Entrepreneur Jon Gosier, 34 and a former Ushahidi director (SwiftRivers) is launching a new venture capital firm called Cross Valley Capital and it will be based in Philadelphia, US.
Gosier has teamed up with RJ Joshi, a Miami-based entrepreneur and they are raising $20 million for Cross Valley Capital according to a report by Technical.ly which also adds that Cross Valley Capital has already made its first investment which remains undisclosed.
Gosier, an African-American software developer, investor, and philanthrop was a director of SwiftRiver at Ushahidi from 2009 to 2011 but he went to start MetaLayer, a big data startup and is also the founder and CEO of Kampala-based Appfrica which is behind initiatives such as Apps4Africa and HiveColab and is also a co-founder of Apps4Africa accelerator competitions.
Based in Philly, Cross Valley Capital aims to invest in pre-revenue stage companies to those in Series A. Gosier has various investments in Africa and though this fund is not primarily for Africa, any exponential startup on the continent ready to scale globally can easily get this fund’s attention.
Being co-founded by an African-American doesn’t mean Cross Valley Capital will just invest in startups with teams of African-Americans but will look for growth and not colour of the founders.
Gosier is not new to this VC game even though he is launching a micro-fund. The Philadelphia based investor and data scientist co-founded Third Cohort Capital with a friend and is a partner at Rokk3r Labs in Miami. He has made several investments via his Appfrica Fund.
