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Careful preparation and execution are necessary to ship delicate office objects safely. Taking the proper precautions will save damage and keep your belongings secure, whether transferring delicate goods within your workplace or moving your business.

For the safe transportation of delicate office supplies, consider the following advice:

Use Proper Packing Materials

Label Boxes Clearly

Pack Items Strategically

Secure Electronics

Use Proper Moving Equipment

Read more!

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[un-enfant-immature]

A focus on diversity reaps rewards for this Los Angeles investor

The Los Angeles startup scene has come a long way in the three-and-a-half years since Marlon Nichols, Troy Carter and Trevor Thomas launched Cross Culture Ventures. The city and its surrounding Orange County exurbs were at the beginning of a venture capital surge that has seen invested capital in the region rise from $3.63 billion in 2015 to $6 billion last year.

Since Cross Culture landed on the Los Angeles scene with a $50 million fund, Nichols and his partners have notched three exits and seen the paper value of the fund’s portfolio grow by an aggregate of 2,085%, according to people with knowledge of the firm.

And Nichols and his partners have done it by backing one of the most diverse pools of startup founders in any firm’s portfolio.

The road to Cross Culture

The path from growing up in one of the towns on the outer edges of New York to the center of Los Angeles’s burgeoning venture capital industry wasn’t a straight line for Nichols (unlike many other venture investors). Cross Culture’s architect had to make his own way through the tech ranks after college, through a professional career in Europe, then back to business school before finally landing an opportunity with Intel Capital.

His father had worked as a train engineer in Jamaica and relocated the family to New York where his mother worked as a housekeeper before getting her beautician license and opening her own shop. The couple had moved from Jamaica two years before Nichols would take the trip himself — time he spent living with his aunt and grandmother.

Marlon Nichols, co-founder and managing partner, Cross Culture Ventures

Growing up in Mt. Vernon, NY, just north of the Bronx where he’d moved with his parents, Nichols had always expressed an interest in technology. He’d been playing around with computers ever since his parents bought him a Commodore 64.

The first person to attend college in his family, Nichols transferred to Northeastern’s newly developed major in Management Information Systems after starting out in architecture. College gave Nichols his first exposure to life in Silicon Valley as well. Northeastern had an internship program which sent students out of Boston to try their hands in the business world — and Nichols was placed at Hewlett Packard in Cupertino, Calif.

He’d intended to move out to Silicon Valley after graduation, but instead took a job in the Boston offices of Frictionless Commerce — and it was there that Nichols first confronted the constraints that the city’s lack of diversity could mean.

“In Boston there was definitely a racial undertone,” says Nichols. “Going out as a professional… you weren’t treated well.”

He took the opportunity to move to London when it was presented and spent a few years there — playing semi-professional basketball in the evenings and working for Frictionless Commerce during the day.

After the company’s acquisition by SAP in 2006, Nichols consulted at the Blackstone Group and Warner Media. “In those rooms I was again the only one [who was a minority],” he says. “I started getting annoyed by it and started thinking about it a little bit more — I thought about education and opportunities and just knowing that there’s even an opportunity out there for this career path.”

So Nichols created a nonprofit that would help inner city students get into colleges. “I never had an SAT prep-course,” says Nichols. “I didn’t have anyone coaching me.”

The program helped students start to think about applying to Cornell, Vassar and Penn, when they were initially thinking about City University in New York.

As the non-profit took off, Nichols returned to school — Cornell University on a full scholarship to its business school.

“When I started going through that process I saw even fewer of the folks that looked like me,” Nichols recalls.

From Cornell, where Nichols ran the University’s venture capital fund, he was recruited to Intel Corp as part of a management training program. Although Nichols was supposed to rotate through three different business divisions at Intel, once he was placed in Intel Capital he advocated to stay there.

And it was there that he was able to bring his passion for creating opportunities for under-represented minorities and women to an industry that sorely needed it.

It was around the time that the diversity numbers at big technology companies were generating more criticism. Long held as an island of meritocracy in a sea of industries that were rife with sexism, racism and nepotism. When Tracy Chou called for reporting on diversity numbers in 2013, Nichols saw a repeating pattern that perhaps he could do something about at Intel.

Alongside Lisa Lambert, a managing director in Intel Capital’s software and services group, Nichols, who’d been in the new user experience group at Intel Capital, advocated for the creation of a diversity fund at Intel.

“We thought that there’s got to be a way that the folks in charge of deploying capital can be involved in diversity,” Nichols says of the creation of the fund. “Diversity was front and center and then it goes away and then it’s front and center again… There had to be something that could be done from a venture perspective.”

While the diversity fund had no problem finding companies to invest in, these companies were having trouble when they sought additional capital in subsequent rounds, said Nichols.

“I saw that some of the companies — after receiving the funding — were having trouble being viewed as a high-class company which had raised money from one of the largest institutional investors in the world,” says Nichols.

The problem, as Nichols sees it, is that these companies were solving global problems for a broad base of consumers, but their perceived financing as a “diversity” play was an obstacle to their future success.

“I was like, all right… I’m not going to put this tag on their back that would make it difficult for them to raise capital in the future,” Nichols says. “Instead I’m going to look at culture from a global perspective and try to identify emerging trends — if we are successful in doing that — and can be successful in picking trends — I’m going to get a high number of diverse entrepreneurs solving problems for the 99%.”

