Entertainment mogul Jay Z has announced his intention to enter the world of investment, launching a Venture Capital firm to help support early-stage startups.
The “startup platform”, Arrive, has been launched by Jay Z’s company Roc Nation, in collaboration with Primary Venture Partners and GlassBridge Asset Management.
Neil Sirni, Head of New Ventures at Roc Nation, said in a statement: “ARRIVE was created to leverage our experience and resources in building brands, developing consumer facing businesses, managing artists and representing athletes. We’ve opened that diversified, global range of expertise to a new vertical: entrepreneurs and their early stage businesses.”
The size of the fund has not yet been announced, but is expected to be big. In a statement, the company said it “anticipates the launch of a traditional venture fund in order to, among other activities, support existing portfolio companies through their subsequent growth stages.”
In addition to Arrive, Roc Nation intends focus on ‘social impact investing’ later in 2017.
Jay Z – born Shawn Carter – launched Roc Nation with partner Jay Brown in 2008, and has steered it to become one of the world’s most famous entertainment companies. Jay Z himself is no stranger to investment, having put money into several technology companies including Uber, his own venture Tidal and controversial company JetSmarter.
JetSmarter, backed by Jay Z, is marketed as an ‘Uber’ for private jets. It attracted controversy when the JetSmarter PR team asked for the credit card number of a Verge reporter, so that it could charge them $2,000 if they didn’t publish a positive story “within 5 business days.”