Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Base10, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, has raised $460 million for its third early-stage fund.
Why it matters: The firm's bet on what it calls "automation for the real economy" is definitely one that paid off during the pandemic as all industries had to adapt.
- "Everything needs to happen online and some of the businesses that we invested in have been real life-savers during the pandemic," co-founder and managing partner Ade Ajao tells Axios.
Between the lines: "I think it’s really hard to be an entrepreneur today and look at these companies [Uber, Theranos, WeWork] and not think, 'if I get there, or when I get there' — because you are an optimist — how am I going to be the hero?'" Ajao says of the reckoning with power and impact among startup founders he's observed in more recent recent years.
- Other noticeable changes since Base10's start include: all startups having distributed workforces (also a pandemic result), more of its peers investing internationally and more venture dollars in the market overall.
1 diversity thing: "For an industry that looks like this, it's surprising how much people think about [diversity]," Ajao, who is half Nigerian and half Spanish, says of the gap between the VC industry's homogenous demographics and all the talk of diversifying its ranks.
- Last year, Base10 closed a $300 million late-stage fund that counts several HBCUs among its limited partners (who also get half the carry).