Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter and Blogger, is back with his third version of Obvious, the previous versions of which spawned Twitter, Medium, and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s Jelly and Super.
This one is called Obvious Ventures, and running the show with Williams are investors James Joaquin and Vishal Vasishth. The firm is what it sounds like – a venture capital fund, but it focuses on what they refer to as “wold positive” startups. A message on the Obvious Ventures website says:
We’re entrepreneurs. We’ve helped a lot of companies launch, grow, and generate great financial returns. A few of these companies also deliver positive social and environmental benefits with every dollar of revenue they earn. We want to fund and build more of those. That’s what we call #worldpositive venture capital.
Why should these companies work with us? We’re experienced investors, with several IPOs under our collective belt. But we’re product designers and company builders first, and we are on a mission to help fuel startups that combine profit and purpose. Startups that create new solutions to big world problems in a profitable and scalable way.
Obivous Ventures has invested in eleven companies so far, but has only revealed nine of them. These are: Olly, which makes nutritional supplements; Beyond Meat, which makes meatless protein foods; Breezeworks, a business operations app; Flux, which makes architectural design tools; Loup, a ride service; Magic Leap, a screen interface developer; Miyoko’s Kitchen, which makes plant-based cheeses; Workpop, a work marketplace; and ZenPayroll, which makes payroll software.
Image via Obvious Ventures