This article by Michal Lev-Ram was originally published on Fortune.com.
On a recent Wednesday in Woodside, Calif., about a dozen Silicon Valley-based investors gathered to celebrate a new fund. These were some of the region’s top “operators”—the executives who make organizations tick day-to-day—from some of the hottest tech companies around, with many decades of experience (and financial success) represented in the room. But they also had something else in common: Nearly all of them were first-time investors.
Why had they never invested before? Because no one had ever asked them to.
Operator Collective, the new fund, counts more than 100 of these operators and first-time investors as its limited partners. (The fund has not yet officially closed but currently stands at $45 million.) Notably, 90% of these LPs are women, and more than 40% of them are people of color. And yes, 77% of them have never invested in tech, though they are fully steeped in the industry.
