According to Axios Dan Primack, Jay Z is about to launch a Venture Capital Fund.
In 2015, Inc’s Laura Montini wrote about The 10 Top Celebrity Startup Investors which included pop-star Justin Bieber and actor, Leonardo Di Caprio. In 2016, we hear about the 3-year old startup that football star, Thierry Henry invested in Grabyo, a video-sharing tech startup that has wooed Wimbledon.
While it is not uncommon for Hollywood to take interest in Silicon Valley, I wonder if such partnership is happening in other parts of the world such as Nigeria’s Nollywood and Yabacon Valley.
More about the Jay Z VC Fund
According to Axios, Shawn “Jay Z” Carter would not be going in alone but with Roc Nation President and long-time business Partner, Jay Brown.
They currently seek a full-time investment partner, perhaps to handle the more technical aspects of Angel investing so they can focus on the music. Although they are partnering with American Venture Capital firm, Sherpa Capital, the Sherpa staff would not be leading the investments, according to Axios. However, it is interesting to note that this is not their first experience in the VC market as they are reported to have taken part in Uber’s Series B, according to Axios.
Not much has been said about the fund size but we know they would be focusing on seed-stage tech companies, according to Axios.
At this point, it might be interesting to know that Jay Z is also an owner of high-fidelity music-streaming service, Tidal.
Having said all these, who has an idea on how we can get more of our Celebrities involved in the Start-up business? Perhaps, the volatility in our Nigerian market is too high and the conditions for doing business are quite unfavourable.
