Two well-recognized names in the Atlanta venture capital and entrepreneurial scenes are partnering to help fund overlooked, high-potential startups across the Southeast.
Today, Paul Judge, Ph.D., and BIP Capital co-founder Mark Buffington announced the formation of Panoramic Ventures, a new $300 million fund.
Judge told Hypepotamus that the fund will look for founders based on three specific sectors: “Geography, diversity, and university.”
The name Panoramic was coined as the two recognized the untapped potential across the Southeast tech landscape, including the opportunity to support diverse founders in the region along with professors, graduate students, and undergraduates at the university level.
Judge, co-founder of Pindrop and Purewire, has invested in 30 companies to date and is co-founder of Tech Square Labs. Since then, he recognized that “the thing that’s missing is a meaningful venture capital firm that’s anchored here and that’s really active across multiple stages.”
“[If we] put our efforts together we could make a new firm that really fills that gap and is there to support everything that Atlanta and the Southeast really deserves to be over the next decade,” Judge added. “The $300 million size is really intentional because we can be active at the seed stage but we can also lead Series As and lead Series Bs.”
The team believes Judge’s background in enterprise SaaS and cybersecurity, along with Buffington’s work in healthcare IT and FinTech, will help the new venture find the next generation of startup founders in Atlanta and the Southeast.
Judge points out that the new venture will also look at emerging trends and opportunities in Digital Media, MarTech, and beyond. According to Judge, Atlanta is seeing a unique interest in bringing together culture and technology, particularly around music, film, and sports. “We’re right in the middle of helping that happen and backing those founders,” Judge said.
Buffington said they’ve soft circled around $125 million of that $300 million to date. “Fundraises are never easy, but we’ve got a lot of momentum based on recent success.”
