US-based venture capital firm Unshackled Ventures has raised $20m for its second fund from limited partners (LPs) including Bloomberg Beta, media company Bloomberg’s data-focused investment arm.
AME Cloud Ventures, the investment vehicle of internet company Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang; social impact organisation Emerson Collective and Brad Feld, managing director and co-founder of VC firm Foundry Group, are also among the fund’s LPs.
Unshackled Ventures was launched in 2015 and concentrates its investments in companies founded by immigrants, and migrants on student or work visas. It provides visa support as well as capital and had raised $3.5m for its first fund.
The firm has backed 31 portfolio companies and conducted 80 immigration filings. Its portfolio includes vegan food producer Mylk Guys, plant-based protein ingredients provider Plantible, autonomous truck developer Starsky Robotics and nursing-focused radar sensor manufacturer Togg.
Nitin Pachisia, a founding partner of Unshackled, told TechCrunch: “The point is to take the burden off of founders because they are not immigration experts, they are experts at building satellites or extracting protein from plants.
“These are people that if you go to a workspace, you will see them show up on nights and weekends because they want to build something but they cannot.”
