Comedy legend, entrepreneur and business mogul Kevin Hart took some time off from his current comedy tour to appear at TechCrunch’s Disrupt event to talk about his Venture Capital firm, Hartbeat Ventures investing in early startups.
During the discussion, Hart revealed that he didn’t know much about investing until he took some time to educate himself about the business and the art of investing.
“I had to learn why investing was okay,” Hart said. “From my understanding, the world of investing — well, it was attached to the space of a con. You’re trying to con me out of my money. I don’t trust you. I’m not giving nobody my money so they can run off and do what they want — that was my challenge. The biggest learning curve for me was understanding that the investment has a timeline attached to it and because I invested today, does that mean I get anything tomorrow?”
The comedy star said he’s not a one-man band, he spoke about the importance and value of teamwork and trusting his employees and the rest of the workforce in order to make inroads in business.
“This is not a Kevin Hart machine that Kevin Hart stands in front of and I said it has to happen and there’s no other way,” Hart said. “This is a table. This is a table where we sit and we talk, we ideate and we come up with the best possible ideas. That’s something that I’ve done very well over the years. I’ve aligned myself with people who have done it right and that’s how I’ve learned.”
Hartbeat Ventures received outside investment from Investment Firm JP Morgan through their Project Spark program, which is the company’s initiative that invests proprietary capital into diverse and women-led ventures.
“Over the last few years, we’ve put $90 million into 23 funds that have gone on to raise over $900 million of capital. And so through this project and through meeting with Kevin’s team, we’re super excited that as of yesterday, we just closed and J.P. Morgan is now the first investor in Hartbeat Ventures’ new fund and we’re very excited for the things that we can do together,” said Michael Elanjian, J.P. Morgan’s head of digital investment banking and digital private markets.
Kevin co-founded Hartbeat Ventures with Robert Roman, and they both put money together to invest in early tech and media startups.
According to TechCrunch, Hartbeat Ventures has already invested in a number of companies, including electrolyte beverage brand BrightFox, avatar platform Ready Player Me, sustainable bottled water brand Path, massage therapy device Therabody, sustainable packaging brand Cleancut, car leasing platform Rodo and social food ordering platform Snackpass.
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