Ryan Hoover’s Nights-And-Weekends VC Firm Targets $10 Million For Fund II

On Thursday at around lunchtime PST, Weekend Fund submitted paperwork to the SEC indicating the venture firm has raised $8.676 million out of a targeted $10 million for its second flagship venture capital fund.

It is nearly three times the size of Weekend Fund I, which topped out at a little over $3 million in 2017.

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According to the filing, Weekend Fund received its first hard capital commitment in early June, and has raised Fund II from 98 investors.

Weekend Fund is an early-stage investment firm founded and operated by Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt, a popular community-driven aggregator of recently-launched startups and new products from large companies. Hoover started Weekend Fund in 2017, shortly after AngelList acquired his venture for around $20 million.

In a September 2017 blog post announcing the launch of his new fund, Hoover wrote that Weekend Fund echoes his work on Product Hunt, which he “started as a side project” and worked on during nights and weekends. Writing at the time, Hoover said that “Product Hunt remains my #1 focus, and like the startups I plan to invest in, this is my nights and weekend hustle.”

In the post announcing Fund I, Hoover cited a number of companies and products which started as side projects. This includes the likes of BuzzFeed, Craigslist, and Facebook, among many others. “Right now, the next Facebook is being built on nights and weekends and its these curious, creative founders that I’d like to support,” he wrote.

Weekend Fund is thematic, but largely sector-agnostic. The firm invested in social media companies like TTYL and YOLO, elder care communication company Carenote, personal finance companies like Secfi and Northstar, esports streetwear and lifestyle brand FaZe Clan, and voice interface design platform Voiceflow, among the many other ventures listed on the firm’s website.

Hoover stated in early 2019 that Fund I did not take a management fee from its limited partners, but that Fund II would.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias