Jay Z, real name Shawn Carter is popular the world over for his hand in shaping music. Looks like he’s going to become a famed name in Silicon Valley as well.
Roc Nation, the parent company for Jay Z’s various music productions, investments, and business deals officially announced the launch of Arrive, their new venture capital firm to invest in early stage startups.
Jay Z is increasing his interests in startups, this isn’t his first fund for innovative companies. Respected tech journalist Dan Primack from the publication, Axios is quoted as saying that Arrive is a separate fund to the one he reported on in February 2017.
Arrive will not only fund their selected startups, but will aid in business development, marketing and branding efforts to get newbies up, running and flourishing.
Roc Nation won’t be controlling its own corpus, the size of which has not been disclosed as yet either. However reports say it hopes to do so in the future. For now Arrive is has been formed in partnership with other investment forms, Primary Venture Partners and GlassBridge Asset Management; Primary will offer venture advise and GlassBridge will offer business infrastructure on behalf of Arrive.
What Roc Nation will bring to the table when Arrive entices more investors, is their reputation in brand building. The company has been responsible for creating and managing some of the biggest names in American music like Rihanna and Shakira along with American basketball stars whose contracts run into multi millions.
It’s a sensible approach if Arrive plans to invest in startups that perform consumer oriented services and will need to win over masses to become big companies.
While Jay Z is best known for his rapping, he has long been an entrepreneur and investor with a diverse range of own businesses, in fashion, food, hospitality and real estate and even a music streaming services. His first recorded investment in a startup was Uber. That was a series B round in 2012. Other than that, the rapper with a net worth estimated between 400 and 500 million dollars has invested either independently or through his company in startups like,
Away (a luggage maker),
Julep (a nail parlor business) and
JetSmarter (a private jet startup).
BW Reporters
Regina is a reporter for BW Businessworld. In her previous assignments, she has worked with Independent television Network as a news anchor and reporter in Sri Lanka
