Collide Capital’s journey began only three years ago, but you wouldn’t know it by the weight of their latest announcement. On Thursday, founders Brian Hollins and Aaron Samuels drew back the curtain on a $95 million Fund II—fresh capital ready to bolster ambitious new startups. Their thesis: seize the pulse of change across fintech, supply chains, and the workspaces of tomorrow, and back the founders who dare to redraw those maps.
If you trace the firm’s path, you’ll see momentum rather than luck. Since launching with a $66 million Fund I in 2022, Hollins and Samuels have invested in 75 early-stage companies—each a small bet on unpredictable potential. It took them just over a year, thirteen months by Hollins’ count, to raise this latest round. Now, with funds in hand, their goal is to gradually deploy this capital over the next three and a half years, balancing patience and urgency in equal measure.
The backdrop is anything but easy for rising fund managers right now—uncertainty permeates every corner of the finance world. But backgrounds matter, and Collide’s leaders are hardly green. Before this chapter, Hollins spent nearly ten years sharpening his instincts at titans like Goldman Sachs, Lightspeed, and Slow Ventures. Samuels brought his own distinct experience: strategic work at Bain, investing at Lightspeed, and a key role birthing AfroTech—the tech conference that’s all but reshaped inclusivity in Silicon Valley. Collide’s roster carries the polish that impresses, but their approach hints at something grittier, more lived-in.
Their investors, too, tell a story. The University of California’s Endowment, early believers from the first fund, are back. So are Accolade Partners, Fairview Capital, and heavy-hitters like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. For startups, Collide’s checkbook usually opens for $1 to $3 million, and they envision investing in at least 30 companies from this new fund. Five checks have already cleared; health platform Culina and tech upstart Helios among those already on board.
Hollins frames their focus simply: “We’re drawn to tools that let people do more—automation, real-time teamwork, quicker, shrewder decision-making fueled by clean data.” There’s hunger in his words, an underlying belief in founders who chase efficiency and clarity.
Yet Collide’s ambitions don’t end at dealmaking. Alongside their tech bets, Hollins and Samuels are nurturing something quieter but no less profound: the next wave of entrepreneurial minds. In 2022, they launched Collide Campus—an educational program that now stretches across twenty universities, from Harvard to Johns Hopkins. Their undergraduate course brings students into the machinery of venture capital and entrepreneurship. For those farther along, a graduate fellowship places eager minds alongside the Collide team, learning the work from the inside as investors in training.
Samuels speaks about the program with a kind of gentle insistence. “If we’d had this when we were starting out, maybe the road would’ve felt less lonely,” he says. He knows the impact: more than fifty past students have walked straight from Collide’s classrooms into coveted roles at General Catalyst, and, fittingly, Collide itself. Talent is talent—but this approach builds loyalty and shapes sharp, broad perspectives. The firm doesn’t just find deals and hires through Campus; it plants seeds for the future of the industry itself.
“We want to link the brightest people with real opportunity,” Samuels adds. “To let drive and vision collide—no pun intended—with capital and hard-fought lessons.”
In a corner of an industry often marred by transactional coldness, Collide Capital is playing a longer game. They cut checks, yes, but they also open doors—not just for startups, but for the minds who dream of building them. Each bet is both risk and belief—a wager that the future doesn’t just happen. It is built, and built together, with new voices at the helm.