Chart courtesy of PWC Moneytree/CB Insights

Cross Culture and the Los Angeles opportunity

By the time Nichols was ready to form Cross Culture, other obstacles had emerged at the Intel fund. The focus on diversity had predominantly settled on trying to address venture’s gender problem to the exclusion of other representation issues that Nichols thought the firm had to deal with: race and ethnicity.

In addition, many of the entrepreneurs solving problems in billion-dollar industries that Nichols identified didn’t fall within the Intel mandate. The corporate investor had to back companies that aligned with its strategic vision — something of a challenge when advocating for investments in consumer-focused beauty products for the African American community (for instance).

So, after a stint in the Kauffman Fellows program, Nichols came away with a desire to strike out on his own with the help of a few anchor investors (like Freada Kapor Klein). Klein introduced Nichols to Troy Carter of Atom Factory as another potential investor in the fund.

“I flew down to L.A. and I sat with Troy… we talked for two hours and we really got along and… at the end of the meeting he said, ‘Good to meet you, but I’m not going to invest in your fund.'”

Two weeks after that initial rejection, Nichols got another call from Carter — instead of investing, the music impresario suggested a partnership. With Carter on board as founding partner, the two began laying the groundwork for the fund that would close on its first capital within the next year.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 23: Troy Carter of Atom Factory speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015 at Pier 70 on September 23, 2015 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

Cross Culture has built a portfolio where 72% of the founders are white women and women and men of color. It’s the only firm to back several African American founders that have gone on to raise significant capital in their A or B rounds, including Blavity, PlayVS, Mayvenn and WonderSchool.

The firm has also already enjoyed some success from early exits.

Gimlet, the podcasting company that Cross Culture backed at a $36 million post-money valuation, sold to Spotify for approximately $230 million. The firm’s other exits include MessageYes, which was sold to Nordstrom, and Skurt, which was acquired by Fair in February of last year.

Nichols has been instrumental in getting the firm in front of fast-growing companies like Airspace Technologies, a provider of on-demand logistics services; PlayVS, the company bringing esports to high schools around the country; and the new mobility company revolutionizing rental cars, Fair. These companies have all seen their value jump in recent months.

After Cross Culture was given the opportunity to invest in Fair through the Skurt acquisition, Fair’s valuation increased by 150% when SoftBank added another $385 million in financing to the rental car company. Airspace’s valuation saw a 733% increase in less than 8 months when Scale Venture Partners led the company’s $20 million Series B (at a valuation over $100 million) and PlayVS saw its value increase by 329% in the six months since Cross Culture invested, according to a person familiar with the fund’s portfolio.

Diishan Imira, the chief executive of Mayvenn, recently raised $23 million for his business selling hair extensions and beauty products to the African American community, up from the $10 million the company had closed when Cross Culture invested as part of the startup’s Series A.

Mayvenn was Cross Culture’s first investment and is a testament to the longterm relationship building behind much of Nichols’ work in the venture community.

“Kirk Collins put together a group of four or five people to get together for me to pitch to and for me to get some money. Marlon was one of the people there… and me and Marlon argued the entire time,” Imira says of that first meeting with Nichols. “We argued for 30 minutes and nothing came of it. But we kept in touch. He always offered advice or support here and there. He kept tracking us. And then… prior to our whole Series A… he had just started Cross Culture. I was like ‘Yo man, I want you guys to come in.”

With a new deal for customers and a fresh $23 million, Mayvenn extends its hair care business

Meanwhile, the problem of representation in venture capital was not improving, as the rest of the venture capital industry is failing to keep pace. Only 1% of founders of startup companies receiving venture capital backing are African American, and only 1.8% of founders are Latinx, according to data from RateMyInvestor and Diversity VC.

Nichols sees a potential to reverse those trends by focusing on cities and investing in ecosystems that have been historically ignored by venture capital’s white shoe firms and traditional rainmakers.

“We had an office in Palo Alto and an office down here in Culver City,” Nichols recalled. “For the first two years I would come down every other week and Troy would come up every other week. [But] coming down here I could see there was something happening that I hadn’t seen before. Unlike in the Bay Area, I was seeing things being created for a greater percentage of the population.”

Fueled by exits in Dollar Shave Club, Snap, and Oculus more capital was coming in to the ecosystem to back a more diverse group of founders who’d proven they could find success south of the Bay Area.

“Most of the things that are coming out of the Valley these days are meant to be used by people in the Valley as opposed to people in the Bronx, or Queens or Baltimore,” says Nichols. “This is the time to be here. If you are going to invest in the companies of tomorrow you have to go where the world is moving to — and that’s black and brown, honestly.”

The census supports Nichols’ assessment. By 2044 the United States will see a majority minority population, and the next generation of consumers is already showing its preferences. Companies like Ipsy, founded by Michelle Phan, is a billion-dollar beauty business built by a minority founder, or Pat McGrath Labs, another billion-dollar makeup brand launched by make-up artists Pat McGrath, which raised $60 million from Eurazeo Brands.

