Aaron Clark Becomes Matchstick Ventures’ Equity Advisor
/dev/color member Aaron Clark, founder & CEO of Justice Reskill and Equity Solutions, recently joined the Matchstick Ventures board as their new Equity Advisor. We spoke with him on his journey with Matchstick Ventures, and on their collective goals moving forward.
“Matchstick Ventures is a venture capital fund based in Boulder, Colorado and Minneapolis, Minnesota, founded by Natty Zola and Ryan Broshar. They’re attempting to provide funding, resources, and support for companies in Colorado, Minnesota, and nationwide.
I met Natty last year, after the death of George Floyd. He was a part of a group that we had begun to talk to to address what we now know as a racial reckoning last year. In some of those conversations, the objective was to work with leaders in different spaces — startup, venture capital — that wanted to advance their support for Black communities.
The objective was to work with leaders in different spaces that wanted to advance their support for Black communities.
I immediately hit it off with him and started working with him and Ryan to develop their Black Lives Matter support statement. They titled it “Wire and Hire.” They listed a number of initiatives that they wanted to commit to, in order to support Black founders and Black leaders across the U.S.
As a venture capital fund, the first thing they listed was they wanted to invest in Black founders. They had already done a number of investments to Black-led companies and Black founding team members, but they wanted to increase that more in the coming years. So they wanted to create relationships with new networks and organizations that could help them understand how to best invest in and support Black founders.
The first thing they listed was to invest in Black founders.
They also wanted to help their companies add Black members to their board, directors of C-suite, so that it’d continue creating more equity within the companies they had an interest in.
After a number of conversations, they invited me to join their advisory committee as an equity advisor. What that means is that as needed, and with regular communication with them, we’re in conversations around how can they, as a company, continue advancing themselves on their journey towards equity, and then how can they continue being a support to other Black and Brown founders and companies across the U.S.
How can they, as a company, continue advancing themselves on their journey towards equity, and then how can they continue being a support to other Black and Brown founders and companies across the U.S.
In a lot of ways it’s kind of like an accountability partner. They wanted to have someone that they could call on to assist that was not just a friend, but more so someone that they were compensating for their time.
They’re part of a world which I don’t really know very intimately yet, which is venture capital funding. So I said “Yes, I’d love to provide my perspective but I also want to learn more about what you do, and how you do the stuff you do.” I’ve been fortunate enough to listen in on some conversations and learn more about the venture capital world, so that’s beneficial.
And the other piece is that Ryan and Natty themselves have a reputation in the industry as being just good, core people. They’re two people that love other people, and really want to learn and grow as humans so for me, it’s personally great to be around people like that. And I’ve met a number of the founders in their current portfolio and these founders are the same way.
It’s really really exciting to be connected with the people that are in their network because it just feels like I resonate with them. So I do anticipate that continuing.”
