Collide Capital is making some serious moves in the venture capital space. The San Francisco-based firm, co-founded by Brian Hollins and Aaron Samuels, just closed a massive $95 million Fund II, and honestly, it’s pretty impressive considering how brutal the fundraising landscape has been for emerging VC firms lately.

The firm kicked off back in 2021 and has already backed 75 companies across fintech, supply chain, and future-of-work sectors. Their first fund pulled in $66 million back in 2022, so this new fund is a solid sign that their strategy is actually working. It took them about 13 months to raise Fund II, and they’re planning to deploy the cash over the next 3.5 years.

What’s making Collide Capital stand out? Their team has serious credentials. Hollins spent over a decade at Goldman Sachs, Lightspeed, and Slow Ventures, while Samuels came up through Bain and Lightspeed before co-founding AfroTech, one of the biggest tech conferences in the world. That pedigree clearly resonated with their limited partners, which include the University of California Endowment, Accolade Partners, Fairview Capital, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan.

The fund is planning to write checks between $1 million and $3 million per company, with a goal to back at least 30 startups. They’ve already made five investments so far, with portfolio companies like Culina Health and Helios already making waves.

According to Hollins, the firm is laser-focused on backing “platforms enabling automation, real-time collaboration, and faster, data-driven decision making”. In other words, they’re betting on tools that actually help people work better and smarter.

Beyond just investing money, Collide Capital is also expanding their Collide Campus program, which they launched back in 2022. This is their way of training the next generation of founders and venture capitalists, think of it as a pipeline for future innovation. The undergraduate initiative is already running on more than 20 campuses including Harvard and Johns Hopkins, and over 50 students have gone through the program and landed jobs at major VC firms and, naturally, at Collide itself.

Samuels explained that they created Collide Campus because it’s something they wish they’d had access to when they were students. The graduate fellowship program lets students work alongside the Collide team as investors and apprentices, which is basically getting paid to learn from people who actually know what they’re doing.

For the startup community in the Bay Area, this is solid news. More capital flowing into fintech and future-of-work startups means more opportunities for founders who are trying to build the next big thing. And with a team that’s committed to mentoring the next generation? That’s the kind of long-term thinking we need more of in venture capital.