Praxis
409 W 45th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY, 10036, United States
Overview
We are in a moment in history where entrepreneurs have disproportionate influence on everything from the social problems they work on to what they consume, practice, believe, and desire. As Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, recently declared on the cover of Forbes, "the most efficient means to spread an idea today is corporate structure." Moreover, according to the Kauffman Foundation, 54% of millennials have started an organization or have the desire to start one. Given all of this, we believe the future of our world depends largely on the ventures the next generation creates. To create an institution for this context, we've created Praxis as a venture group, structured as a non-profit, that focuses on equipping and resourcing a growing portfolio of faith-motivated entrepreneurs who have committed their lives to cultural and social impact, renewing the spirit of their age one organization at a time. Praxis was conceived in 2010 by Dave Blanchard, then a Principal Designer at IDEO and Josh Kwan, the Director of International Giving for the David Weekley Family Foundation, and developed in collaboration with Q, a learning community that mobilizes Christians to advance the common good in society. Each year, Praxis welcomes 12 businesses and 12 nonprofits into their two Accelerator programs, where they provide the top-decision makers in these organizations with the knowledge, network, and personal discipleship necessary to build sustainable, high-impact organizations. In summer of 2014, they'll also launch Praxis Academy, a summer program focused on training Christ-following undergraduates at the intersection of faith, startups, and culture. Academy graduates will have a chance to apply for their Future Founders program, where they'll have an unique opportunity to do a summer apprenticeship with their Accelerator alumni.
- Total investments
- 2
- Lead investments
- 1
- Investments · 12mo
- 0
- Active investors
- 4
Sector focus
- Finance
- Financial Services
- Venture Capital
Investment portfolio
- Parallel Fluidics
Participated · Seed · Nov 2024
Parallel Fluidics is a Boston, MA–based manufacturer of microfluidic devices that provides on-demand design and manufacturing services for scientific teams. Led by CEO Josh Gomes, the company supplies production-grade devices intended to accelerate discovery and shorten the path from concept to commercial microfluidic products. It serves organizations across life sciences verticals including diagnostics, drug discovery, precision medicine, sequencing, and cell therapy. The company plans to use the new funding to grow its on-demand design and manufacturing platform, expand its hardware and software solutions, and commercialize its new product, MV-2. Parallel Fluidics raised a $7M Seed round to support those initiatives. The round was led by J2 Ventures with participation from 8VC and Praxis. Parallel Fluidics is a Boston-based digital manufacturer of microfluidic devices founded in 2020 by Josh Gomes and Andy Harris. The company offers a rapid prototyping platform that it says cuts industry-standard microfluidic prototype turnaround from 3–4 weeks to two days. Parallel plans to use new funding to hire manufacturing and mechanical engineers and to further develop its capabilities and capacity. Financially, the company announced a $1.8M round of financing, bringing total funding to $2.0M since founding, including a $225k NSF SBIR grant. Its stated goal is to lower the barrier to microfluidic development and help researchers move products from lab to market. The company targets applications across point-of-care testing, genomics, diagnostics, drug development, and other life‑science fields.
- Heuristic Commerce
Led · Equity · Mar 2022
Prodport provides a headless software platform that dynamically personalizes product detail pages for individual customers to improve conversion rates. The platform is headless and agnostic to any ecommerce platform, matching product content with customer intelligence for B2B and B2C product catalogs. It is delivered via an intuitive solution designed to enable easy collaboration between product and marketing teams. The company plans to use the new funding to hire employees and further develop its capabilities. Prodport is built and led by a global, distributed team across the U.S., Germany, India, and Spain and was founded in 2021. The company is based in San Diego, CA and Munich, Germany.