 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Venture capital |
| Founded | 2014 |
| Founders | Mike Collins |
| Headquarters | Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S. |
Key people | Mike Collins (CEO) |
| AUM | US$1.2 billion (2023) |
Number of employees | 175 (2022) |
| Website | www |
Alumni Ventures ("AV") is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire. The firm creates investment funds for university alumni to invest in.
AV was founded in 2014 by Mike Collins. [1] [2] Collins, who previously worked at TA Associates, wanted to make venture capital more accessible to individual people and had grown tired of how the industry was mostly limited to the institutional investors and the ultra wealthy. [1] [2] [3] When AV started, Collins raised $1.5 million in funding from his alma mater, Dartmouth College, for the fund Green D Ventures. [2] [4]
The firm focuses on fundraising directly from individual alumni of universities, taking $50,000 minimum each rather than getting large investment funding from institutional investors. [1] [2] [4] [5] Examples of alumni funds include The Yard Ventures (Harvard), Spike Ventures (Stanford), Castor Ventures (MIT), Purple Arch Ventures (Northwestern) and Strawberry Creek Ventures (University of California-Berkeley). [1] [3] Some students of universities claim the way AV advertise these funds is misleading as it gives the impression they are university officially sanctioned endeavors when they are in fact not affiliated with the universities themselves. [1] [3] [5]
Within five years, AV raised almost $1 billion and grew to have over 175 employees. By some accounts, AV was the most active and fastest growing venture investor in the U.S. It is speculated that its growth came partly due to its pitch to democratize markets and make them accessible to less experienced investors in the same manner as Robinhood Markets. AV may have taken advantages of such neophytes. [3]
Despite AV having a large deal flow, the firm prefers to have a low profile. [1] [2] The firm prefers to focus on investing in companies and avoids taking board of directors seats to change the company's direction. [1] [2] [4] Some startup founders do not even know that AV owns a part of their company. [1] SimpliSafe founder Chad Laurans claims that he never directly interacted with the firm and that it wasn't actively involved in the company. [1]
Notable investments of AV include Mic, Casper Sleep and Better.com. [3]
On March 4, 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined AV $700,000 for making misleading contract statements and breaching operating agreements. [3] [5] [6] The SEC alleged AV in its marketing communications claimed to have an industry standard management fee which was a 2% management fee during each year of its funds’ 10-year term and a separate 20% performance fee. [3] [5] [6] Instead AV assessed a management fee of 20% of an investor's fund investment at the start which represented 10 years of 2% annual management fees. [3] [5] [6] The SEC also alleged AV commingled funds assets through loans and transfers among the funds, despite the contact language stating this was prohibited. [5] [6] AV has blamed sloppiness in its marketing materials for the cause of the problem. [3] Apart from paying the fines, AV also returned $4.8 million worth of fees to investors and also hired a new compliance officer who rewrote the policies and procedures of AV to review any "written communication" about fees by any AV employees. [6]
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