Woman-Led Venture Fund Targets Overlooked Pennsylvania Startups
Photo: Unsplash/@podmatch
Renee Castillo closed a $40 million venture fund last month aimed specifically at founders outside Philadelphia's established startup networks, a category she says includes strong companies in Erie, Scranton, and Altoona that rarely reach investors focused on coastal-style tech hubs.
"The deal flow in this state doesn't stop at the Philadelphia city line," Castillo said. "It just stops showing up in the rooms most investors sit in."
Castillo spent eighteen months raising the fund, a process she describes as harder than raising capital for a fund focused on a recognizable hub like Pittsburgh's robotics corridor. Limited partners, she said, needed more convincing that strong founders existed in smaller Pennsylvania cities and that her team could actually find them.
The fund has made four investments so far, including a Scranton-based logistics software company and an Erie medical device startup. Castillo says her sourcing strategy relies heavily on regional economic development offices and community college entrepreneurship programs rather than the accelerator pipelines most venture funds depend on.
She expects to deploy the remainder of the fund over the next three years, with a stated goal of at least half of portfolio companies being led by women or first-generation founders.
