Half Moon Bay, California: Lifeboat Ventures today announced its successful first closing.
Lifeboat Ventures, was part of the first cohort of venture funds launched as part of the Founder Institute, the world’s largest accelerator’s, VC Lab program. FI VC Lab has seen a need for early-stage venture funds for startups that can impact the world beneficially and has completed multiple cohorts of VC funds.
In the last 20 years, we have had three global emergencies- 9/11 – Terrorism, the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 Pandemic. In addition, local disasters such as earthquakes, fires, storms, floods, tsunami, droughts all continuously happen. Currently California and the western states of the USA are going through three concurrent disasters – COVID-19, drought and fires. These disasters cause severe impacts to people in all societies. Most problems are well-known. Many solutions have been proposed – but execution has been very poor so far. This is the unique thesis the Lifeboat Venture fund is focused on – Disaster Impact Mitigation.
“As you can see from the headlines of newspapers from around the world these days, we have a great number of disaster-related problems to solve”, says Fred Durham, CEO of CafePress, a company he founded and took public. “I am an investor because I see that Lifeboat Ventures has the right model for these solutions and I believe in Gopi Mattel’s visión and capability”.
Lifeboat Venture is founded by Gopi Mattel, who is a serial entrepreneur with his first startup acquired by Oracle. His second firm serves companies in 50 countries with a staff of a 100. He has 30 years of deep software technology and operational experience. Gopi has been a mentor and the Director of a Founder Institute chapter. He has invested in startups and startup funds. His network includes Founder Institute, customers of 20 years and various partners.
The majority of startups in the venture capital ecosystem fail to achieve their objectives. The fund uses a venture studio model to reduce the risk of startups failing. The fund identifies problems and inevitable ideas, market-validates them, recruits qualified entrepreneurs from accelerators, provides the first round of funding, provides partners and advisors, provides technology, provides KPIs, provides project plan and
cashflow plans, and guides the startups to the next round of founding. With careful and engaged guidance the fund plans to have a lot more exits of its startups than is typical.
“Venture Capital has a significant role to play in solving the impact of disasters on people”, says Gopi Mattel, CEO of Lifeboat Ventures. “It is important that investors focus their attention on these type of problems using their resources”.
About Lifeboat: Lifeboat Ventures is a $12M Startup Studio that is creating disaster impact mitigation startups. Startups that reduce the impact of continuous disasters such as storms, floods, fire, and pandemics, have compelling demand in society. The objective is to market-validate inevitable solutions, recruit qualified entrepreneurs, and take them to exit. For more information, visit www.lifeboat.ventures
