Illumen Capital partners with institutional investors to back the next generation of venture and private equity managers.
We believe an inclusive and optimal asset management industry will be the cornerstone of an equitable future.
We are research-backed investors.
Before we ever closed our first fund, we published research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) alongside Stanford SPARQ offering clear evidence that race can influence the decision making of professional investors*.
This research suggested investors may be completely missing out – unknowingly – on many high-quality investment opportunities.
We are thesis-driven investors.
We have a basic thesis: narrow sourcing networks, a limited investable landscape and skewed diligence can lead to suboptimal financial performance.
We believe by reducing bias in how investments are allocated, we can help drive capital to founders and entrepreneurs long overlooked and underestimated – and unlock stronger financial performance.
Our differentiated strategy combining investment capital with evidence-based tools helps our fund managers actively reduce bias and promote opportunity for all.
We invest in venture, growth, and private equity funds, and then work closely with fund managers to implement and install IllumenIQ™, a proprietary web-based platform providing educational training programs, strategies, and tools designed to advance inclusive hiring, investment, and company support processes. We select managers investing in one or more of the following themes:
EDUCATION
FINANCIAL
INCLUSION
CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY
HEALTH &
WELLNESS
INCLUSIVE
SYSTEMS
This research-informed platform support – developed in part through our strategic relationship with Stanford SPARQ – empowers fund managers to expand their investable landscape and better support entrepreneurs who have historically been overlooked and underestimated.
We are returns-focused investors.
We at Illumen Capital subscribe to the growing body of evidence that suggests teams with different lived experiences, cognitive approaches and backgrounds outperform more homogenous teams.
Illumen Capital is an institutional investor seeking to back high-performing managers with strong potential for top-decile and top-quartile performance. By working closely with every manager in our portfolio to reduce bias, we strive to help our managers unlock stronger returns.
Our team has over 75 combined years of investment, operating, and impact management experience.