Cross Culture isn’t just sitting in Los Angeles waiting to find these companies. Nichols and his firm are taking the opportunity on the road. He spent a month in Miami meeting with entrepreneurs and has organized a series of “Culture and Code” events in Detroit and Atlanta to get exposure to startups in those cities as well. Nichols describes them as pop-ups to meet entrepreneurs and investors in those communities.

For Cross Culture, the decision to travel to these urban hubs far from technology’s traditional perch in Silicon Valley is simply an extension of the firm’s broader vision.

“Only 2% of venture capital is black and Latinx and .002 is black women. Part of that is that young folks that look like me don’t know what venture capital is,” says Nichols. “It was kind of eye-opening in the sense of how a good portion of our population thinks about these demographics and what they’re capable of and it was very sad.”

Now, as Cross Culture is mostly deployed the firm needs to make a decision about its future. There’s the potential that Cross Culture could go out for another $50 million to $100 million, or, potentially raise a larger new vehicle.

To date, the firm’s average investment size has been roughly $250,000 into the the 34 companies that the firm has backed so far.

For Nichols, the success of these companies is an imperative. Not just to make money, or to prove out his thesis, but because of what failure would mean for other firms that take a broad approach to their investment thesis trying to back the best founders — no matter their background. Nichols believes it’s important for the venture industry, for the economy, and for the broader society.

“There is no way I can fail at this,” Nichols says. “I have to win.”

[chiefpundit-blog]

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[bass-brewers]

Sears to close more than 100 additional stores, including Boca Raton store

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NEW YORK (AP) — Sears Holdings Corp. will be closing over 100 more stores as the struggling department store chain tries to turn around its business.

The Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based company says that includes 64 Kmart stores and 39 Sears stores that will be shuttered between early March and early April.

Liquidation sales will begin as soon as next Friday at the stores.

A Sears spokesman said Thursday the number of workers affected was not available. The majority of the jobs are part-time positions, Sears said.

The move comes in addition to closing about 250 stores announced last year.

Sears has been selling off some its real estate and brands as it tries to raise cash.

Earlier Thursday, Macy’s Inc. announced it was closing 11 stores early this year.

