The 81 Collection
Vijen Patel is the Founding Partner of The 81 Collection, a Founders Fund for un-sexy industries. Vijen is also the Co-Owner of One Knoxville SC, where Vijen works alongside other successful founders and leaders in various industries. Vijen previously served as an Advisor and later as CEO of Tide Cleaners, post-acquisition of Pressbox which Vijen co-founded. With a background in finance and mathematics, Vijen has also worked at Friedman Fleischer & Lowe and McKinsey & Company before starting their entrepreneurial journey.
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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.