Gorges Ventures Fund Hits the Mark with Students and Entrepreneurs

From its conception in the fall of 2023 to its launch in the spring of 2024, Gorges Ventures, a student-managed and financed investment club, met a resounding, enthusiastic response both from seasoned entrepreneurs who became the startup’s advisors and from fellow classmates, the fund’s investors. Launched by three class of 2025 MBA students in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, this closed investment club is developing a fund to invest in companies founded by Cornell University students in the classes of 2024 and 2025.

Gorges Venture’s founders—Megan Shkolyar ’20, MBA ’25; Matheus Lelis, MBA ’25; and Albert Charles ’23, MBA ’25—connected in the fall of 2023, during their first semester at the Johnson School, and bonded over their shared interest in venture capital. Inspired by a Tech Crunch article they read about Stanford MBAs who launched an investment club, they reached out to that club’s cofounder, Steph Mui, and started working with her and her startup, PIN, as their fund administrator. PIN’s platform provides the legal, tax, and administrative tasks that enable people to pool their money and invest in startups.

Shkolyar, Lelis, and Charles floated their idea for the venture fund at Eclectic Convergence 2023, an Entrepreneurship at Cornell event held on the Cornell Tech campus in New York City. Taking advantage of the event’s office hours, they presented their idea to Susan Sarich ’91, founder and CEO of SusieCakes, and Jim Cavalieri ’92, senior vice president in the office of the CEO at Salesforce. Clearly excited by the idea and the founders’ energy and determination, both Sarich and Cavalieri signed up to be advisors for the Cornell entrepreneurs that Gorges Ventures will select for its portfolio.

Building community and opening classmates’ access to venture capital

By launching Gorges Ventures, the founders set out to achieve several goals: Connect Johnson School students across all full-time MBA and executive MBA programs; make investing in venture capital an accessible, integral part of the Johnson School community and culture; build connections to and support for fellow Cornellians by investing in their startups; and create a lasting legacy at the school, as the MBA class of 1998 did in establishing the Cayuga Fund as the fund’s initial investors.

“A big reason why we come to get our MBA is for the network and connections you can make, and Gorges Ventures evolved into something that connects all of the MBA programs with founders across the entire university,” said Shkolyar, who, as president of Gorges Ventures, oversees operations, sourcing, and fundraising. Moreover, she added, “People don’t have to wait a few years post-graduation before they go and do VC. They can do it now.”

“We’re achieving two things: building community for MBAs while investing in the greater university and Entrepreneurship at Cornell community,” said Lelis, who leads Gorges Ventures’ operations, including accounting, legal, and overall strategic needs.

As part of its legacy, the fund’s team envisions Gorges Ventures living on by helping future MBA students start their own VC funds for their own classes. “It’s something that we feel very passionate about,” says Shkolyar.

Gorges Ventures’ founders have been diligent about getting the word out and gaining support, advisors, and members via happy hours, mixers, and calls. Clearly, they have hit a nerve. Many classmates from across the Johnson School’s MBA programs pledged their support early on. As of August, just six months after launch, Gorges Ventures boasts nine advisors—all seasoned, successful entrepreneurs and investors, and mostly Cornell alumni; a team of eight fellow classmates who run operations, sourcing, and fundraising; and more than 60 classmates who have joined.

Identifying Cornell founders to invest in

As the fund’s sourcing lead, Charles identifies startups that meet Gorges Ventures’ investment criteria: top venture capital-backed companies founded by Cornell University students in the classes of ’24 or ’25. He and his sourcing team actively attend events to connect the fund with founders across the university’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Charles has strong connections to determine where and how to find founders across campus. He is himself a founder whose eLab startup, Phytoflock, aims to upcycle beverage waste and use it as a feed additive in the livestock industry to reduce the use of antibiotics. He came straight from earning his undergraduate degree in food science at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to the Johnson School’s MBA program in order to focus on entrepreneurship. Now a fund manager at Big Red Ventures, Charles was a business development intern with the Cornell Institute for Food Systems, 2023-24.

Charles regularly collaborates with faculty members involved in Cornell’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, including Ken Rother, managing director at eLab, Cornell’s student accelerator, and Gregory Ray, PhD ’14, program director for Green Technology Innovation Fellows, which pairs MBA students with PhD candidates from across Cornell University to work on green tech startups. Ray also leads Cornell’s Life Science Innovation Fellowship and the Johnson Summer Startup Accelerator programs.

The Gorges Ventures team attends Cornell pitch competitions like Entrepreneurship at Cornell’s Eclectic Convergence and the David BenDaniel Venture Challenge, where they “set up a table, meet founders, speak with professors, and drum up a lot of a lot of interest,” Charles said. It has been effective in spreading the word; startup founders began to approach Gorges Ventures directly.

Shkolyar, who earned her undergraduate degree at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and is at Cornell Tech for the 2024-2025 academic year as a participant in the Johnson Cornell Tech 1+1 program, brings a strong connection to student founders and faculty on that campus. “So now we’re talking to people at the Cornell Tech Runway Startups program,” Charles says.

Gorges Ventures knows there are a plethora of startups founded by members of the Cornell University class of ’24 alone. Regarding selection, all investor members have an equal vote in what startups to invest in. In fact, “Everyone who is an investor in Gorges Ventures investment club is legally required to vote,” said Shkolyar.

Gorges Ventures is actively exploring investment opportunities with a strategic plan to allocate resources over the next two to three years, aiming for complete allocation within five years. “Given our voting structure and planned check sizes, it will definitely take some time to deploy the capital that we have,” Shkolyar said. The initiative has seen engagement from alumni and current students across the classes of 2024 and 2025, reflecting a broad base of support and commitment to the project’s long-term goals. “The plan is for the fund to remain active for ten years before closing, and the fund’s founders have committed to remain involved for the life of the fund,” Lelis added.

Building a team of advisors

“We’ve kind of built Gorges Ventures for founders,” said Shkolyar. The fund has attracted Cornell alumni who are highly successful investors, operators, and founders to serve as core strategic advisors. They have been invaluable in helping Gorges Ventures launch and take off and their key role going forward will be to help the entrepreneurs selected for the fund’s portfolio. They’re enthusiastic because, as Lelis put it, “as the founders succeed, the fund succeeds.”

In addition, Gorges Ventures is building out an alumni council that the fund’s selected founders can tap for technical and industry-specific expertise in health tech, biotech, crop tech, sales, and marketing. “We have someone who’s gone through Y Combinator and really knows how to put a pitch together for both investors and customers,” said Charles. “And we all have someone in the food industry and who’s gone through the process of getting into a store—that, in itself, is incredibly valuable.”

A community of students, for students

“Gorges Ventures is ultimately a community of students, for students,” said Shkolyar. “We are MBAs, EMBAs, Cornell Tech MBAs, who are coming together to invest in Cornell University founders. Our goal is to continue to build this legacy of community, and to continue to be the go-to resource both for founders and for our classmates who are interested in VC.

“We are so thankful to our community and our peers, who have supported us through this process,” Shkolyar added. “A lot of what we’re doing with Gorges Ventures wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for our classmates supporting us along the way and hyping us up and saying ‘It’s so cool that you guys are doing this.’ It really is a community effort.”

Note: This article is for informational purposes and is not a solicitation for investment.