LIST OF IMPACTED STORES: Kmart 1 Kmart Plaza/State Hy 89 Cabot AR Early April Kmart 8701 West Mc Dowell Tolleson AZ Early April Kmart 750 West Deuce Of Clubs Show Low AZ Early April Kmart 301 Gardner Field Road Taft CA Early April Kmart 8017 South Atlantic Avenue Cudahy CA Mid‐March Kmart 1670 East 4Th Street Ontario CA Early April Kmart 1570 W Branch Street Arroyo Grande CA Early April Kmart 2685 Hilltop Drive Redding CA Early April Kmart 3020 N Nevada Street Colorado Springs CO Early April Kmart 1002 East Hwy 50 Clermont FL Early March Kmart 10301 S E Us Hwy 441 Belleview FL Early April Kmart 3711 E Silver Spring Blvd Ocala FL Early April Kmart 430 Northside Drive East Statesboro GA Early April Kmart 2525 Dawson Road Albany GA Early April Kmart 950 Sunset Blvd Jesup GA Early April Kmart 2501 N Broadway Street Red Oak IA Early April Kmart 7501 Hickman Road Urbandale IA Early April Kmart Route 149 West West Frankfort IL Early April Kmart 3404 Broadway Street Mt. Vernon IL Early April Kmart 1321 Sandy Hollow Road Rockford IL Early April Kmart 5101 E Thompson Road Indianapolis IN Early April Kmart 3175 West 3Rd Street Bloomington IN Early April Kmart 4830 S Broadway Street Wichita KS Early April Kmart 2440 Lone Oak Road Paducah KY Early April Kmart 3555 Highway 190 Mandeville LA Early April Kmart 1647 Crofton Centre Crofton MD Early April Kmart 301 Tilghman Road Salisbury MD Early April Kmart 67300 Main Street Richmond MI Early April Kmart 205 South Greenville W Drive Greenville MI Early April Kmart 1700 Cedar Street Helena MT Early April Kmart 3300 Harrison Avenue Butte MT Early April Kmart 706 E Dixon Blvd Shelby NC Early April Kmart 2515 Horner Blvd Sanford NC Early April Kmart 395 Westgate Plaza Road Franklin NC Early April Kmart 175 Freedom Way Midway Park NC Early April Kmart 815 East Innes Street Salisbury NC Early April Kmart 701 5Th Avenue Se Devils Lake ND Early April Kmart Milton Road Rochester NH Early April Kmart 1235 S 2Nd Street Raton NM Early April Kmart 2100 E Tucumcari Blvd Tucumcari NM Early April Kmart 4500 North Rancho Drive Las Vegas NV Early April Kmart 2671 Las Vegas Blvd N North Las Vegas NV Early April Kmart 57 Centre Drive Plattsburgh NY Early April Kmart 2100 Niles Cortland Road Se Warren OH Early April Kmart 4010 W Owen Garriott Road Enid OK Early April Kmart 1025 Washington Pike Bridgeville PA Early April Kmart 2900 N Elmira Street Sayre PA Early April Kmart 463 N Enola Rts 11 & 15 Enola PA Early April Kmart 5050 Jonestown Road Harrisburg PA Early April Kmart 5 Laurel Mall Hazleton Township PA Early April Kmart 1874 North Twp Blvd Pittston PA Early April Kmart 2235 East State Street Hermitage PA Early April Kmart 3301 Aramingo Avenue Philadelphia PA Early April Kmart 491 Allegheny Blvd Franklin PA Early April Kmart 650 Old Willow Avenue Honesdale PA Early April Kmart 190 Cumberland Square Crossville TN Early April Kmart 230 Longhollow Pike Goodlettsville TN Early April Kmart 1317 Tusculum Blvd Greeneville TN Early April Kmart 1400 Wildcat Drive Portland TX Early April Kmart 2 Diamond Run Mall Rutland VT Early April Kmart 1201 N W Louisiana Chehalis WA Early April Kmart 5636 U S Route 60 E Huntington WV Early April Kmart 102 Emily Drive Clarksburg WV Early April Kmart 1477 Maccorkle Avenue St Albans WV Early April Sears* 5900 Old Seward Hwy Anchorage (Sur) AK Early April Sears* 1679 W Lacey Blvd Hanford CA Early April Sears 24137 Valencia Blvd Santa Clarita CA Mid‐March Sears 9000 Northgate Mall San Rafael CA Early April Sears* 100 Brea Mall Brea CA Early April Sears* 100 Westminster Mall Westminster CA Early April Sears 5540 Winfield Blvd San Jose CA Mid‐March Sears* 3240 Kirkwood Hwy Wilmington DE Early April Sears* 5900 West Glades Road Boca Raton FL Early April Sears† 2930 Watson Blvd Centerville GA Early April Sears 2060 Crossroads Blvd. Waterloo IA Early April Sears* 200 W Hanley Ave Coeur D Alene ID Early April Sears† 1543 Poleline Road E Twin Falls ID Early April Sears* Orland Square Mall Orland Park IL Early April Sears† 1602 State Road 50 Bourbonnais IL Early April Sears 3000 W Deyoung Street Marion IL Early April Sears* 1100 S Green River Road Evansville IN Early April Sears* 1100 Middlesex Turnpike Burlington MA Early April Sears* 693 Stillwater Avenue Bangor ME Early April Sears 2700 State Street Bismarck ND Early April Sears* 1201 Hooper Avenue Toms River NJ Early April Sears* 195 N Broadway Hicksville NY Early April Sears† 1300 Ulster Avenue Kingston NY Early April Sears 6000 Glenway Avenue Cincinnati OH Early April Sears† 3030 Gateway Street Springfield OR Early April Sears 1260 Lloyd Center Portland OR Early April Sears* 1008 Ross Park Mall Drive Pittsburgh PA Early April Sears 7300 Bustleton Avenue Philadelphia PA Early April Sears* 1155 Carlisle Street Hanover PA Early April Sears 2200 N Maple Avenue Rapid City SD Early April Sears* 1000 Hwy #6 Houston TX Early April Sears^ 4511 North Midkiff Road Midland TX Early April Sears* 12625 N I‐H 35 Austin TX Early April Sears 1000 Newgate Mall Ogden UT Early April Sears 15711 Aurora Avenue N Shoreline WA Early April Sears 1701 S Commons Street Federal Way WA Early April Sears 121 Ne Hampe Way Chehalis WA Early April Sears† 1555 Green Bay Plaza Green Bay WI Early April Sears Brookfield Square Brookfield WI Mid‐March

Sears Auto Center closing

^ Early January 2018 * Late January 2018 † Late February 2018

Copyright 2018 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source Article

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[toomanysinks]

A focus on diversity reaps rewards for this Los Angeles investor

The Los Angeles startup scene has come a long way in the three-and-a-half years since Marlon Nichols, Troy Carter and Trevor Thomas launched Cross Culture Ventures. The city and its surrounding Orange County exurbs were at the beginning of a venture capital surge that has seen invested capital in the region rise from $3.63 billion in 2015 to $6 billion last year.

Since Cross Culture landed on the Los Angeles scene with a $50 million fund, Nichols and his partners have notched three exits and seen the paper value of the fund’s portfolio grow by an aggregate of 2,085%, according to people with knowledge of the firm.

And Nichols and his partners have done it by backing one of the most diverse pools of startup founders in any firm’s portfolio.

The road to Cross Culture

The path from growing up in one of the towns on the outer edges of New York to the center of Los Angeles’s burgeoning venture capital industry wasn’t a straight line for Nichols (unlike many other venture investors). Cross Culture’s architect had to make his own way through the tech ranks after college, through a professional career in Europe, then back to business school before finally landing an opportunity with Intel Capital.

His father had worked as a train engineer in Jamaica and relocated the family to New York where his mother worked as a housekeeper before getting her beautician license and opening her own shop. The couple had moved from Jamaica two years before Nichols would take the trip himself — time he spent living with his aunt and grandmother.

Marlon Nichols, co-founder and managing partner, Cross Culture Ventures

Growing up in Mt. Vernon, NY, just north of the Bronx where he’d moved with his parents, Nichols had always expressed an interest in technology. He’d been playing around with computers ever since his parents bought him a Commodore 64.

The first person to attend college in his family, Nichols transferred to Northeastern’s newly developed major in Management Information Systems after starting out in architecture. College gave Nichols his first exposure to life in Silicon Valley as well. Northeastern had an internship program which sent students out of Boston to try their hands in the business world — and Nichols was placed at Hewlett Packard in Cupertino, Calif.

