Spotlighting Founders With a MIT Connection

Chris has 30+ years of experience in venture capital, product development, and sales engineering. As an investor, he has deployed over $100 million into companies across all stages, from seed to growth/venture. At AV, Chris has built Castor Ventures from Fund 2 – 7 to over 150 portfolio companies. Prior to Castor, Chris was a Vice President at Edison Partners, where he focused on Enterprise 2.0 and mobile investments. Previously, Chris served as Director of Business Development at a biomedical venture accelerator and at an early-stage venture firm. Earlier in his investing career, as part of JumpStart, a nationally recognized venture development organization, Chris sourced and executed seed-stage investments. Chris received his SB in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1988 and his MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Meera has 10 years of experience serving as an investor and consultant to technology startups and enterprises. Prior to Alumni Ventures, Meera was a Manager at Deloitte Consulting where she led strategy teams that advised the world’s largest technology companies. Some of her projects include optimizing a $1T global social media company’s data center operations, leading the global rebrand of a telecom provider’s cloud offerings, and building a national healthcare exchange. She led sales proposals to help a semiconductor company shift to a subscription business model and enhance AR/VR capabilities of a social media company. At Apple, Meera helped launch Apple Arcade, preparing investment materials for Tim Cook to support the acquisition of multi-million dollar games. She has also worked with several early stage venture funds focused on media, consumer technology, and health/wellness technology sectors. She has an MBA in Finance from Wharton and a BS in Management Science from SMU.

Darshan has over a decade of experience serving as an early-stage investor and financial services professional. Prior to Alumni Ventures, Darshan was the Head of Investments at H/L Ventures for the firm’s venture studio, H/L Studio, and growth funds, CityRock Venture Partners. Darshan specialized in early-stage opportunities across sectors, including Fintech, Healthcare, Energy Infrastructure, and enterprise SaaS. Darshan led the firm’s multi-faceted investment strategy and provided advisory services to entrepreneurs on go-to-market, growth strategy, and business development. Prior to joining H/L Ventures, Darshan was an MBA Associate at Scout Ventures, focusing on seed-stage investments in dual-use frontier technologies. Before transitioning to Venture Capital, Darshan worked in Deutsche Bank’s Sales & Trading practice, serving as a Relationship Manager to some of the world’s leading asset managers, pension funds, and insurance companies. At Deutsche Bank, Darshan helped clients optimize their portfolio alpha through equity and debt lending strategies. Darshan holds his MBA from Georgetown University and his B.S. in Finance from Rutgers University.