Brad Zions, who helped to launch AOL Europe and is an active investor in Los Angeles, announced the close of his Pitbull Ventures $5M Fund I this week to support vertical SAAS entrepreneurs.
According to the company, the fund is looking for back founders building AI-enabled vertical SAAS companies across a range of industries, and that have promising early traction.
Founder and Managing Partner at Pitbull Ventures, Brad Zions, said, “The launch of our new fund’s closing is thanks to the unwavering dedication of our investment team and the support of our amazing LPs. Now, we’re eager to get into Los Angeles and uncover founders working on the most interesting vertical SaaS solutions across industries that need venture backing in 2024.”
The venture fund has backed 15 vertical SaaS early-stage startups. Investor and entrepreneur Brad Zions has been an active early-stage investor for the past 25 years, both as a partner at Structure Fund and individually, prior to founding Pitbull Ventures in 2021.
Winners in the portfolio include Harri, VidMob, and Embrace, with recent exits including Podsights, Jukin Media, and Donut Media. Previous exits include QXL (IPO) and Google via Ron Conway’s Angel Funds I and II.
California is home to about 85,000 Latino-owned businesses, which in addition to contributing more than 670,000 jobs also generate more than $25 billion in payroll income for the state.
Latinos were the fastest-growing demographic in the state between 2000 and 2020, and their importance to the economy is only expected to continue to grow.
Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.