He’d intended to move out to Silicon Valley after graduation, but instead took a job in the Boston offices of Frictionless Commerce — and it was there that Nichols first confronted the constraints that the city’s lack of diversity could mean.

“In Boston there was definitely a racial undertone,” says Nichols. “Going out as a professional… you weren’t treated well.”

He took the opportunity to move to London when it was presented and spent a few years there — playing semi-professional basketball in the evenings and working for Frictionless Commerce during the day.

After the company’s acquisition by SAP in 2006, Nichols consulted at the Blackstone Group and Warner Media. “In those rooms I was again the only one [who was a minority],” he says. “I started getting annoyed by it and started thinking about it a little bit more — I thought about education and opportunities and just knowing that there’s even an opportunity out there for this career path.”

So Nichols created a nonprofit that would help inner city students get into colleges. “I never had an SAT prep-course,” says Nichols. “I didn’t have anyone coaching me.”

The program helped students start to think about applying to Cornell, Vassar and Penn, when they were initially thinking about City University in New York.

As the non-profit took off, Nichols returned to school — Cornell University on a full scholarship to its business school.

“When I started going through that process I saw even fewer of the folks that looked like me,” Nichols recalls.

From Cornell, where Nichols ran the University’s venture capital fund, he was recruited to Intel Corp as part of a management training program. Although Nichols was supposed to rotate through three different business divisions at Intel, once he was placed in Intel Capital he advocated to stay there.

And it was there that he was able to bring his passion for creating opportunities for under-represented minorities and women to an industry that sorely needed it.

It was around the time that the diversity numbers at big technology companies were generating more criticism. Long held as an island of meritocracy in a sea of industries that were rife with sexism, racism and nepotism. When Tracy Chou called for reporting on diversity numbers in 2013, Nichols saw a repeating pattern that perhaps he could do something about at Intel.

Alongside Lisa Lambert, a managing director in Intel Capital’s software and services group, Nichols, who’d been in the new user experience group at Intel Capital, advocated for the creation of a diversity fund at Intel.

“We thought that there’s got to be a way that the folks in charge of deploying capital can be involved in diversity,” Nichols says of the creation of the fund. “Diversity was front and center and then it goes away and then it’s front and center again… There had to be something that could be done from a venture perspective.”

While the diversity fund had no problem finding companies to invest in, these companies were having trouble when they sought additional capital in subsequent rounds, said Nichols.

“I saw that some of the companies — after receiving the funding — were having trouble being viewed as a high-class company which had raised money from one of the largest institutional investors in the world,” says Nichols.

The problem, as Nichols sees it, is that these companies were solving global problems for a broad base of consumers, but their perceived financing as a “diversity” play was an obstacle to their future success.

“I was like, all right… I’m not going to put this tag on their back that would make it difficult for them to raise capital in the future,” Nichols says. “Instead I’m going to look at culture from a global perspective and try to identify emerging trends — if we are successful in doing that — and can be successful in picking trends — I’m going to get a high number of diverse entrepreneurs solving problems for the 99%.”

Chart courtesy of PWC Moneytree/CB Insights

Cross Culture and the Los Angeles opportunity

By the time Nichols was ready to form Cross Culture, other obstacles had emerged at the Intel fund. The focus on diversity had predominantly settled on trying to address venture’s gender problem to the exclusion of other representation issues that Nichols thought the firm had to deal with: race and ethnicity.

In addition, many of the entrepreneurs solving problems in billion-dollar industries that Nichols identified didn’t fall within the Intel mandate. The corporate investor had to back companies that aligned with its strategic vision — something of a challenge when advocating for investments in consumer-focused beauty products for the African American community (for instance).

So, after a stint in the Kauffman Fellows program, Nichols came away with a desire to strike out on his own with the help of a few anchor investors (like Freada Kapor Klein). Klein introduced Nichols to Troy Carter of Atom Factory as another potential investor in the fund.

“I flew down to L.A. and I sat with Troy… we talked for two hours and we really got along and… at the end of the meeting he said, ‘Good to meet you, but I’m not going to invest in your fund.'”

Two weeks after that initial rejection, Nichols got another call from Carter — instead of investing, the music impresario suggested a partnership. With Carter on board as founding partner, the two began laying the groundwork for the fund that would close on its first capital within the next year.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 23: Troy Carter of Atom Factory speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015 at Pier 70 on September 23, 2015 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

Cross Culture has built a portfolio where 72% of the founders are white women and women and men of color. It’s the only firm to back several African American founders that have gone on to raise significant capital in their A or B rounds, including Blavity, PlayVS, Mayvenn and WonderSchool.

The firm has also already enjoyed some success from early exits.

Gimlet, the podcasting company that Cross Culture backed at a $36 million post-money valuation, sold to Spotify for approximately $230 million. The firm’s other exits include MessageYes, which was sold to Nordstrom, and Skurt, which was acquired by Fair in February of last year.

Nichols has been instrumental in getting the firm in front of fast-growing companies like Airspace Technologies, a provider of on-demand logistics services; PlayVS, the company bringing esports to high schools around the country; and the new mobility company revolutionizing rental cars, Fair. These companies have all seen their value jump in recent months.

