IgniteXL Ventures closed a female-led fund to remodel the sweetness and wellness business by backing numerous, under-networked founders. Outstanding Silicon Valley LPs and VCs supported the preliminary fund.
WHO: IgniteXL Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based international seed fund investing in game-changing founders on the intersection of expertise, magnificence, and wellness. With its ties to Korea, IgniteXL leverages its international partnership community to open new markets and supply founders with assets and connections important to their success. The agency launched Silicon Valley”s first-ever magnificence tech accelerator in 2018, SVBeautyTech, and has since pioneered discovering technology-forward corporations led by ladies and numerous groups that deliver wellness innovation to the world.
IgniteXL is led by solo Basic Accomplice Claire Chang, a 20-year Silicon Valley veteran and skilled angel investor with deep connections to the Ok-beauty business in her native Korea in addition to international Fortune 500 manufacturers within the wellness and wonder area. Its debut $10MM fund will again disruptive merchandise, companies, and enterprise fashions in magnificence and wellness, prioritizing numerous groups and under-networked founders. IgniteXL’s tech focus, international networks, and model connections present distinctive benefits for early-stage founders.
WHY: Claire moved to the US from Seoul, Korea, when she was 12 years previous and constructed her profession working with worldwide start-ups by way of a Korean government-run accelerator earlier than beginning her personal international accelerator in 2014. After working with over 200+ early-stage start-ups, Claire noticed a spot in funding from angel to seed—the place there have been only a few pre-seed institutional buyers—and noticed the frustration of feminine founders who discovered male buyers unsavvy to the market and few feminine VCs to work with. Whereas the market potential for magnificence and wellness funding is remarkably secure, it is largely ignored as a result of it is seen as a ladies’s section. This can be a $5 trillion greenback oversight. It was this necessity and alternative that prompted Claire to create the IgniteXL Ventures fund.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: “Expertise has all the time been on the forefront of great business change, and it is excessive time it revolutionized the $5 trillion magnificence and wellness area,” stated Claire Chang, founder and GP of IgniteXL. “IgniteXL is proud to hunt out and again numerous founders leveraging expertise to construct services that empower customers to enhance their high quality of life. We consider variety is not a hoop to be jumped by way of; it is a path to be taken.”
“We pleasure ourselves on Silicon Valley being the birthplace of innovation, but there’s a lot occurring on the intersection of tech, magnificence, and wellness that we’re woefully behind on,” stated Han Kim, Basic Accomplice at Altos Ventures. “Claire brings a novel lens in an business that has historically been dominated by male buyers, and we’re thrilled to be supporting her as she embarks on this new fund.”
“Claire leads a really clear course of and from day one, each dialog has all the time been real, heat, insightful, and useful,” stated Juan Acosta, founder and CEO of Tabella, a social networking platform for faith-based communities. “I really consider that IgniteXL’s funding goes past a enterprise partnership. It’s actually a friendship constructed on belief with a founder’s greatest curiosity at coronary heart.”
DETAILS:
- IgniteXL Ventures closed a $10 million beauty- and wellness-focused fund.
- The fund has attracted a world profile of distinguished VCs and strategic LPs, together with Han Kim of Altos Ventures, Perry Ha of Draper Athena, Allen Miner of SunBridge Group, and strategic LPs together with Cosmax and CTK USA.
- A few of IgniteXL’s portfolio embody Good Light, Dame, and Revea.
