Investment firm partners Monique Idlett-Mosley and Erica Duignan Minnihan are level-headed in their approach to allocating capital to companies.
Forming Reign Ventures
The duo lead Reign Ventures, an early-stage investment fund targeting consumer technology and software startups led by women and minorities.
Both founders, who met more than a decade ago during an executive MBA program, bring distinct experiences to their roles, which fall on opposite ends of the spectrum. Idlett-Mosley, co-founder and managing partner, brings 20 years of experience spanning entertainment, marketing, press, and entrepreneurship, and previously worked as CEO for Mosley Brands and Mosley Music Group.
Minnihan, co-founder and general partner, has collected 15 years of experience as an investor and advisor. She began her career in investment banking with roles at Citigroup, Credit Suisse, and Cantor Fitzgerald. She later transitioned to venture capital as managing director at DreamIt Ventures, executive director at STAR Angel Network and Golden Seeds, and founder and managing partner at 1000 Angels.
The differences in career trajectories and experience is ultimately their superpower in the venture capital space.
“I have a completely different background, and spending 25-plus years in entertainment, dealing with talent, dealing with creativity, identifying talent and creativity, I saw it as a very similar lane transitioning to founders and the founding team,” Idlett-Mosley said on the “Black Tech Green Money” podcast. “There’s a special talent there. There’s a special ‘it’ factor. They have something special that they wanna build, but they need kind of like that bumper system. That’s the way Erica and I really, really where we kind of just blended on what our idea of supporting an early stage founding team looked like. And so we both were in agreeance on that. We both had different skill sets, which kinda just is like, ‘Okay. This is what venture needs right now.’”
Minnihan commented, “We actually have very different outlooks on what’s important in an investment and how to kind of identify risk and also identify potential for reward. So I felt very lucky to meet Monique because in my circles, given my background is largely finance and business school and all that, most of the people that were in my world have a very similar perspective to things that I do. So, if I were to come together with them it would kind of be just two lenses over each other. Whereas with Monique and I, we’re able to create between the two of us a really unique viewpoint on not only how to select companies to go into the portfolio, but also how to support founders in very different ways.”
In 2013, the pair first began investing together. Two years later, as they recognized their circumstances were going well and their momentum was building, they decided to launch the venture capital fund in 2015, but they mark 2019 as the time period of officially entering the market. By 2021, they closed their first fund and are in the process of closing their second.
“We have sort of proven track record results. But that’s taken over 10 years, and we’re still considered emerging managers,” Minnihan said.
The Key To Building A Solid Track Record
Their success, which they emphasize has not been overnight, can so far be credited to several factors in the market, including maintaining leveled expectations and being diligent. This has been helpful for adapting to the shift in the market, as they recognize that securing funding has been difficult for not only founders but also those running venture capital firms. However, they have not allowed surrounding concerns to influence their investment decisions.
“I spent my whole career in New York doing investment banking, actually doing discounted cash flow analysis, sort of understanding very much how to value a variety of different asset classes,” Minnihan stated. “So, we’ve always been really focused on fundamentals. For that reason, we never got caught up in the hype and the overpaying and the investing in companies that needed to burn through a $100 million to get to profitability. We’ve actually been rewarded for that really diligent approach, but it’s based on many decades of experience in the market, understanding market cycles and understanding where true value is created.”
She added, “For that reason, our fund one is performing in the top 5% of funds of our vintage, but it’s because the market is correcting to a more sensible approach that we’ve consistently kept. We’ve focused on building healthy companies that are healthy not only for the investors, but also for the founders and the employees. What we are hoping is to build great product, to have founders that are gonna see substantial personal and financial reward from what they’ve done, and to build great jobs for the amazing people in our community.”
Portfolio Companies
Reign Ventures’ portfolio currently includes at least 22 companies, according to equity-focused database PitchBook. This includes Clearbrief, Letterhead, Accern, and OurX. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, OurX, a Black-woman-owned data-tech platform, offers tailored solutions and resources for the textured hair community through live expert consultations, interactive education, and community engagement.
“We do fewer investments than the traditional VCs. But at the end of the day, the reality is that all of this is hard. This is hard work,” Idlett-Mosley mentioned. “We’re really, really blessed and fortunate that we are doing well at Reign Ventures… We’re sacrificing now for later and so that we can give some type of viewpoint to founders that would not necessarily have access to pitch to traditional VC firms. None of this is easy… We’re choosing to not give up, and this is what we chose to do over the last 12 years.”
Check out the full episode below.
