WILLIAM CROWDER

William Crowder is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Aperture Venture Capital, a seed stage venture capital fund with offices in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Aperture invests early in companies leveraging financial innovation to help individuals and businesses thrive. Through an innovative engagement model with corporate partners, Aperture emphasizes investing in startups with Black and Latino founders, female founders, and ventures based outside of Silicon Valley.

For over a decade, 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). In aggregate, the Catalyst Fund’s portfolio companies, all led by diverse founders, are currently valued at nearly $5 billion.

William serves as an Adjunct Professor of Venture Capital at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. A former strategy consultant and software developer, he holds an MBA from Duke University and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science from North Carolina State University. William is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina and currently resides in the Philadelphia area.