Sean ‘Jay-Z’ Carter’s Roc Nation will form ARRIVE- a venture capital for newly selected startups, giving them brand services, business development, advisory consultations, and funding.
Apparently, the rumor turned out to be true- Jay-Z’s parent company Roc Nation has announced a new platform that will provide venture capital to a select group of startups. Known as ARRIVE, the new venture capital company will provide startups with brand services, business development, advisory consultations and of course, funding to get their businesses off the ground.
According to the Roc Nation press release provided by Yahoo- “ARRIVE was created to leverage our experience and resources in building brands, developing consumer facing businesses, managing artists and representing athletes. We've opened that diversified, global range of expertise to a new vertical: entrepreneurs and their early stage businesses.”
To get the new VC platform off and running, Roc Nation is collaborating with Primary Venture Partners (seed-stage venture firm) and GlassBridge Asset Management (holding company) with the former playing an advisement and guide investment role while the latter providing business infrastructure support. This partnership will effectively allow the new startups to “keep their minds on their money and their money on their minds.”
In addition to the new ARRIVE platform, Roc Nation will continue its support for new and rising artists while formalizing its focus on social impact investments through this year.
Considering Jay-Z has backed a number of successful startups (Uber, Stance, Away) both privately and through Roc Nation, it’s a good bet that ARRIVE will produce a good share of brand-name enterprises in the near future when the new platform takes hold. Still, there’s no word yet on how much funding can be had by those startups or what the initial “select group” will produce, so it will be interesting to see what becomes of the endeavor.
Developing story, I'll keep an eye on it.
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