TechCrunch has featured Acceleprise many times over the years. This includes a look at its mid 2020 accelerator startup batch. Since its inception, the firm has been focusing on SaaS startups for business-to-business. This helps them to get started in a global market.According to Michael Cardamone (CEO and managing partner of the group), Acceleprise has changed its name to Forum Ventures and has access to a lot of funding to support its work. The company's new name is fitting, as it is more than just a collection software-focused accelerators.Forum Ventures also has raised its first seed money. Cardamone told TechCrunch that the new seed vehicle is worth $13.2 billion. The group plans to write checks from $100,000 to $650,000 in rounds valued between $1million and $4 million. This is a seed fund.It is interesting that Forum has created a seed fund to invest in both its accelerator graduates as well as other SaaS companies. However, the pre-seed investment vehicle of the firm is significantly larger than its previous accelerator fund. Why is it so large? Cardamone says that the group has added another accelerator to its last fund. This helps explain the size shift.Forum has increased its staff to make it more profitable.Of course, there is synergy between seed funds and pre-seed funds. Forum can now defend its early ownership of standout companies from its accelerator batches. Why would Forum allow investors to invest in startups it did not incubate? It all comes down to the new company name. Cardamone and his team chose Forum Ventures for the hard work it did to create a SaaS community. It sometimes spins up companies that didn't go through Forums programs. They also want to invest in some of these companies.ReasonableThe results of its previous funds are what underpin the Forums' new raise. The firm shared via email that its first accelerator fund was deployed between the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015. It has returned 86% of the committed capital. The rest of the fund is marked as 3.36X and growing, with 18 companies still alive at different stages.The Funds 2 & 3 are still in their infancy but will have similar concrete returns. We'll have to wait to see how they perform.TechCrunch wanted to know regardless of the impact COVID-19 made on Forum and its various batches and funds. They were they able to catch a COVID-induced tsunami? We wondered if the firm may have been able to raise two funds at once with its recent good results.Cardamone says the answer is yes. According to Cardamone, its pre-seed fund CEO stated that their accelerator cohorts are seeing more startups raising Series A and seed rounds faster. TechCrunch recently reported that they are sometimes raising Series A deals at lower thresholds than we expected. It's a great time to put pre-seed money to work, provided you have deal flow.Forum now has 11 members, six of them women and one nonbinary. This is about as many women as we have seen in the SaaS venture-capital world. Forums' new seed fund has 53% female or underrepresented founders. It's not bad.Let's see if Forum can duplicate its early accelerator returns using more capital, more financial instruments and more people.
