Dana Guthrie became the first Black woman in Wisconsin to raise an institutional venture capital fund, closing approximately $13–13.5M for Gateway Capital focused on the Milwaukee area after spending 12–13 years as a software engineer and product leader at Johnson Controls. She invests with an explicitly transparent style, sharing her actual spreadsheets and assumptions with founders to demystify venture math, while using a Money for Minnows strategy that spreads early capital across diverse technologies rather than concentrating in a single vertical.
About their Fund
Sectors
AI, Health, SaaS, Proptech, Under-represented founders
Rounds
Seed
Avg Check Size
$10K - $400K
Notable Investments
Gateway Capital Partners is the only Milwaukee-based VC firm that invests almost exclusively in Wisconsin's pre-revenue startups, with 75% of its portfolio companies being Milwaukee-based and 75% minority-founded. The fund was founded and led by Dana Guthrie, cited as the first Black woman in Wisconsin to raise a VC fund, and operates with a concentrated approach of making ~$400K investments into just 12-15 companies to generate financial returns while targeting low-to-moderate income communities and founders using entrepreneurship for generational wealth creation.
Other partners at the fund
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Notable Fund
Investments
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