After Cross Culture was given the opportunity to invest in Fair through the Skurt acquisition, Fair’s valuation increased by 150% when SoftBank added another $385 million in financing to the rental car company. Airspace’s valuation saw a 733% increase in less than 8 months when Scale Venture Partners led the company’s $20 million Series B (at a valuation over $100 million) and PlayVS saw its value increase by 329% in the six months since Cross Culture invested, according to a person familiar with the fund’s portfolio.

Diishan Imira, the chief executive of Mayvenn, recently raised $23 million for his business selling hair extensions and beauty products to the African American community, up from the $10 million the company had closed when Cross Culture invested as part of the startup’s Series A.

Mayvenn was Cross Culture’s first investment and is a testament to the longterm relationship building behind much of Nichols’ work in the venture community.

“Kirk Collins put together a group of four or five people to get together for me to pitch to and for me to get some money. Marlon was one of the people there… and me and Marlon argued the entire time,” Imira says of that first meeting with Nichols. “We argued for 30 minutes and nothing came of it. But we kept in touch. He always offered advice or support here and there. He kept tracking us. And then… prior to our whole Series A… he had just started Cross Culture. I was like ‘Yo man, I want you guys to come in.”

With a new deal for customers and a fresh $23 million, Mayvenn extends its hair care business

Meanwhile, the problem of representation in venture capital was not improving, as the rest of the venture capital industry is failing to keep pace. Only 1% of founders of startup companies receiving venture capital backing are African American, and only 1.8% of founders are Latinx, according to data from RateMyInvestor and Diversity VC.

Nichols sees a potential to reverse those trends by focusing on cities and investing in ecosystems that have been historically ignored by venture capital’s white shoe firms and traditional rainmakers.

“We had an office in Palo Alto and an office down here in Culver City,” Nichols recalled. “For the first two years I would come down every other week and Troy would come up every other week. [But] coming down here I could see there was something happening that I hadn’t seen before. Unlike in the Bay Area, I was seeing things being created for a greater percentage of the population.”

Fueled by exits in Dollar Shave Club, Snap, and Oculus more capital was coming in to the ecosystem to back a more diverse group of founders who’d proven they could find success south of the Bay Area.

“Most of the things that are coming out of the Valley these days are meant to be used by people in the Valley as opposed to people in the Bronx, or Queens or Baltimore,” says Nichols. “This is the time to be here. If you are going to invest in the companies of tomorrow you have to go where the world is moving to — and that’s black and brown, honestly.”

The census supports Nichols’ assessment. By 2044 the United States will see a majority minority population, and the next generation of consumers is already showing its preferences. Companies like Ipsy, founded by Michelle Phan, is a billion-dollar beauty business built by a minority founder, or Pat McGrath Labs, another billion-dollar makeup brand launched by make-up artists Pat McGrath, which raised $60 million from Eurazeo Brands.

Cross Culture isn’t just sitting in Los Angeles waiting to find these companies. Nichols and his firm are taking the opportunity on the road. He spent a month in Miami meeting with entrepreneurs and has organized a series of “Culture and Code” events in Detroit and Atlanta to get exposure to startups in those cities as well. Nichols describes them as pop-ups to meet entrepreneurs and investors in those communities.

For Cross Culture, the decision to travel to these urban hubs far from technology’s traditional perch in Silicon Valley is simply an extension of the firm’s broader vision.

“Only 2% of venture capital is black and Latinx and .002 is black women. Part of that is that young folks that look like me don’t know what venture capital is,” says Nichols. “It was kind of eye-opening in the sense of how a good portion of our population thinks about these demographics and what they’re capable of and it was very sad.”

Now, as Cross Culture is mostly deployed the firm needs to make a decision about its future. There’s the potential that Cross Culture could go out for another $50 million to $100 million, or, potentially raise a larger new vehicle.

To date, the firm’s average investment size has been roughly $250,000 into the the 34 companies that the firm has backed so far.

For Nichols, the success of these companies is an imperative. Not just to make money, or to prove out his thesis, but because of what failure would mean for other firms that take a broad approach to their investment thesis trying to back the best founders — no matter their background. Nichols believes it’s important for the venture industry, for the economy, and for the broader society.

“There is no way I can fail at this,” Nichols says. “I have to win.”

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/12/a-focus-on-diversity-reaps-rewards-for-this-los-angeles-investor/

[fmservers]

A focus on diversity reaps rewards for this Los Angeles investor

The Los Angeles startup scene has come a long way in the three-and-a-half years since Marlon Nichols, Troy Carter and Trevor Thomas launched Cross Culture Ventures. The city and its surrounding Orange County exurbs were at the beginning of a venture capital surge that has seen invested capital in the region rise from $3.63 billion in 2015 to $6 billion last year.

Since Cross Culture landed on the Los Angeles scene with a $50 million fund, Nichols and his partners have notched three exits and seen the paper value of the fund’s portfolio grow by an aggregate of 2,085%, according to people with knowledge of the firm.

And Nichols and his partners have done it by backing one of the most diverse pools of startup founders in any firm’s portfolio.

