, fintech andconsumer, with two partners teaming up
on each deal.
At Meroxa, CEO Brown said he’s intouch with his WAV contacts about twicea week. Ultimately, he’s judging the firm’s
helpfulness on how many customer introductions the Wellington network canmake. But as a personal investor alreadyin several of the same startups as WAV,
Brown is optimistic that more founders– and not just Black entrepreneurs, butother types of underrepresented leaders –will line up to work with the fund.
“We need more culturally applicablecapital,” Brown said. “Once the message
gets out there, you’re going to see a lot offounders say, ‘look, this is a time for me tochart my own destiny.’ Having people thatcan understand you across the diaspora,that’s super helpful.”(#S0118633) Reprinted with permission of Forbes Media LLC. Copyright 2023. For more information about reprints and licensing, visit www.parsintl.com.