Exclusive: Enable Ventures closes $50M accessibility-focused fund
Photo collage: Brock E.W. Turner/Axios. Photo: Courtesy of Enable Ventures
Enable Ventures, which backs accessibility-focused startups, closed its debut fund at just over $50 million, managing partner Regina Kline tells Axios Pro Deals.
Why it matters: Kline sees opportunity in markets investors have historically overlooked, as smaller VCs face fundraising headwinds.
How it works: The firm backs companies that reduce barriers for people with disabilities.
- For example, it led a round in computer vision startup Be My Eyes, which uses AI to audibly describe the physical world for blind and low-vision users.
Follow the money: Enable has made 11 investments so far — generally backing companies that have already raised seed or Series A funding. It aims to make about 25 investments from Fund I.
- LPs include UnitedHealth Group, Liberty Mutual Investments, Ally Bank, SHRM and Ascension.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Axios Pro: What's the fund thesis?
- Kline: "We think the market size and the opportunity is the 1.5 billion people with disabilities on the planet.
- It does inherently include health care, but there's been a long history of disability being treated in principally a medical lane. A fantastic opportunity is thinking about the disability community as end users and consumers of technology, and also builders and makers of technology."
How do you deal with intense competition for LPs?
- "We are painting on a white space in the capital markets that was overlooked and underrepresented in capital allocation to date. We're able to source and screen companies that are attracted to that thesis, that are ready to scale.
- To investors, it was unique and highly differentiated. That's a moat — these are founders that they hadn't really focused capital on before."
What's your pitch that this is a market worth backing at scale?
- "All across the value chain, there is an urgent need to solve these problems — to not only enhance overall health care outcomes and improve employment, but also to strengthen the community.
- Given that one in four adults identify strongly with disability, the same is true for how that impacts organizations, and ultimately institutional interests of capital."
You initially filed plans to raise $75 million. Was there a lack of LP interest?
- "It was a reach goal, a target. We've come across the finish line with an appropriate [first] fund size."
