William Crowder

Founder & Managing Partner at Aperture Venture Capital

Speaker

William Crowder is a founder and managing partner at Aperture Venture Capital, a $75M venture capital fund with offices in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Aperture invests early in companies leveraging financial innovation to help individuals and businesses thrive.

Over the last 10 years, William has played instrumental roles in creating diversity-centric investment platforms for leading corporations including Comcast, Hearst, Morgan Stanley, and Samsung. In 2012, he launched and led the nation’s first corporate-backed diversity venture fund, the Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, a $20 million venture fund designed to invest in entrepreneurs of color. Under William’s leadership, the Catalyst Fund made over 70 investments and the portfolio has included several high growth companies such as Squire, Cuyana, AptDeco, Flutterwave, Paystack (acquired by Stripe), and Partpic (acquired by Amazon).

A former strategy consultant and software developer, William holds an MBA from Duke University and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science from North Carolina State University.