The 81 Collection
Ariana Smith has a background in marketing and event planning, with experience in various roles at Tide Cleaners, Ralph Lauren, and Food for Thought. Currently, Ariana is the Community Director at The 81 Collection and the Co-Founder of Carats + Cupcakes Events, specializing in wedding and special event planning. Ariana graduated from DePaul University with a Bachelor's Degree in Public Relations and Advertising.
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The 81 Collection
We are the founders fund for un-sexy industries. We seek to back entrepreneurs transforming boring trades, hard work, unpleasant spaces, and structural inequity. Businesses in these industries still attract less seed funding at lower valuations because venture believes these industries are still low margin, capital intensive, difficult to scale, and full of red tape, respectively. However, this narrative will soon flip. Automation is transforming services into goods businesses, and mass-produced hardware can now create beautiful, individual experiences. Start-ups will transform low growth and low margin industries into high growth and high margin ones. As we look around, 19% of GDP attracts more than 50% of venture capital activity. 81% of the U.S. GDP is starved of innovation and it’s now possible to fully digitize these industries. Dream big, and we'll have your back.