PRBC Investors
Total Technology Ventures ("TTV") is an Atlanta-based investment firm focused on providing capital to early-to-late stage privately held companies in the financial services industry and IT driven businesses with products that serve the financial services industry. TTV targets companies where it can leverage the close relationships with its strategic partners: Synovus Financial Corp., TSYS, and CheckFree Corporation.
Omidyar Network is a mission-based organization committed to unleashing human potential on a global scale. Established in 2004 by Pierre and Pam Omidyar, the organization builds the conditions that enable individuals to tap their own potential to improve their lives. Omidyar Network uses an expanded toolset to advance its mission, supporting both businesses and nonprofit organizations that promote equal access to information, tools and opportunities; connections around shared interests; and a sense of ownership for participants.
The Center for Financial Services Innovation, a non-profit affiliate of ShoreBank Corporation, facilitates financial services industry efforts to serve underbanked consumers across the economic, geographic and cultural spectrum. It provides funding and resources, enables partnerships, and identifies, develops and distributes authoritative information on how to respond to the needs of the underbanked profitably and responsibly. CFSI works with banks, credit unions, technology vendors, alternative service providers, consumer advocates and policy makers to forge pioneering relationships, products and strategies that will transform industry practice and the lives of underbanked consumers. For more on CFSI, go to www.cfsinnovation.com.
ACCION International is a private, nonprofit organization with the mission of giving people the financial tools they need - microenterprise loans, business training, and other financial services - to work their way out of poverty. A world pioneer in microfinance, ACCION was founded in 1961 and issued its first microloan in 1973 in Brazil. ACCION International's partner microfinance institutions today are providing loans as low as $100 to poor men and women entrepreneurs in 25 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and in the U.S. In the last decade alone, ACCION partners have disbursed more than 14 million loans totaling more than $9.4 billion.
The Maryland Venture Fund, started in 1994, is a state-funded seed and early-stage equity fund. The Fund is an evergreen fund and receives annual allocations from the Maryland State Legislature. The Fund makes direct investments in technology and life science companies and indirect investments in venture capital funds. Approximately 60 percent of the Fund is invested in technology companies in the areas of software, communications, and IT security, and 40 percent of the Fund is invested in life sciences companies in the areas of therapeutics, medical devices, and diagnostics. The Fund has invested as a limited partner in a total of nine venture funds since 1994.
Additional Support
PRBC also gratefully acknowledges initial business planning and development support from the The Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has been a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, guided by its goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Russia.
