JAY-Z is adding a venture fund to his always expanding portfolio.
Axios reports Hov is launching the fund with Jay Brown, a longtime business partner and president of Roc Nation.
Expect the focus to be on seed-stage tech opportunities, with this really being the institutionalization of Jay Z and Jay Brown's previous angel investing activities. For example, they both were in Uber's Series B, at a $300m pre-money. Other investments have included JetSmarter, plus his involvement and stake in music streaming service Tidal.
Jay-Z's attempt to further diversify has been applauded.
"It's no surprise that Jay-Z would launch a venture fund," Ben Parr, a former VC who is co-founder of Octane AI, tells Barron's. "Equity in fast-growing startups has huge upside–more than record sales or touring revenue. Early-stage venture investing is all about access, and Jay-Z has the name, network, and brand recognition to get into the top deals."
Because you may be wondering, here's the difference between a venture fund and a hedge fund, via The Motley Fool:
The key difference between the two is that while hedge funds have the ability to make money when investments grow or decline in value (because they can short investments in order to hedge their long calls), venture capital funds need the companies they invest in to be profitable in order to make money themselves.