Black Ventures, LLC

About Us

Black Ventures is a micro venture capital and real estate investment firm that makes investments in tech startups exclusively through equity crowdfunding and real estate investments.

Meet the Team

Kevin Rivers, Co-Founder & CEO – Rivers is a serial entrepreneur with over 18 years of music and digital media business experience. In 2009, Rivers founded WaTunes, a music distributor and the world's first Facebook Music Store that revolutionized the music industry. In 2012, Rivers launched Venzo Digital, an award-winning iTunes music service that helped musicians earn over $2M in music sales, which Lester Ventures purchased in 2015. In 2019, Rivers purchased music labels Grapevine Music and Rocket Science Ventures to grow the media business Global Media Bank with over $1.5M paid to creators.

Richard Freeth, Co-Founder & COO – Freeth is a New York attorney with over 20 years of legal and business experience. Also, in 2014, he was co-founder of Freethfields Financial Partners, a diversified international financial firm focused on opportunities in Brazil. Mr. Freeth will utilize his experience in corporate transactions, securities, and intellectual property law concerning the corporate governance of Black Ventures to evaluate potential startups for investment and compliance issues related to the continued viability of those investments.

The BV Strategy

We traditionally invest in minority-led tech startups that are disrupting current markets. Our portfolio of companies is invested strategically through equity crowdfunding portals. Our investment sectors are focused on consumer/digital media, IoT, AI, VR/AR, and enterprise software. 

BV's strategy is unique in its ability to collect continued value from proven assets without the need for significant investment or overhead going forward. As a result, returns from our strategy are reasonably predictable.