Fellowship Spotlight: non sibi ventures

Sid Smith and Kent Lucas’s long-lasting friendship began as high school roommates and teammates. Their school’s seal incorporates the Latin phrase, “non sibi,” which means “not for self,” and inspired the name of their fund, non sibi ventures. As Co-Founding Partner, Kent Lucas, explains, “What we're really doing is not for ourselves. If we execute on our strategy, investing in our target markets, people, and technologies, we’ll be helping others - which includes generating leading returns for our investors.”

The What

“We’re trying to find underrepresented founders — minorities and women — who have great technologies,” Lucas shares. As Co-Founding Partners with a foundational relationship that goes back several decades, Lucas and Smith are the core of non sibi ventures, a differentiated Black and female-led firm investing in category defining U.S.-based technology startups led by underrepresented founders.

With over 90 years of combined relevant experience, the team leverages their far-reaching network to access deal flow from top-tier funds, to help de-risk the investment process, and to provide business development and sales opportunities for non sibi’s portfolio companies. “We're older than a lot of other first-time funds,” Lucas points out. “I've been investing in some of these sectors since the 90s, so one strength is our relationships, and what startups need is basically capital and connections.”

Complementing their connections is non sibi’s value-driven approach to their sourcing and selection process. “Value investing in public markets is a common and well known approach, but value investing in venture is less common. We are looking for undervalued and overlooked founders and technologies in less obvious markets.”

Focused more on deep tech than on consumer tech, non sibi is targeting seed and series A investments. Two-thirds of the founders in their portfolio are targeted to be BIPOC or female and the firm intends to write checks that range from $250K up to $2M, averaging $1M. 

non sibi launched in early 2021 and had their first close in November of the same year. “The team has made seven investments to date, including category-defining startups such as Planet FWD, ChargerHelp! and Moodify,” according to Smith. “Our team earned our stripes during the dot.com era and the great recession which adds invaluable perspective. Combined with our value approach to investing, we are very comfortable and enthusiastic about investing in today’s challenging climate for startups, and we have a robust pipeline of high quality deals.”

The Why

Formed in the raucous wake of the unjust murder of George Floyd — in the context of antiracist uprisings and calls for an end to systemic rascism — non sibi ventures exists to do its part in transforming our collective reality. “The numbers are terrible around Black, Brown, and women founders,” Lucas shares, “but there's also a performance side to this.” non sibi operates from the data-driven understanding that diversity is not some idealistic nice-to-have; expanded diversity actually correlates to higher performance. 

“We’ve seen double and even triple-bottom line outcomes between supporting an ecosystem of underrepresented founders, supporting our investors, and having a mission-driven focus on performance.” And this is not just by chance. We need more people in decision making positions to really believe and act on the performance data as it is also their fiduciary responsibility.

As Lucas explains, fueled by data that supports his assertions, “Diversity outperforms. So we’re investing in women-led teams, diverse-led teams, and geographies outside of Silicon Valley.” 

The time is also right for the work non sibi ventures is dedicated to. “This is a great time for non sibi to deploy capital,” Lucas says, “given what’s happening in our sectors.” The areas they’re investing in — sustainability and industrial tech, electrification, renewables — are all at a tipping point. “Governments and companies are pushing towards zero emissions infrastructure and transportation,” Lucas emphasizes, pointing to the billions of additional dollars available for non sibi’s focus areas due to the recent Inflation Reduction Act.

The People, The Foundation

non sibi’s ability to positively impact the companies in their portfolio has everything to do with the people at the table, their vast experience, and their domain expertise. “We've narrowed our focus to work in those areas where we have advantaged networks, knowledge, and relationships that really help and support our founders.”

With vast networks from his time at Harvard undergrad and then Stanford Business School, Lucas started investing over 25 years ago, managing $1 billion in public equities with outperformance at Capital Group which manages the American Funds. He also served as research director at a top Brazilian brokerage firm. Additionally, he had a stint as a professional poker player — the latter of which may sound unrelated but speaks to Lucas’ decision making skills, ability to recognize patterns and to read people and personalities, all crucial when it comes to investing and working with founders. As Lucas also founded and managed the portfolio of a small hedge fund in New York, several of the investors he made money for at that time are current LPs in non sibi ventures. After switching to venture, his ultimate calling, he founded a tech advisory firm that afforded him even more expanded and diverse experiences here in the U.S. along with international experience – spending a lot of time on technology investing and innovation in Israel and South Korea, both global tech innovation hubs.

Smith, on the other hand, has been involved with venture, and particularly Black venture capital, for decades as one of the early figures. He is a lawyer by training, with deep experience negotiating and closing venture deals including serving as general counsel to Syncom Venture Partners, one of the earliest and largest Black venture firms. Smith also possesses operational expertise, having co-founded and served as VP of strategy and as board member for D.C.-based data startup Discourse Analytics. Smith and non sibi’s partner Saamra Mekuria-Grillo also have backgrounds in education and leadership, which adds to the long list of assets the firm provides.

“We have depth as a team that not many other first-time funds of our size have,” Smith reiterates. “Our experience as investors and operators gives us the confidence to invest in this tough market environment.”

Informed By Diverse Experiences and Perspectives

The environment that first brought Lucas and Smith together — and also gave their fund its name — is a key part of the story. They initially crossed paths at Phillips Academy, an elite prep school in the U.S., both hailing from environments that weren’t particularly represented at Phillips. 

Lucas speaks to his own experience saying, “I’ve been fortunate enough to go to some of the best schools while growing up in a working middle class family in Queens, NY. I straddled both worlds. I’ve spent time with my family in Mississippi, in the Deep South, with one traffic light, seeing the depths of poverty, while also being with my prep school friends whose family names were on buildings.” He goes on to point out the benefits of he and Smith being exposed to highly contrasted environments, resulting in a unique propensity for pattern recognition, essential to their success as investors.

VC Include Fellowship

Smith hones in on some of the most valuable takeaways from he and Lucas’s participation in the VC Include Fellowship: the community, camaraderie, and support. “The fellowship was a great experience,” he says, “as it exposed us to other general partners that are trying to do what we are doing, and proved that this ecosystem is supportive, not competitive.” 

He also elevates the valuable tangible information that the pair gained, saying, “Along with an impressive list of guest speakers, the fellowship program gave us exposure to topics that our firm was less familiar with, but made us well informed and prepared.”

Given their unique depth of experience, we at VCI are particularly honored to have added value that will reinforce, strengthen, and accelerate the powerful and impactful work of non sibi ventures.