Moderne Ventures, an early stage venture fund, is currently enrolling new businesses in its midyear Accelerator class to help new businesses grow.
Based in Chicago, Moderne Ventures primarily (although not exclusively) focuses on real estate, mortgage, finance, insurance and home services.
Moderne Ventures has positioned itself with around 300 industry professionals and corporations to help brands establish themselves. During the course of the program, which officially starts in August (early registration has allowed two companies to begin already), start-up companies are thrown into a mix of CEOs, boardrooms, and product testing.
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“We get most excited about companies that have applicability in our space, but also have applicability in other industries, also,” Moderne Ventures Founder Constance Freedman said. “If you think about DocuSign, which was one of my early investments, that is a perfect example of where it makes sense in real estate, and everywhere else.”
The firm is accepting applications on a rolling basis.
Looking for game-changers
While new apps drop daily in almost all sectors, Freedman and Moderne Ventures are looking specifically for ones that address a problem, even if that problem is unknown until the app spotlights it.
One of the areas she’d personally like to see growth is in the mortgage sector. One company, Better Mortgage, has recently been accepted into the Accelerator course.
First, she addressed the issue that a mortgage takes on average 45 days from start to finish. Better Mortgage, she said, has cut the average time from start to finish on mortgage down to 26 days, with five days as the goal.
Freedman said Moderne is looking for companies that can disrupt the status quo in a good way, but there are other criteria that fund researches before moving forward.
“Is the market big enough? What are the entrepreneurs like? What are their advisors and board and investors like?” she asked.