The PennZone

NEW YORK - PennZone -- Red Bear Angels (RBA) today announced the launch of Red Bear Ventures (RBV), a new community-first investment platform which invests exclusively in companies founded or managed by the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Cornell University, one of the world's most innovative and entrepreneurial universities. Led by industry veterans and long-time business partners Dan Stoller (Cornell '93) and Gus Warren (Cornell '94), RBV plans to make 8-12 new investments per year, across stages and verticals, primarily via special purpose vehicles (SPVs).

As of this release, RBV has made its first five investments:

• Pacific Fusion (Series A): a platform to deliver affordable, reliable fusion power
• Adro (Seed): a virtual bank for international executives, businesses, and students
• Tough Day (Pre-Seed): the world's first employee resilience AI
• Mustard (Seed): democratizing access to world-class athletic coaches
• Kanvas BioSciences (Series A): microbiome-based drug discovery and diagnostics

Red Bear Ventures evolved out of Red Bear Angels, a group of 500+ angel investors which has been investing for over a decade in Cornell-affiliated companies.

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Unlike traditional venture capital firms and angel networks, RBV is developing a proprietary, AI-powered community platform that connects the 350,000+ people in the Cornell community. This hub will allow entrepreneurs to easily engage with a vast network of subject matter experts for mentorship and guidance, as well as reach out to potential partners, customers, and investors.

"By leveraging the remarkable capabilities of artificial intelligence, we will be able to tap into the power of the community in a way that would not have been possible even three years ago," said Dan Stoller, Managing Partner of RBV.

"This is about so much more than capital," said Gus Warren, Managing Partner of RBV. "We believe deeply in the power of the Cornell community to deliver ongoing value to RBV companies  – not only to our portfolio companies, but also to the hundreds in our pipeline."

Red Bear Angels has invested $20M+ into 45 companies over the past decade and has had 11 exits to date. Portfolio companies include Lyft (NASDAQ), GrokStyle (acquired by Facebook), Rosie (acquired by Instacart), and Datalogue (acquired by Nike).

"We're thrilled to be launching RBV," said Sam Sezak, founder of RBA. "We've always wanted to expand the RBA investment thesis to the entire Cornell community, and Dan and Gus are the perfect partners to make that happen."

As Managing Partners of RBV, Stoller and Warren – friends for over thirty years and business partners since 2020 – have 60+ years of experience managing venture funds and assessing, investing in, and operating early-stage technology companies. They have co-founded, or been early employees of, eight companies, five of which were acquired and two of which are still in operation.

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Stoller played an instrumental role in the early days of the Internet advertising business, then spent 16 years in executive roles at AOL and Time Warner,  most recently as Group Vice President, Corporate & Technology Strategy at Time Warner Cable. He also developed and managed the TWC "Greenlight" process that deployed hundreds of millions in capital for technology, infrastructure, and new products.

Warren was part of the venture group at Hambrecht and Quist, and has managed, or helped manage, venture funds for British Telecom, Samsung, Time Warner and Texas Instruments. He was also a Venture Partner at FirstMark Capital. His investments have included InfoGear (acquired by Cisco), Digital Fountain (acquired by Qualcomm), Speakeasy (acquired by BestBuy), Entropic Communications (IPO), Visible World (acquired by Comcast), and Scroll (acquired by Twitter).

[RBV is an independent organization wholly managed by its Managing Partners – it is neither affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Cornell University. Red Bear Ventures is a service mark used under license from its owner, Red Bear Angels Management LLC.]