- MaC Venture Capital has hired Jennifer Randle as its first COO.
- The firm is spinning up a back office as its team and fund sizes grow.
In less than three years, MaC Venture Capital has become a presence in the tech ecosystem that cannot be ignored. It exploded onto the scene in 2021 with a $100 million first fund, making it one of the largest initial capital raises by a majority Black-owned venture firm. In 2022, MaC followed it up with a $203 million second fund. And a flurry of deal activity helped the firm nab a spot on Insider's list of the top seed-stage firms in America.
Now MaC has brought on a new executive to sharpen its operations.
Jennifer Randle, a finance and operations veteran, has joined MaC as its first chief operating officer — a sign of a maturing firm with more personnel and funds to manage. In this role, Randall will support firm operations from finance and accounting to investor relations and IT.
MaC has led investments into startups like the Black-owned Twitter rival Spill, which hit the top of Apple's US app store in July, the climate-tech startup giant BlocPower, and Mansa, a streaming service centered on Black culture that came out of stealth with $8 million in funding in April.
Randle joins MaC from The Chernin Group, where she started about 12 years ago and rose up as executive vice president of finance and operations. In her tenure, she helped grow the company from what was essentially the family office of its media-mogul founder, Peter Chernin, to a global investment firm with more than $1 billion in assets under management. Previously, Randle served as a controller at private equity firm Century Park Capital Partners and worked on tax compliance for venture firms at professional services firm KPMG.
Her hiring puts a spotlight on representation in the clubby world of venture. In April of 2023, according to data gathered by Venture Forward, Deloitte, and the National Venture Capital Association, Black investors made up only 4% of investment partners with decision-making responsibilities. Meanwhile, the share of Black female investment partners ticked up from 0.25% in 2020 to 1%. By contrast, over half of the MaC team identifies as Black and more than a quarter are women, according to a firm spokesperson.
The diversity in its ranks has produced a steady stream of investments in underrepresented founders. That's a result of the firm's initial intent, Marlon Nichols, a cofounder and managing partner at MaC, told Insider.
"Part of our ethos is to not be a 'diversity fund' but to set an example," Nichols said. "If you truly invest without bias you will end up with a very diverse portfolio and a high-performing one because that's what the world looks like. Our team should mirror what the world looks like. Our portfolio should mirror what the world looks like, if we're doing our jobs properly."
That ethos is part of what attracted Randle to the gig. "I wanted to be able to take all the things I have learned over the last 20-plus years and help build a firm and be a part of something so amazing and special," Randle said.