Venture Out Investors & Launch Program Announced
We are thrilled to announce that Venture Out has received support from M12 – Microsoft’s venture capital fund – and an incredible group of 30+ early stage investors, including Flying Fish VC, Founders’ Co-op, Liquid2 Ventures. This support signals that employees should be encouraged to moonlight, a term used to build a startup while working in your day job.
With the support of these investors, we are opening applications for our second Launch program on May 18th. We have enhanced the program to provide more curation for each founder and due to demand, we will start a new Launch program every two months with rolling applications.
Venture Out started in 2018, when we brought together a handful of Seattle startup founders with the simple goal of supporting one another on our startup journeys. All of us had three things in common: We wanted to build something great, we had experience working at Seattle’s big tech companies, and we were nervous to leave the security of our day jobs without a strong support network.
What started out as 20 builders and technologists has grown into more than 200 founders building some of the world’s next big technology companies. Once a month this group has come together for direct founder to founder support. VO members crowdsource answers from other founders who have been in their shoes – finding answers faster and avoiding common pitfalls that trip founders up. The foundation of this community is a shared value of giving back and giving first.
We’ve since doubled these events to twice a month and taken them virtual – but the ethos stays the same. Founders supporting other founders courageous enough to venture out of their day jobs and build something new and valuable to the world.
Eighteen months into this journey this community of founders sought more support from Venture Out, so, last December we launched our first Venture Out Launch Program. We surrounded eight startups with successful entrepreneurs, investors and mentors in order to help those founders validate, launch and accelerate their startups.
We are excited to continue supporting founders in the Seattle ecosystem and beyond.
Learn more about Venture Out