Alumni Ventures’ Impact on Our Seed-Stage Portfolio Companies
Read about the impact we are having on our seed and pre-seed portfolio companies in their own words
Alumni Ventures has served as a value-add partner for all 1,200+ companies we’ve invested in, whether they’re seeking their first checks or laying the groundwork for an IPO. Read about the impact we are having on our seed and pre-seed portfolio companies in their own words. In many cases, we’ve leveraged the expertise of Alumni Ventures’ ~50 investing professionals and our network of more than 600,000 community members to help them scale into promising, later-stage companies. We have since been invited by some of them to invest in additional financing rounds.
Interested in Investing in Seed-Stage Companies?
Reserve Your Spot in Seed Fund 7
Alumni Ventures’ Seed Fund is one of our most popular Focused Funds, and we are seeing strong interest in this year’s vintage. We recommend securing a spot promptly.
Max Accredited Investor Limit: 249
Deadline to Join: December 31, 2023
Founder Sage Wohns
“As we grow the company and look for different expertise to develop in new areas, Alumni Ventures has been able to reach out to their network and find people that fit our needs. In addition, Nassau Street (for the Princeton community) has been able to go the extra mile in core functional areas like recruiting and sales, successfully leveraging their network to help us with both.”
Region: New York
Focus: Agolo designed its content summarization platform to help companies fight information overload. Its neural network training is powered by an extensive dataset of human-written summaries, enabling users to consume information more efficiently.
How We’re Involved: $2.5 million seed round in 2020 alongside M12 (Microsoft’s VC fund)
AV Invested Funds: Nassau Street Ventures, Total Access Fund
Co-Founders Paul Jarvis (CEO) & Henry Hutcheson (CTO)
“The teams at Green D (for the Dartmouth community) and Alumni Ventures have helped make deep customer introductions. For instance, they introduced us to the CFO of a top 75 customer target. Two weeks later, we were in business together. Love the power of the network!”
Region: West Coast
Focus: Clarent (formerly known as Bateau) is a software platform that enables senior living owners and operators to see all their data in one place and make better decisions.
How We’re Involved: $1.5 million pre-seed round in 2020 led by Founder’s Co-op; $4 million seed round in 2022 led by CRV
AV Invested Funds: Green D Ventures, Seed Fund, Total Access Fund
Founder and CEO Shanel Fields
“Chestnut Street Ventures (for the Penn community) has been an incredible investment partner. They not only provided the financial resources we needed to grow but also jumped in the trenches with our team to make critical connections, generate prospect leads and grow our pipeline. Their support has been invaluable on our journey to drive better connectivity between 911 and the broader healthcare ecosystem.”
Region: Mid-Atlantic
Focus: MD Ally provides patient navigation software and telemedicine solutions that integrate into 911 computer-aided dispatch systems. The company helps transfer nonemergency callers to telemedical care, provide virtual care to triaged members, coordinate follow-ups, and automate referrals.
How We’re Involved: $1 million pre-seed round in 2020 led by Red & Blue Ventures; $3.5 million seed fund in 2021 led by General Catalyst
AV Invested Funds: Chestnut Street Ventures, Impact Fund, Total Access Fund
Founder and CEO Ed King
“Alumni Ventures makes it simple to leverage not only the alumni strength of my schools (Berkeley and MIT) but also the alumni of other top-tier institutions within our network like UT-Austin. Highly recommend adding AV to your cap table if you have the opportunity to do so.”
Region: California
Focus: Openprise is a cloud-based data automation platform intended to leverage open data and open web technology on a single platform. Openprise bots automate dozens of critical data management processes, including data onboarding, cleansing, and more.
How We’re Involved: $10 million seed round in 2019 alongside Bloomberg Beta; $16 million Series A in 2021 led by Susquehanna
AV Invested Funds: Castor Ventures, Congress Avenue Ventures, Strawberry Creek Ventures, Total Access Fund
Co-Founder and CEO Mark Frank
“From the start, Purple Arch Ventures (for the Northwestern community) was thoughtful and easy to work with, achieving the delicate balance of in-depth diligence and respect for a small startup team’s time. We’ve had a great partnership throughout our growth journey.”
Region: Mountain
Focus: SonderMind is a behavioral health network that addresses the three-sided marketplace between consumers, private practitioners, and partners or enterprises. Their platform helps users find a licensed therapist and comes with built-in customer support and integrations with medical billing systems.
How We’re Involved: $2.5 million seed round in 2018 led by Kickstart Seed Fund; $150 million Series C in 2021 co-led by Drive Capital and Premji Invest
AV Invested Funds: Castor Ventures, Congress Avenue Ventures, Purple Arch Ventures, Total Access Fund
SonderMind’s Mark Frank on Redesigning Mental Healthcare
Watch an engaging conversation with SonderMind, an innovative behavioral health platform addressing the three-sided marketplace between patients, therapists, and insurance providers. CEO Mark Frank and AV Managing Partner Catherine Lu will discuss the company’s mission to improve access and outcomes for its users.
See video policy below.
Founder and CEO Dipanwita Das
“Alumni Ventures is one of our favorite investors. They have been a supporter of us since we were six-months old and connected us to the expertise of AV investor Bill (Schneiderman). Since then, Bill has done workshops with the entire team and personally works with me and Richard (Co-Founder and CCO) on commercial and overarching strategy. Bill has dipped in and out of everything from pricing models to contracts to connecting us to other professors.”
Region: Mid-Atlantic
Focus: Sorcero‘s Language Intelligence Platform allows employees to access their company’s knowledge more efficiently and effectively. Their NLP suite enables the immediate deployment of solutions, automating the building of advanced knowledge bases to future-proof team members’ expertise.
How We’re Involved: $1.2 million seed round in 2019 alongside H/L Ventures; $10 million Series A in 2021 co-led by CityRock Venture Partners and Harmonix Fund
AV Invested Funds: Castor Ventures, Seed Fund, Total Access Fund
CEO Nourredine Tayebi
“The team at Spike Ventures (for the Stanford community) was instrumental not only in the early stages of YASSIR but also during our growth. They recognized the potential of our venture, and, more importantly, the mission and vision behind it. Moreover, the breadth of the Stanford alumni network the team draws from is simply unparalleled, giving us access to world-class mentors, talent, and partners.”
Region: Africa
Focus: YASSIR is building the “super app” for French-speaking Africa. Their platform will provide an ecosystem of services — such as Uber, Doordash, Instacart, and digital banking — all delivered in a single app.
How We’re Involved: $13.2 million seed round in 2020 alongside Y Combinator; $30 million Series A in 2021 alongside Moving Capital (founded by Uber alumni); $150 million Series B in 2022 led by Bond (founded by Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins)
AV Invested Funds: Global Fund, Growth Fund, Spike Ventures, Total Access Fund
Seed Fund Closing December 31
Alumni Ventures’ Seed Fund lets you invest in a fund of ~50-75 diversified, venture-backed companies at the earliest stage, where the opportunities for value creation are typically highest and company valuations are usually at their lowest.
Contact [email protected] for additional information. To see additional risk factors and investment considerations, visit av-funds.com/disclosures.