Firms

Genius Guild

Genius Guild is a Chicago venture capital firm and business-creation platform founded by Kathryn Finney. It backs scalable early-stage businesses led by underestimated founders, with a particular focus on Black founders and companies improving the health and economic wellbeing of diverse communities. Its investing framework spans the social determinants of health: access to care, community connection, economic opportunity, education and the built environment. Its published specialties include pre-seed and seed investing, and it has also participated in later startup rounds. The platform originally described three complementary activities: direct venture investing through the Greenhouse Fund, incubation through Genius Guild Labs and media and thought leadership through Genius Guild Studio. Its verified investments include pediatric mental-healthcare company Backpack Healthcare and digital-health platform Health in Her HUE.

Founded: 2020
Type: Venture capital

Funds0

No funds on record yet.

Team

Operations and support

Brian Laung AoaehVenture Capitalist in Residence (appointed November2021; current status unverified)

Darlene Gillard JonesExecutive Producer, Build the Damn Thing (Studio production affiliation; legal employment/status unverified)

Jennifer Van DamFormer Director of Platform (published2021; historical role confirmed2023)

Kathryn FinneyFounder and Managing General Partner

Saidah Nash CarterPublished team affiliation (title undisclosed); 2021 contributor

Stacey FergusonHead of Marketing and Communications (published May2022; current status unverified)

Taryn Miller-StevensLaunch team member (published2021; exact title and current status unverified)

Tessa FlippinVenture Capitalist in Residence (appointed November2021; current status unverified)

Investments

$14M2024-05-07	Backpack Healthcare	PACE Healthcare Capital, ECMC Group, Techstars, Bridge Builders Collaborative, Portland Seed Fund, Hopelab, Rethink Education, Maya Ghosn Bichara, Jeffrey Walker, Collab Capital, Genius Guild, Unlikely Collaborators
$3M2024-01-08	Health in Her Hue	Founders Fund, SE Ventures, Genius Guild

team@apexlogos.ai4 hours ago
Own main site links Kathryn Finney and BUILD. Current Is My App Slop privacy policy identifies Genius Guild LLC as Build Labs owner/operator and shares BUILD contact/address; this proves a platform corporate/product bridge, not the precise investment adviser or LP legal allocator. An Echoing Green published FY24 nonprofit filing indexes Genius Guild Management LLC as aUSD100000 follow-on grant recipient, but direct PDF403 prevents local-byte inspection; this grant is not a fund close, corpus or startup investment. Exact corporate/adviser/LP legal relationship remains unverified. No unrelated Genius Group, Genius Ventures or Baltimore Greenhouse Funds entity is merged.
team@apexlogos.ai4 hours ago
Authentic unmodified logo was downloaded from Genius Guild's April2021 issuer-distributed PRNewswire media asset and visually inspected. Current2026 landing page uses a different live HTML wordmark/glyph and exposes no downloadable logo asset in the reviewed source. The retained image is authentic historical issuer branding, not an asserted current corporate identity standard.
team@apexlogos.ai4 hours ago
No completed fund close dated2023-10-06 through2026-10-08 was verified in the bounded primary search. Greenhouse Fund is explicitly named in2021 own issuer/founder publications, outside the requested recent window. April2021 platform launch reports overUSD5m of partner investments, not an exact separately verified fund corpus. A2022 interview biography refers to aUSD20m fund and current founder subscription copy to an unnamedUSD25m fund, but neither establishes a named recent vehicle, closing date or new capital raise. No fund record or date is fabricated from those figures. The founder's career-wide100+ investments and REFASHIOND's rolling-fund capital are not Genius Guild corpus or portfolio totals.
team@apexlogos.ai4 hours ago
Accessible published affiliation coverage includes the current managing general partner, a current company-directory named affiliation with unpublished title, historical2021 launch/residency/platform roles, a2022 marketing role and a Studio podcast production affiliation. This is not a claim of all current employees. Historical residencies were one year with optional extension; no extension or current tenure is inferred. Jennifer Van Dam's2023 primary organizer biography expressly describes Genius Guild as prior experience. Darlene Gillard Jones's producer credit is not formal investment-firm employment. Podcast guests, LinkedIn commenters, award event guests and third-party-only staff claims are excluded.

Funds0

Team

Operations and support

Co-investing

Investments