Fellowship Spotlight: Rebel One Ventures
The adage “if you truly understand something, you can teach it,” rings true for Sergio Marrero, general partner of Rebel One Ventures. That’s because Sergio has created and run founder and investor training programs that have instructed over one thousand people from around the world.
“People from other funds are sending their folks to us so that we can train them,” Sergio explains, “We’re talking about Harlem Capital, Vamos Ventures, we recently had a staff of Sequoia join our venture fellowship program – us, a small emerging fund, to take part in our training.”
This visionary emerging manager is putting his deep knowledge of the investment industry to use in order to help improve and evolve it from the inside. His mission is to democratize access to investing in order to realize zero inequality.
Disrupting The System
“The problem that I’m focused on,” says Sergio, “is that entrepreneurs have a tough journey. Over 90% of those individuals fail. For Black, Latino, and Women-led startups it’s even worse because they don’t have access to the same capital. I don’t believe that needs to be true. But how do we change that is the question.”
In order to disrupt the investment industry, he’s attacking the problem from several angles with the purpose of connecting startup founders to the “knowledge, capital, and community in order to change the game.”
Three-Part Strategy
This Harvard Business School graduate is more than ready to change the game with ten years of experience as a founder, investor, and leader of the Innovation Fund at the University of Chicago. His three-pronged strategy includes a venture fund, education program, and a syndicate network.
First, Sergio is general partner of Rebel One Ventures, a VC fund that backs early-stage startups creating digital infrastructure and accelerating market transformation that allow people to achieve economic empowerment. He focuses investment into four main areas: startups that help people increase their income, reduce their debt, participate in the financial ecosystem (or bank the un-banked), and invest and build wealth.
Second, his founder and investor training programs give pre-accelerator training for ambitious founders to move from idea to launch, provide scalable support to his current portfolio companies, and supply tremendous deal-flow for the fund.
Third, he created a syndicate. The alumnae of the training program gain access to invest side by side with Rebel One. For this right, the fund gets the pro-rata rights in follow-on deals. “So we’ll be able to cherry pick the highest performing deals and achieve super pro-rata in those investments,” Sergio details, “creating a win-win scenario where they get access to invest in deals and we get outsize financial return.”
How the VCI Fellowship Helped Rebel One Ventures
Breaking into an industry known to be very clubby can be daunting, so Sergio highly values the community that the VCI Fellowship built. “The VCI program has been amazing in the community that it has created. It really makes the tough journey of being a general partner that much smoother. To be side by side other folks that are making the same leap – we’re learning from each other, and giving each other hope and persistence along the way.”
He also appreciates the insider advice and insight that he received during the program. “One of my favorite moments was listening to Jim Casselberry, of 4S Bay, talk about his strategy of investing in emerging fund managers and GPs. It was really enlightening and felt like we were side by side with him as peers. Taking that time to coach us was invaluable, and getting that perspective into the limited partner lens.” He adds, “Since we’ve entered the program, the evolution in our fund strategy and clarity into how we fit into LP portfolios has been amazing.”
All of us at VC Include are blown away with Sergio’s grit, determination, brilliance, and the astonishing amount of hard work that he has put in to propel his lofty goals forward. We know that there’s nothing that he can’t do, and we look forward to watching him help catalyze an evolutionary leap in the VC industry.
