1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julianne Zimmerman of Reinventure Capital (Part 4)

Julianne Zimmerman: The company did eventually have mainstream well-known investors. It took us a long time to get there. Also, that company was one of innumerable companies that were killed off in the extinction event that occurred when the markets imploded in 2007.

I had an amazing experience of being at the forefront and accomplishing something incredible with my colleagues, but the ultimate success was outside our control. That was an excellent learning experience.

There is a certain amount of ego that you have to invest in any new enterprise, but there’s a limit to how far your ego will take you. As a result, I became very actively involved in the innovation and entrepreneurship community not only here in the greater Boston area but also much further afield.

I was fortunate to be involved in a bunch of things outside of the US as well. I was a mentor and a judge for competitions and an advisor to many companies. I joined a few companies as an early team member.

Over the experience of advising and working with dozens of founders, I came to form my own investment thesis. I found myself as somebody who was on the innovation and operation side of the table and not on the capital front. I told all people I knew about this opportunity I saw that I didn’t see a lot of investors recognizing.

People said maybe I should just stick to what everybody else is doing. I found a co-founder and raised a tiny bit of money and made four seed-stage investments in 2013 and 2014. Now we would think of those as pre-seed.

Just as I was in the process of tying a bow around that and preparing to think about what else I would do next, it was my incredible good fortune that Ed came to recruit me in launching Reinventure.

Having been a co-founder myself and having worked with dozens of founders, not only was I intimately acquainted with the ways in which the mainstream venture community discounts and dismisses founders who don’t resemble Mark Zuckerberg, but I had also seen an enormous population of founders who are doing all kinds of interesting things regardless of their gender or ethnicity.

From personal experience and from years of observation and involvement in the community, it was abundantly apparent to me that there was a compelling investment opportunity with the Reinventure opportunity.

Moreover, how many times in your life do you get to have that opportunity to work with someone of Ed’s stature. It was an absolute no-brainer to join him in doing that.

Sramana Mitra: You are very comfortable with technology. That’s the main conclusion that I got out of this. Let’s start with companies you have invested in from the MIT ecosystem. I’m an MIT alumnus as well. Let’s talk about those first.

Julianne Zimmerman: This is a newly-launched fund. We don’t yet have any alumni funding that we can point to. A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of speaking at the MIT Women’s Conference. Some day, I hope that we no longer have the need to have such events.

It’s an important event to gather together current and past members of the MIT academic community. The sad fact is that they don’t enjoy the same access to capital as their white male peers even though they are from MIT or holders of advanced degrees and have significant traction. 

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julianne Zimmerman of Reinventure Capital
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