We’re a group of founders and product managers who know how to navigate the world of early stage startups and venture funding. We’re partnering with First Round to provide a way for recent grads to get started and have a friend who can help them work through the early days of their startup and fundraising.
Bruno is Co-Founder and CEO at Synapse Technology, an artificial intelligence platform automating security checkpoints at airports and secure buildings around the world. Previously, he was a software engineer and product manager building tech for Wall Street at Kensho Technologies, watching it grow from 8 to 100 people. Bruno attended MIT, where he co-founded HackMIT and led Dorm Room Fund Boston.
Lauren is a Product Manager at Segment, where she works on the the building blocks for the foundation of the Segment platform. Previously, she was the Managing Partner on the Philadelphia Dorm Room Fund team. She also spent time investing at Accel, at a hedge fund in India, and as the first engineer at an EdTech startup while in college. She is excited to continue working and learning with incredible founders.
Parthi was previously a Product Manager at Google, where he launched Hangouts Chat and Google Go. He was Managing Partner at Dorm Room Fund New York and graduated from Columbia where he studied Computer Science. He's currently working on founding a company.
Udit wasis CTO of Snackpass, a startup backed by First Round and a16z that lets students pre-order at restuarants. He studied Computer Science and Statistics at Yale.
We make angel-sized investments. While we have First Round's financial and operational support, we invest and operate independently.
We're targeting founders who've had a first job or two, recently out of undergrad or grad school, thinking about starting their first company. If you're looking for a partner to guide you through the fund raising processs or bring product expertise to your company, we may be a good fit.
We are early founders and product managers at successful tech companies. We strive to make raising from us simple and as low friction as possible. As a group, we know how to raise early funding, have a strong network in the Valley and can help you think about your business. We're in your shoes, building products day-to-day, raising rounds and hiring. We're more than happy to share our learnings and help you with the challenges your startup faces.
We invest up to $50k in startups at seed stage and earlier.
Yes. While we're based in San Francisco, we invest in startups across the country.
Graduate Fund is backed by First Round. Partners are open to independently investing as well.
The best way to start a conversation with us is to reach out to one of us through your network. If we don’t have mutual connection, you can email us directly at talktous@graduatefund.com, and we'll do our best to respond.
