Collision capitalfounded by Brian Hollins and Aaron Samuels, announced Thursday the closing of a $95 million Fund II. Founded in 2021, the corporate supports young corporations within the areas of fintech, supply chain and the longer term of labor.
After closing its first $66 million Fund I in 2022, the firm has backed 75 corporations to this point. Hollins said it took about 13 months to launch this latest fund, which they hope to deploy over the subsequent 3.5 years. The environment is difficult for a lot of aspiring fund managers, but Collide Capital’s team has a track record and robust pedigree (Hollins spent a decade at Goldman, Lightspeed and Slow, while Samuels worked at Bain, Lightspeed and co-founded AfroTech, one among the world’s largest technology conferences).
Limited partners (LPs) in Fund II include the University of California Endowment (UC Regents) – which anchored its last fund – Accolade Partners, Fairview Capital, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. The average check size can be between $1 million and $3 million, and the team hopes to support a minimum of 30 corporations, having already cut the checks to 5. (Other corporations in the corporate’s portfolio include Culina Health and Helios).
“We are most interested in platforms that enable automation, real-time collaboration and faster, data-driven decision making,” Hollins said.
Aside from technology, Hollins and Samuels say the corporate can also be enthusiastic about expanding its Collide Campus program, which launched in 2022, to mentor the subsequent generation of founders and enterprise capitalists. The expansion is independent of fundraising. The program includes an undergraduate initiative that trains students in VC and entrepreneurship, in addition to a graduate fellowship program where students work with the Collide team as investors and trainees.
The undergraduate campus program is held at greater than 20 locations, including Harvard and Johns Hopkins, and Samuels said greater than 50 students have passed through this system to date and landed top jobs at corporations like General Catalysts and, after all, Collide. Overall, this system helps the corporate find business and talent. Samuels said they began this system because they wanted it as students.
“We connect the best and brightest with venture capital to match their courage and determination to build companies the world needs,” he said.
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