One of the best-kept secrets about BCV is that we have been investing in emerging fund managers for the last five years. Today, we have developed a portfolio of over 80 pre-seed and seed fund managers, most of whom run funds of less than $35 million, concentrated on the domains and geographies that overlap with our focus areas here at BCV.

While it is still early, the program has been generating strong initial returns. Just as importantly, it has created unique opportunities for BCV to collaborate with emerging fund managers and work with founders at the pre-seed and seed stages that we might not have found on our own. Some of those collaborations have resulted in BCV leading later funding rounds for companies including Crusoe Energy, Reprise, and Noteable.

As we are building out our platform team at BCV, we knew we wanted to take the seed fund program to the next level.

But finding the right person to lead that effort is not easy. They need the acumen of an early stage investor to evaluate deals and funds, as well as strong operational VC knowledge about standing up scalable infrastructure and processes that will support growth and deeper collaboration over time.

They also need to be a culture fit both within BCV and with our community of managers – meaning a supportive and transparent communication style, possessing strong domain expertise and a curious mind, and, of course, being an active and reliable partner. A challenge for sure!

After a very purposeful search, we are thrilled to announce that Amit Bhatti is joining BCV as our Head, BCV Seed Fund Program, taking over for the fantastic Zeeza Cole who had been running the program on an interim basis.

We are so fortunate to have someone with Amit’s wide range of VC experience join the team. Amit joins us from 500 Startups where he was a Principal making early stage investments all over the world in fintech, crypto, ecommerce, and SaaS while helping manage a portfolio of over 2,400 companies. Before that, Amit served as corporate counsel at both 500 Startups and Wilson Sonsini, closing numerous funding rounds representing both VCs and startups, as well as handling issues relating to VC fund formation.

It is pretty unusual to find someone with both the process and administrative knowledge of a startup lawyer and direct investment experience in many of the domains we focus on at BCV. We are lucky to have Amit join the team and are excited to continue to build out and improve the BCV Seed Fund Program under his leadership. Welcome, Amit!

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