Friends and family who write a first check don't usually keep records of it. We've kept ours since June 2021. This page holds what we've measured across thirty-six checks and the public data we build on.
Because we invest in the round, we see what happens after it. Since our first check in June 2021 we've recorded:
We do it for two reasons. Contributors and funders deserve to see what a first check produces, including the ones that didn't work. And the Friends & Family round is thinly measured in public data, so a fund sitting inside it is well placed to widen what gets tracked. We'd rather publish what we have, with the caveats attached, than wait for a perfect dataset.
Where a figure is ours, it says so. Where it's someone else's, the source is beside it.
Still operating and raised $100,000 or more, with public benchmarks beside them and the closed companies in aggregate.
Household wealth with the home taken out, from Census tables. A gap of $103,020 a household in 2024, the widest in six years of Census tables.
What a $150 million annual fund could reach, by our own estimate.
What it is, how much people raise, SAFE or note, and what to do if you have no friends and family money.
The whole argument in one place, on the sources this page uses. It builds on the 2023 edition, which is still here to download.
Our companies are selected, so this describes the portfolio, not the effect of the check. We publish it by year because a company we backed in 2026 hasn't had time to do anything yet, and one we backed in 2021 has.
| Year | Companies | Still operating | Raised $100K+ since our check |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20215 years | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 20224 years | 16 | 10 | 4 |
| 20233 years | 6 | 6 | 3 |
| 20242 years | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 20251 year | 4 | 4 | 1 |
| 2026Under 1 | 5 | 5 | 1 |
| All | 36 | 28 | 10 |
Eight of the thirty-six have closed. Six dissolved and two were written off, and all eight came from the 2021 and 2022 cohorts. We report closed companies in aggregate and don't list them by name.
We report counts rather than rates, because with four companies in a single year a percentage implies a precision that isn't there. "Still operating" means the company hasn't dissolved and we haven't written it off.
17 of our 36 companies have at least one female founder, and all five checks we wrote in 2026 went to companies with one.
The racial wealth gap is usually quoted on total net worth. But most of a typical family's net worth is the house they live in, and a house doesn't fund a company. So we use the Census Bureau's median household net worth excluding equity in own home, white non-Hispanic against Black, and call the distance between them the liquid wealth gap.
It's our metric, built entirely from Census inputs, so anyone can open the table and reproduce the number to the dollar.
In 2024 the typical white household held $103,020 more outside the home than the typical Black household, the widest distance in the six years of tables we track. It dipped in 2022 and has widened in each year since. We lead on the dollars because a $25,000 check is an absolute amount. The ratio is in the table, but on a base this small a few thousand dollars can halve it without closing any of the distance.
The Fed adds a caveat. Real average liquid wealth for Black families fell between 2019 and 2022 even as net worth rose on housing, so the gains came mostly in a form a founder can't put into a company.
Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation, Wealth and Asset Ownership for Households, Table 1, "Net Worth (Excluding Equity in Own Home)," 2019 to 2024 releases. The 2024 tables, published June 2026, are the current release. Census publishes irregularly, so we check. Federal Reserve FEDS Note, "Greater Wealth, Greater Uncertainty," October 18, 2023.
Outside their homes, the typical white household holds $103,020 more than the typical Black household.
| Year | White non-Hispanic | Black | Dollar gap | Ratio | Households per $25,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $79,010 | $3,630 | $75,380 | 21.8x | 6.9 |
| 2020 | $89,260 | $6,000 | $83,260 | 14.9x | 4.2 |
| 2021 | $104,400 | $8,320 | $96,080 | 12.5x | 3.0 |
| 2022 | $100,100 | $10,850 | $89,250 | 9.2x | 2.3 |
| 2023 | $108,900 | $8,000 | $100,900 | 13.6x | 3.1 |
| 2024 | $113,200 | $10,180 | $103,020 | 11.1x | 2.5 |
This is our own estimate, built on the assumptions shown beside it. We show it so a funder can see how we think about scale and check the arithmetic.
Venture funds can't invest in companies that don't exist. A national Friends & Family fund would be the step that creates them.
Our estimate, not a measurement. 6,000 first checks a year is a fund size, not a count of founders. The value applies the average payoff to founders of US venture-backed companies, about $8.0 million in today's dollars (Hall and Woodward, American Economic Review, 2010, restated in 2025 dollars), to the 3% to 10% of our founders we assume will go on to raise an institutional venture round. It's an average: most would receive nothing and a few would receive a great deal. It isn't a return to the fund.
The questions founders ask us most. If you're raising one, or trying to, start here.
It's the first outside money a company takes, and it comes from people who know the founder rather than people who invest for a living. Parents, siblings, a former boss, a friend from school. It pays for the first version of the product and the first few months of finding customers.
Less than you'd guess. About half of US businesses with employees started on less than $25,000, and among Black-owned and Hispanic-owned businesses it's nearer six in ten. Fewer than one in a hundred started with venture capital. The only published median is $17,500, what founders said they needed to start in 2015. Our first check is $25,000, which for about half of businesses is the whole launch.
US Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey, 2017 data, published May 2020, table AB1700CSCB01, share of businesses reporting an amount. GEM 2015 US Report (Babson, 2016).
Either works. A SAFE is simpler: the investor's money converts to shares at the next priced round, at a cap and usually a discount, with no interest and no maturity date. A convertible note is a loan that converts, so it carries interest and a due date. We use a standard post-money SAFE at a $4 million cap with a 20% discount, and we'd suggest friends and family use a SAFE too, because nobody wants to chase a due date with a relative.
Then you're the founder we exist for. If you're building in Chicago and at least one co-founder has faced material barriers to accessing capital due to racial discrimination, you can apply for a first check. We'd like Chicago to be where founders like you come to build. If you're elsewhere, our founder resources page lists where else to look.
We wrote "The Racial Wealth Gap: A Data-Backed Solution" in 2023 to explain the Friends & Family gap and why a nonprofit fund answers it. It made the case for the $25,000 check we've written since 2021. The 2026 edition moves every figure to the current release of its source and adds what we've learned since.
The 2023 edition is still here as a download, with its figures as they stood then.
The whole argument, with every source listed.
October 2026. Tell us if we've got a figure wrong and we'll correct it in the open.
The original paper, ten pages. Its figures are as of 2023. The 2026 edition carries the current ones.
March 2023. PDF, 2.4 MB.
Updates on the founders we back and the work behind the checks.
