While VCs crowd into San Francisco, Endeavor Catalyst raises $320M for founders ‘elsewhere’

Endeavor Catalyst just raised $320 million to keep backing founders outside Silicon Valley. Half the profits go back to the nonprofit that finds them. Endeavor Catalyst has closed its fifth fund with $320 million in capital commitments, bringing the firm’s total assets under management to more than $850 million. The raise is good news for founders outside the Bay Area who risk getting overlooked as more funds focus squarely on AI companies in Silicon Valley. Endeavor Catalyst is the venture arm of Endeavor, a New York-based global nonprofit that has spent 30 years supporting founders outside major tech hubs. (It calls all those other places “elsewhere” throughout its marketing materials.) The fund is run by managing partner Allen Taylor, a 20-year veteran of the organization, and managing director Jackie Carmel, who joined Endeavor Catalyst 12 years ago, along with a 16-person team.

The official general partner, though, is Endeavor itself. What that means, says Linda Rottenberg, who co-founded Endeavor and helped start Endeavor Catalyst in 2012, is that “half of the fund’s profits go back to Endeavor, so every investment helps the next generation of founders who are building elsewhere.” The bar for those founders is pretty high. A person first has to get into Endeavor’s network, where he or she can access Endeavor’s mentoring and extensive network, and that’s