Social Venture Fund, a student-run fund at Michigan University, has joined Loveland Technologies’ series A round. The round included seven investors, but the remaining six are undisclosed. According to the SEC filing, the company has so far raised $781,000 and is aiming to close the round at $1m.
Although Social Venture Fund’s size of investment has also not been disclosed, the fund makes investments between $50,000 and $250,000. It is one of three such funds at Michigan’s Ross School of Business, alongside the Wolverine Venture Fund and Zell Lurie Commercialisation Fund, all with slightly differing focuses and maximum investment sizes. Social Venture Fund’s focus is on the areas of education, food systems, environment, health, and urban revitalisation in south-east Michigan and Detroit.
Loveland fits that bill as a Detroit-based startup specialising in aggregating and analysing publicly available information. The company recently launched the Motor City Mapping project to survey Detroit’s 360 square kilometres, containing more than 400,000 properties, and seek out vacant properties for demolition. The project is the first such undertaking and supports the bankrupt city’s efforts to demolish large unoccupied parts to allocate its resources more efficiently.
The company is hoping to expand this kind of surveying to other cities in the near future.
Jerry Paffendorf, co-founder at Loveland, said: “Loveland Technologies is mission-driven – we want capital and the business to grow, and we want to work with organisations that are also profit-driven and mission-driven. We were sort of like guinea pigs in a good way, like Shark Tank. We wanted partners rooted here that would benefit when we do grow and expand.”
