Visible Hands

The firm runs a 14-week virtual fellowship that selects founders who are women, people of color, or based outside major tech hubs. Every participant receives a stipend and hands-on company-building support. Rather than relying on warm introductions, the fellowship itself functions as a proprietary sourcing pipeline — the investment team watches founders execute for three months before deciding which companies to back. This turns the diligence process into an observed execution record, not a pitch meeting.

As of May 2024, approximately 20% of Visible Hands fellowship graduates had raised seed rounds from the firm. This figure was published by the firm itself and reflects a deliberate structure: every graduate receives a $25,000 pre-seed investment, and the most promising companies receive follow-on capital. The rate measures how many founders convert from the stipend program into formal portfolio companies.

The three general partners — Daniel Acheampong, Yasmin Cruz Ferrine, and Justin Kang — lead investment decisions. They are the firm's co-founders and operate as a partnership without a separate CIO layer. Acheampong and Cruz Ferrine are both former operators and investors; Kang brings institutional and civic-sector relationships that support the fellowship's corporate sponsorship model.

The pre-seed program is structured so that every fellowship graduate receives a $25,000 investment, but the firm's seed-stage follow-on capital is concentrated on the highest-performing graduates. Visible Hands is not a pure alumni fund — its model is built around the fellowship as the primary but not necessarily exclusive sourcing channel. The published 20% conversion rate reflects the share of graduates that reach the firm's seed portfolio.

Corporate sponsors including J.P. Morgan and MassMutual have underwritten the stipend pool. This structure means the operating costs of the sourcing engine are subsidized by partners whose own business interests — talent pipelines, supplier diversity, community reinvestment obligations — align with the fellowship's mission. The separation between corporate sponsorship dollars and the fund's own capital preserves standard LP economics on the investment side.

The firm operates at two stages. First, a mandatory $25,000 pre-seed check written to every fellowship graduate — a high-volume, small-check strategy that functions as an option on talent. Second, targeted seed-stage follow-on investments into roughly 20% of those founders. The firm does not currently participate in Series A rounds as a lead, focusing its capital and operating bandwidth on the earliest institutional entry point.

The fellowship is remote by design, drawing founders from cities across the United States. The firm's investment activity concentrates on the Northeast — anchored by its Boston headquarters — and select Midwestern markets where corporate partnership relationships support pipeline density. The model deliberately reaches outside the Bay Area and New York venture corridors.