2021 Recap: Photos & Numbers from Waterman Ventures

Three New Investment Committee Members to Help Us Evaluate Investment Opportunities

• Ethan Bernstein ’07 whose last company FreeBird (Waterman portfolio company) in the travel industry was acquired by Capital One
• Michael Liou ‘90 began his career at Goldman Sachs and has been an active venture investor including early in Robinhood, Zapier, and Carbon Health. Michael is head of strategy & growth at Chooch.ai (Waterman portfolio)
• Naveen Rao PHD‘11 whose last company Nervana (AI software) was acquired by Intel and sits on the Board of Square and NeuReality (Waterman portfolio)

Ethan, Michael, and Naveen join our illustrious existing group including the ever bike-riding Professor Barret Hazeltine, venture capitalists, founders, and investors. More here. 

23 New Companies

Many with great Brown connections, all with great potential and past the highest-risk angel stage. See 3-minute clips for some below, others can be seen on our portfolio page. 

Ellevest

Finance for women, by women.

Pacaso

⅛ vacation home ownership, warning: reviewing listings can be addictive.

RapidSOS

Improved 911 data to save lives.

Synthesis

Team problem solving for 8-14-year-olds by the creator of Elon Musk’s school – my daughter is a fan!

Tango

Workflow creation for rapid, improved onboarding and training.

One New Analyst & Eight New Fellows

Cameron Deere: BA ‘20, MS ‘21 Venture Analyst

Eight Brown alumni Fellows — participants in our one-year, part-time VC career on-ramp. A great way that we support the education and success of the Brown community, beyond our investments. 

Hundreds of Ways We Supported Our Portfolio Companies and Investors

• Portfolio company to portfolio company: wonderful to introduce our CEOs and see the sparks of opportunity arise
• Investors to portfolio companies: as advisors, Board members, and new employees
• Portfolio companies to sales leads: e.g. intro to 7 Fortune 500 Human Resources leads (from our vast 600K+ Alumni Ventures community)
• Or just talking through a rough patch with a Founder

Four New Webinars

• An Introduction to Waterman Ventures
• Venture Capital 101
• Meet the Team
• Portfolio Update

New Techniques, New Growth, New Environment

• Launched 1-1 investor chats: enabling our investors to meet one another and talk about Brown, life, work or anything else two fellow alum may find of interest, i.e. infinite possibilities.
• 1 new venture club: HBCU & Friends, a forum for founders and the community to mutually support one another. Similar clubs for New York University and Pepperdine are in the works.
• Nearly ~$900M: Alumni Ventures, our parent organization, has raised ~$900M, >6x more than when I joined the company <4 years ago
• 6 US offices: While Waterman is based in our new NYC office (see image; not my thinning spot), our group has offices in Boston, Chicago, Menlo Park, Austin, and Manchester, NH

Lastly, not related to Waterman, but a note of congratulations to the Brown Endowment as the highest performing Ivy League endowment for the 3rd year in a row at 51.5% — in no small part driven by their investments in, you guessed it, venture capital, “Private equity funds, which represent 39% of investments, generated an 86.8% return.”