Fund has invested in 16 companies and made 14 follow-on investments

NORMAN, OK, UNITED STATES, April 2, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Boyd Street Ventures announced that it has successfully closed its $25 million Fund I.

The fund has four anchor investors: The Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science & Technology (OCAST), OGE Energy Corp. Foundation, Bank of America, and Gateway First Bancorp. Through the fund, Boyd Street Ventures has invested in 16 companies to date, including 10 in the Life Sciences and HealthTech sectors. The fund has also made 14 follow-on investments.

“We created Boyd Street Ventures to discover and invest in innovative, driven founders who were being ignored by the big East and West Coast venture capital firms. We were particularly interested in companies led by female, minority and SEDI founders and based in Oklahoma and other places outside of Silicon Valley or Boston’s Route 128 Corridor,” said Founder and General Partner James Spann, who founded the firm with Co-Founder and Strategic Advisor Jeff Moore in 2021. “However, we were also determined to generate above-average returns for our investors by investing in companies that weren’t being overbid and overpriced by larger VCs, and by further de-risking those investments by providing strategic and operational guidance through our BSV Venture Studio to speed their time to market and increase their ability to scale.”

Boyd Street Ventures’ strategy is captured by the tagline, “Under the radar. Above the crowd.” According to Mr. Spann, that strategy has been well-received by the investor community. “Investing in us helps institutions diversify portfolios that tend to be overly focused on companies located on the two coasts,” he said. “But our fund offers far more than diversity. We’re very proud of the traction being generated by every one of our portfolio companies, and very optimistic about the prospects for numerous successful exits in the years to come.”

Mr. Spann, who is one of only 36 executives nationally selected to be a member of the 2024 Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs Access Network cohort, acknowledged that the past two years have exhibited considerable headwinds for venture capital fundraising. “We believe that our success with our first fund in such a tough environment is a powerful validation of our vision and our strategy,” he said. “And as that environment becomes increasingly favorable, we intend to be in a position to take full advantage.”

To that end, Mr. Spann and his Boyd Street Ventures management team are planning to launch their Fund II later in the year. “We’ll be targeting a significantly larger fund to give us more scale capital,” said Mr. Spann. “We had several institutional investors tell us they really liked what we were doing with Fund I, but that it was too small to accommodate their minimum investment restrictions. Many of our current investors have also encouraged us to launch a much larger fund.”

Boyd Street Ventures will hold its second annual BSV CEO Summit at its Norman, Oklahoma headquarters April 18-19, 2024. This event allows the CEOs of BSV’s 16 portfolio companies to discuss their key challenges and opportunities with BSV’s management team, Venture Partners and Advisory Board members, while also participating in an “Ernst & Young 7 Drivers of Growth” workshop.

Fund I
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3-minute introductory video on Boyd Street Ventures