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Jack Ellis · · 10 min readWhy Jay-Z’s venture fund is rapping on Southeast Asia’s door
When Jay-Z rhymed about having an Empire State of Mind, perhaps he wasn’t just making a paean to his home city of New York.
The music mogul also has an “empire” state of mind when it comes to business.
Over the years, Roc Nation – the company he launched in 2008 – has mushroomed from being a record label and talent management agency into verticals like video and event production, marketing, philanthropy, clothing and apparel, and even cognac and champagne. It employs over 250 people, and its digital team oversees accounts with over 1.5 billion followers between them.
Photo credit: Rich Thane
That diversity gave Roc Nation the perfect foundation to launch Arrive, a startup consulting and funding business, in March 2017.
“That infrastructure can add value to many different types of early-stage businesses, across a wide range of industries, which is why we created Arrive,” explains co-founder and president Neil Sirni.
“We’re leveraging our broader platform to help portfolio companies and in turn, [we] get access to great entrepreneurs. We don’t view Arrive as a departure but as a natural extension for our broader business.”
Top-tier operators
Arrive works with fewer than five partners, Sirni says, declining to disclose their identities. He’s similarly tight-lipped when it comes to the amount of capital the firm has secured.
“I will say that we’ve invested in 22 companies across two separate Arrive-related entities, the most recent of which has about 50% of it’s capital left to deploy, and [we] are already in preliminary discussions for a third vehicle,” he shares.
Filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission indicate that one such entity, Arrive Opportunities Fund I, was set up in November 2018 after raising half of its US$40 million target.
Arrive always co-invests with partners and doesn’t lead rounds. Of the 22 rounds it has been involved in to date, it has teamed up with 15 different lead investors. It has disclosed 15 of its investments so far.
| Company | Country | Description | Total funding to date (US$) | Other investors |
| Beam | Singapore | Micro-mobility, including shared e-scooters | $6.4 million | Founders Fund, Gobi Partners, K2 Global, Sequoia Capital |
| Ethos | US | Ethical life insurance products | $107 million | Accel, Goldman Sachs, GV, Sequoia Capital |
An eye on Southeast Asia
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Arrive’s Neil Sirni talks about the firm’s pivot to the region, what it looks for in startups, and what the hip hop billionaire is like as a boss.
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