Community Highlights: Meet Bruce Hamilton of Mech Ventures

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bruce Hamilton.

Hi Bruce, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I started my career in the music/entertainment industry. Did social media at Live Nation then became an A&R at Epic Records under Sony Music where I had the pleasure of working with acts like Travis Scott, Fifth Harmony, Mary J. Blige and several others. Also owned a talent management company called Samurai where our team managed artists, songwriters, and producers. We had the honor of managing two Grammy-nominated clients during our run.

Completely switched gears in 2017 and decided to go become an entrepreneur in the technology space. The first tech startup I launched was CrwdBoost, a social media growth hacking platform allowing brands and influencers build their audience and engagement on Instagram using our AI-powered platform. The second startup was Wing Zero Apps, a no-code app development platform allowing users to build mobile apps without code. Very similar to Squarespace or Wix but for mobile apps instead of websites.

After being a founder in the tech company for a few years, several startup founders were asking me to work with them from a marketing or branding perspective. I was also becoming quite exhausted from being a founder and started wondering what the next of phase of my career would be. As a creative, I have numerous passions I want to explore at the same time so the next phase would have to allow me to explore those passions without conflict. I also wanted to stay in the tech space but not as a founder. I realized venture capital would allow me to work with different companies building products I’m passionate about and not be bound to one entity. Thanks to Twitter, I started researching and learning more about venture capital by following numerous venture capitalists.

I’m a serial entrepreneur so I knew I didn’t want to start at the ground floor at a venture capital firm. So I decided to take the more difficult path and launch a firm so I can build it that way I wanted to. My goal was to bring my music and entertainment experience into venture capital since the business models are very similar. I was introduced to my business partner, Mario, through a separate business venture and we decided to launch Mech Ventures.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Nothing worthwhile is ever a smooth road but it’s been an incredible journey so far. One of the biggest hurdles we have been traversing is being first-time fund managers. It’s not easy to convince potential limited partners to trust in our unique investment thesis.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Mech Ventures?
Mech Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in the future of pop culture. We believe pop culture is the vehicle driving the evolution of society and connecting people of all walks of live on common level. We’re looking for consumer-touching startups building products/services that affect the average person’s everyday life. Some of the industries we are looking at include: gaming/esports, creator economy, web3, musictech, fintech, etc. We invest in pre-seed and seed rounds. We’re interested in anything related to pop culture.

We look for groundbreaking startups all over the world. Our investment thesis is finding amazing entrepreneurs everywhere with game-changing ideas and building dope companies. Not just in Silicon Valley, New York, or Los Angeles. This allows us to find founders of all walks of life who are working on incredible projects.

We pride ourselves on being entrenched in the culture. The face of entrepreneurship has changed and Mech Ventures wants to represent these founders. Our mission is to invest in next-generation leaders with high-yield returns solving complex problems and provide an ecosystem to support those founders. Mech Ventures will provide equal opportunity to funding to founders regardless of ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. We are interested in innovative projects that are pushing pop culture forward.

How do you think about luck?
I consider myself to be quite a lucky individual but luck with worthless if you aren’t prepared for the opportunities presented to you. I’ve always made sure I’m ready for what I ask the universe for. If I’m not currently ready then I lean on my ability to learn and implement quickly.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mech.ventures
• Instagram: instagram.com/mechvc
• Twitter: twitter.com/mechvc
• Other: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMefEwrk7/

Image Credits
Kwaku Alston