DURHAM – A new fund for early-stage Triangle startups launched Monday. The fund, backed by local early-stage investment firm Primordial, is set up as a rolling fund, meaning the fund managers will continuously raise capital.

Joe Colopy, the CEO of Primordial, says the fund  is “seeking others to become angel investors.”

The minimum investment commitment will be a $5,000 per quarter investment for four quarters, according to the Primordial website.

Primordial will manage the rolling fund through AngelList, a fund-managing platform. (According to AngelList’s website, the platform will charge the fund managers an upfront setup fee and an ongoing fund services fee over ten years. An example fee structure is 0.2% of the fund size plus a $2.5k onboarding fee.)

Individuals must be accredited investors to participate and will need to sign up through AngelList, according to the Primordial website.

Addressing the Triangle-area pre-seed funding gap

Primordial is a Durham-based angel fund. Founded in April 2023, the fund has made eight investments so far.

Primordial is part of Colopy Ventures, the family office backed by Colopy, a serial entrepreneur who was famously an early employee at Red Hat and then co-founder of Bronto Software, which sold for $200M in 2015.

“The Triangle has amazing startups, and new exciting ones are always popping up,” said Colopy. “We started Primordial to help more of them be successful and hopefully uncover the area’s next Red Hat or Epic Games. Tomorrow’s tech behemoths will come from today’s little startups.”

Colopy is also a co-founder of Jurrasic Capital, a Durham-based growth equity fund that focuses on small B2B software companies based in the Southeastern United States.

Jenn Summe, Director at Primordial, says that the fund will help Primorial to extend its support of early-stage startups.

“We’re excited to bring a program of operational guidance, focused networking, and critical capital to select tech startups at the earliest stages,” said Summe in the press release. “After developing Primordial for the last year, we are thrilled to launch this fund and finally help more people become angel investors to support Triangle startups.”

Primordial aims to invest in three to five startups per quarter in 2024, according to the press release. The fund will focus on startups that have raised less than $1 million in capital and generated less than $1 million in revenue.

To learn more about the new fund, see https://primordial.io/invest