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Sep 9, 2021

Passion for Teaching and Cultivating Startups as a Driving Force with Kim King at Launch Factory

Kim King is the general partner of Launch Factory, a venture capital and growth startup studio. Launch Factory, built in 2018, provides investors proprietary deal flow, deploying capital into early-stage startups at significantly below-market valuations and maximizing returns through hands-on, expert-led acceleration of each portfolio company.


"We create companies! We spend time looking at market needs, investigating, and doing due diligence and homework to decide what areas we want to play in. Once we have selected those ideas, we go out and have a founder selection process, and it's pretty interesting since it's run kind of like a competition.



I started at Stanford studying industrial engineering and decided to go into the world of consulting, but I always knew I wanted to go to business school and ended up at Harvard Business School.


I began my investing career at BankAmerica Ventures and at IDG ventures and found out two things. I love startups, and I love investing. I found the space I wanted to be in terms of my career.


I also found that I love to teach and cultivate entrepreneurs. I became an adjunct professor and joined Launch Factory. At Launch Factory, I was excited about what they were doing. It very much aligned with how I saw not only the world of venture capital changing, but also constantly wanting to learn and make things better.


Venture capital model is a great model, especially for diversifying a portfolio, but it's difficult for a founder who doesn't either have the support system or the financial backing to start a company. But with Launch factory, we're leveling the playing field."


Launch Factory Logo

Kim King, General Partner

858 - 353 - 4903

www.launchfactory.com


Launch Factory gives investors access to diversified and proprietary deal flow, deploying capital into early-stage startups at significantly below-market valuations and maximizing returns through hands-on, expert-led acceleration of each portfolio company. The studio cultivates promising business opportunities, recruits talented entrepreneurs to lead each company in merit-based in a biased way, then supports each company from formation to exit. The firm has built seven companies ($5.35MM AUM) since its formation in 2018 and is led by a strong management team including Brad Chisum (prior $85MM exit to Google), James Hereford (former Chief of Staff, Google), and Kimberly Davis King (experienced VC, IDG Ventures). The execution team includes Bill Orabone (three successful exits, 47 of 51 profitable angel investments) & Andy Ballester (co-founder of GoFundMe). They are currently raising a 2022-2023 $14.3M fund.



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