Former Tide Cleaners Exec Vijen Patel’s Venture Firm The 81 Collection Announces $41 Million Fund

The 81 Collection—an early-stage venture firm for founders building across low margin or capital intensive “hard industries” such as manufacturing, real estate, retail, and construction—has unveiled its inaugural $41 million fund.

The 81 Collection is a collection of Midwest-based entrepreneurs focused on “hard industries”—the 81% of the GDP that is underserved by seed venture capitalists.
According to the company, the capital will fuel The 81 Collection’s model, which applies decades of operating experience to identify and support high margin start-ups tapping automation, AI, and smart hardware to disrupt traditionally low margin industries.

The 81 Collection Founding Partner is Vijen Patel—the co-founder and CEO of Pressbox, a Chicago-based fabric care company that was acquired by Procter & Gamble in 2018. Patel remained post-acquisition to lead the company’s re-branding as Tide Cleaners before stepping down in 2020.

“‘Hard’ businesses see a 15:1 funding gap compared to the asset-light, cloud-based businesses that have ruled Silicon Valley, and I experienced this gap first-hand as a founder looking to bring technology to the traditionally boring laundry and dry cleaning industry,” said Patel. “By targeting industries 20 to 30 years behind the tech stack and introducing them to technology innovation, our community built $20 billion of value in ‘hard industries’ and created more than 10,000 jobs. Our businesses weren’t interesting to most investors at the seed stage, but ended up being the better companies in the long-run, financially and socially.”

Raw material shocks, supply chain disruptions, and labor shortages are cracking the infrastructure of hard industries, creating openings for entrepreneurs to exploit and transform sectors starved of innovation. 77% of manufacturers report issues attracting skilled workers, and the average age of skilled construction workers is aging faster than the American workforce.

The “collection” of The 81 Collection includes more than 100 entrepreneurs in its investor base, who can uniquely help portfolio companies shorten the average four-year journey most startups endure to gain traction in these industries. The fund operates with a unique structure that unlocks coaching, access, and relationships to collectively ease the load for entrepreneurs choosing to take the less traveled path in hard industries, according to the company.

“Vijen and the 81 Collection team have assembled an impressive community of successful founders who are uniquely equipped to tackle the complex challenges of ‘the 81%’”, said Charles Tollinche, managing director at DNS Capital. “We believe 81 Collection’s thesis of backing startups in industries underserved by traditional financing sources and leveraging the firm’s founder network to shorten an entrepreneur’s learning curve and catalyze growth represents a differentiated approach in the market.”

The firm participates in pre-seed and seed rounds with initial checks ranging from $500K to $1.5 million. The 81 Collection began investing from the fund in 2022 and has made eight investments to date; they include companies operating across a number of categories from lumber to automotive care to dentistry. They include:

• Bonside, non-dilutive financing for large SMB
• Cambium Carbon, fulfills large lumber orders with local lumber mills
• CarmaCare, car care subscription service making car maintenance more affordable
• Dentologie, modern dentistry with a digitally native focus
• Goose, operating system for professional pet services
• Maestro, allows artisans to co-create with others via asynchronous video
• Mezo, automates home maintenance
• Parentaly, helps women stay in the workforce through life changes