The road to Cross Culture

The path from growing up in one of the towns on the outer edges of New York to the center of Los Angeles’s burgeoning venture capital industry wasn’t a straight line for Nichols (unlike many other venture investors). Cross Culture’s architect had to make his own way through the tech ranks after college, through a professional career in Europe, then back to business school before finally landing an opportunity with Intel Capital.

His father had worked as a train engineer in Jamaica and relocated the family to New York where his mother worked as a housekeeper before getting her beautician license and opening her own shop. The couple had moved from Jamaica two years before Nichols would take the trip himself — time he spent living with his aunt and grandmother.

Marlon Nichols, co-founder and managing partner, Cross Culture Ventures

Growing up in Mt. Vernon, NY, just north of the Bronx where he’d moved with his parents, Nichols had always expressed an interest in technology. He’d been playing around with computers ever since his parents bought him a Commodore 64.

The first person to attend college in his family, Nichols transferred to Northeastern’s newly developed major in Management Information Systems after starting out in architecture. College gave Nichols his first exposure to life in Silicon Valley as well. Northeastern had an internship program which sent students out of Boston to try their hands in the business world — and Nichols was placed at Hewlett Packard in Cupertino, Calif.

He’d intended to move out to Silicon Valley after graduation, but instead took a job in the Boston offices of Frictionless Commerce — and it was there that Nichols first confronted the constraints that the city’s lack of diversity could mean.

“In Boston there was definitely a racial undertone,” says Nichols. “Going out as a professional… you weren’t treated well.”

He took the opportunity to move to London when it was presented and spent a few years there — playing semi-professional basketball in the evenings and working for Frictionless Commerce during the day.

After the company’s acquisition by SAP in 2006, Nichols consulted at the Blackstone Group and Warner Media. “In those rooms I was again the only one [who was a minority],” he says. “I started getting annoyed by it and started thinking about it a little bit more — I thought about education and opportunities and just knowing that there’s even an opportunity out there for this career path.”

So Nichols created a nonprofit that would help inner city students get into colleges. “I never had an SAT prep-course,” says Nichols. “I didn’t have anyone coaching me.”

The program helped students start to think about applying to Cornell, Vassar and Penn, when they were initially thinking about City University in New York.

As the non-profit took off, Nichols returned to school — Cornell University on a full scholarship to its business school.

“When I started going through that process I saw even fewer of the folks that looked like me,” Nichols recalls.

From Cornell, where Nichols ran the University’s venture capital fund, he was recruited to Intel Corp as part of a management training program. Although Nichols was supposed to rotate through three different business divisions at Intel, once he was placed in Intel Capital he advocated to stay there.

And it was there that he was able to bring his passion for creating opportunities for under-represented minorities and women to an industry that sorely needed it.

It was around the time that the diversity numbers at big technology companies were generating more criticism. Long held as an island of meritocracy in a sea of industries that were rife with sexism, racism and nepotism. When Tracy Chou called for reporting on diversity numbers in 2013, Nichols saw a repeating pattern that perhaps he could do something about at Intel.

Alongside Lisa Lambert, a managing director in Intel Capital’s software and services group, Nichols, who’d been in the new user experience group at Intel Capital, advocated for the creation of a diversity fund at Intel.

“We thought that there’s got to be a way that the folks in charge of deploying capital can be involved in diversity,” Nichols says of the creation of the fund. “Diversity was front and center and then it goes away and then it’s front and center again… There had to be something that could be done from a venture perspective.”

While the diversity fund had no problem finding companies to invest in, these companies were having trouble when they sought additional capital in subsequent rounds, said Nichols.

“I saw that some of the companies — after receiving the funding — were having trouble being viewed as a high-class company which had raised money from one of the largest institutional investors in the world,” says Nichols.

The problem, as Nichols sees it, is that these companies were solving global problems for a broad base of consumers, but their perceived financing as a “diversity” play was an obstacle to their future success.

“I was like, all right… I’m not going to put this tag on their back that would make it difficult for them to raise capital in the future,” Nichols says. “Instead I’m going to look at culture from a global perspective and try to identify emerging trends — if we are successful in doing that — and can be successful in picking trends — I’m going to get a high number of diverse entrepreneurs solving problems for the 99%.”

Chart courtesy of PWC Moneytree/CB Insights

Cross Culture and the Los Angeles opportunity

By the time Nichols was ready to form Cross Culture, other obstacles had emerged at the Intel fund. The focus on diversity had predominantly settled on trying to address venture’s gender problem to the exclusion of other representation issues that Nichols thought the firm had to deal with: race and ethnicity.

In addition, many of the entrepreneurs solving problems in billion-dollar industries that Nichols identified didn’t fall within the Intel mandate. The corporate investor had to back companies that aligned with its strategic vision — something of a challenge when advocating for investments in consumer-focused beauty products for the African American community (for instance).

So, after a stint in the Kauffman Fellows program, Nichols came away with a desire to strike out on his own with the help of a few anchor investors (like Freada Kapor Klein). Klein introduced Nichols to Troy Carter of Atom Factory as another potential investor in the fund.

“I flew down to L.A. and I sat with Troy… we talked for two hours and we really got along and… at the end of the meeting he said, ‘Good to meet you, but I’m not going to invest in your fund.'”

