He made the decision to tweet more consistently. At first, Twitter was a way for Conwell to get stuff off his chest. June 2020 was the summer of protests and unrest over the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. That summer was hard for Black people across the US. (Conwell said his personal network outside of Twitter also netted $400,000 when he first started RareBreed.) It got to a point where, from June to September 2020, Conwell had 1,128 meetings - 25 a day at its peak. Quick maths: That’s $8 million, including relationships that would later lead to the kinds institutional investments that help funds reach higher totals than individual limited partners. “80% of the money I raised in my fund came through connections on Twitter,” Conwell said. Social followings can feel painfully trivial, until that leads directly to capital. A year later, his following has tripled to more 60,800 followers. In June 2020, as the world’s attention was drawn to racial justice, Conwell had a tidy following of 2,500 on the social platform of choice for entrepreneurs, journalists and VC. Conwell was still a relatively unknown quantity nationally, so before he landed many institutional investors, he had to build himself - with the help of Twitter. Following the murder of George Floyd, a surge of institutional money flooded the relatively few Black-founded investment firms that were coming online then - like ones launched by Brian Brackeen in the Midwest and DC’s Nasir Qadree. Just this month, Conwell, better known as Mac, was featured on the influential podcast This Week in Tech - which he cited as a source of inspiration years ago, when he was a lonely first-time founder in Baltimore.Ĭonwell knew he had the ability, but he by no means had a safety net. It was founded with the goal of bridging the gap in funding for minority founders that leave Black and Latinx women founders receiving 0.64% of all VC investment.Īnd it worked, with hard-won expertise earned along the way. In September 2020, he left TEDCO to start his own venture capital fund, RareBreed Ventures. With this background, he was ready to join the surging ranks of venture capital. His four years there gave him more traditional grounding, while he continued his personal development, as a voracious reader and enthusiastic consumer of startup culture. In fall 2016, he took a job at TEDCO, the state-backed investment firm to support their seed-stage investments. Along the way, he became known as a generous and thoughtful leader in Baltimore’s fledgling startup community, a frequent speaker and adviser for others, while he developed his own craft.
He is a true repeat founder who had both success and failure he has told Technical.ly how he lost relationships and friendships over his first web company and closed a second. I ain’t have none of that.”Ĭonwell is so interesting a character for many reasons. “Typically you have to have a decent sum of money to do all the fund setup, the legal fees and all that other stuff. “Most people think VCs are rich,” Conwell told Technical.ly. It’s also a signal of how famously white venture capital can feature more Black leaders. His story is the classic tale of an overnight success built on years of quiet work.
Today, he is behind a respectably sized $10 million fund, with nearly 30 investments and a national reputation. In fall 2020, as a pandemic surged, McKeever Conwell II left a job with little savings and lots of dreams.Ī year later, he closed the first $1.3 million of his inaugural venture capital fund.
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