Approach
Why Arizona?
When one of our partners moved to Arizona over four years ago, he was amazed by all of the entrepreneurial excitement. But while there was a robust angel investment community, there was only one active venture fund with over $10 million in capital that was focused on investing in the state! As a result, not a single Arizona startup has received a $5 million or more Seed or Series A round led by a local investment firm.
State48 Ventures seeks to change that.
We have recruited a team of venture capital investors with decades of investment experience who are focused on the opportunity present in Arizona. We believe that active board involvement can strongly benefit many early-stage startups. Plus, having a group of experienced board members in the same metropolitan area is a large part of why Silicon Valley is the center of the tech world—investors and entrepreneurs work together collaboratively. While COVID has changed how we work and the venture ecosystem is now growing faster outside the Bay Area than ever before, what hasn’t changed are the many benefits of an investor being able to drive to meet an entrepreneur or visit a portfolio company.
Key Facts:
Phoenix, Arizona is the 5th largest city in the US and the 10th largest metro-area, but it attracts the lowest in-state venture capital dollars of any of the top 20 cities and 20 metro areas.
Over 30,000 students graduate every year from Arizona universities, a large number of them engineers. ASU alone has over 20,000 students currently studying engineering.
Over $20 billion is being invested in Arizona by firms like Uber, Google, DoorDash, Intel, LiveRamp, TSMC and others… it is becoming a hotbed for data center, semiconductor, Internet, and automotive investment.