Two weeks after that initial rejection, Nichols got another call from Carter — instead of investing, the music impresario suggested a partnership. With Carter on board as founding partner, the two began laying the groundwork for the fund that would close on its first capital within the next year.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 23: Troy Carter of Atom Factory speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015 at Pier 70 on September 23, 2015 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

Cross Culture has built a portfolio where 72% of the founders are white women and women and men of color. It’s the only firm to back several African American founders that have gone on to raise significant capital in their A or B rounds, including Blavity, PlayVS, Mayvenn and WonderSchool.

The firm has also already enjoyed some success from early exits.

Gimlet, the podcasting company that Cross Culture backed at a $36 million post-money valuation, sold to Spotify for approximately $230 million. The firm’s other exits include MessageYes, which was sold to Nordstrom, and Skurt, which was acquired by Fair in February of last year.

Nichols has been instrumental in getting the firm in front of fast-growing companies like Airspace Technologies, a provider of on-demand logistics services; PlayVS, the company bringing esports to high schools around the country; and the new mobility company revolutionizing rental cars, Fair. These companies have all seen their value jump in recent months.

After Cross Culture was given the opportunity to invest in Fair through the Skurt acquisition, Fair’s valuation increased by 150% when SoftBank added another $385 million in financing to the rental car company. Airspace’s valuation saw a 733% increase in less than 8 months when Scale Venture Partners led the company’s $20 million Series B (at a valuation over $100 million) and PlayVS saw its value increase by 329% in the six months since Cross Culture invested, according to a person familiar with the fund’s portfolio.

Diishan Imira, the chief executive of Mayvenn, recently raised $23 million for his business selling hair extensions and beauty products to the African American community, up from the $10 million the company had closed when Cross Culture invested as part of the startup’s Series A.

Mayvenn was Cross Culture’s first investment and is a testament to the longterm relationship building behind much of Nichols’ work in the venture community.

“Kirk Collins put together a group of four or five people to get together for me to pitch to and for me to get some money. Marlon was one of the people there… and me and Marlon argued the entire time,” Imira says of that first meeting with Nichols. “We argued for 30 minutes and nothing came of it. But we kept in touch. He always offered advice or support here and there. He kept tracking us. And then… prior to our whole Series A… he had just started Cross Culture. I was like ‘Yo man, I want you guys to come in.”

With a new deal for customers and a fresh $23 million, Mayvenn extends its hair care business

Meanwhile, the problem of representation in venture capital was not improving, as the rest of the venture capital industry is failing to keep pace. Only 1% of founders of startup companies receiving venture capital backing are African American, and only 1.8% of founders are Latinx, according to data from RateMyInvestor and Diversity VC.

Nichols sees a potential to reverse those trends by focusing on cities and investing in ecosystems that have been historically ignored by venture capital’s white shoe firms and traditional rainmakers.

“We had an office in Palo Alto and an office down here in Culver City,” Nichols recalled. “For the first two years I would come down every other week and Troy would come up every other week. [But] coming down here I could see there was something happening that I hadn’t seen before. Unlike in the Bay Area, I was seeing things being created for a greater percentage of the population.”

Fueled by exits in Dollar Shave Club, Snap, and Oculus more capital was coming in to the ecosystem to back a more diverse group of founders who’d proven they could find success south of the Bay Area.

“Most of the things that are coming out of the Valley these days are meant to be used by people in the Valley as opposed to people in the Bronx, or Queens or Baltimore,” says Nichols. “This is the time to be here. If you are going to invest in the companies of tomorrow you have to go where the world is moving to — and that’s black and brown, honestly.”

The census supports Nichols’ assessment. By 2044 the United States will see a majority minority population, and the next generation of consumers is already showing its preferences. Companies like Ipsy, founded by Michelle Phan, is a billion-dollar beauty business built by a minority founder, or Pat McGrath Labs, another billion-dollar makeup brand launched by make-up artists Pat McGrath, which raised $60 million from Eurazeo Brands.

Cross Culture isn’t just sitting in Los Angeles waiting to find these companies. Nichols and his firm are taking the opportunity on the road. He spent a month in Miami meeting with entrepreneurs and has organized a series of “Culture and Code” events in Detroit and Atlanta to get exposure to startups in those cities as well. Nichols describes them as pop-ups to meet entrepreneurs and investors in those communities.

For Cross Culture, the decision to travel to these urban hubs far from technology’s traditional perch in Silicon Valley is simply an extension of the firm’s broader vision.

“Only 2% of venture capital is black and Latinx and .002 is black women. Part of that is that young folks that look like me don’t know what venture capital is,” says Nichols. “It was kind of eye-opening in the sense of how a good portion of our population thinks about these demographics and what they’re capable of and it was very sad.”

Now, as Cross Culture is mostly deployed the firm needs to make a decision about its future. There’s the potential that Cross Culture could go out for another $50 million to $100 million, or, potentially raise a larger new vehicle.

To date, the firm’s average investment size has been roughly $250,000 into the the 34 companies that the firm has backed so far.

For Nichols, the success of these companies is an imperative. Not just to make money, or to prove out his thesis, but because of what failure would mean for other firms that take a broad approach to their investment thesis trying to back the best founders — no matter their background. Nichols believes it’s important for the venture industry, for the economy, and for the broader society.

“There is no way I can fail at this,” Nichols says. “I have to win.”

Via Jonathan Shieber https://techcrunch.com

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