A local high school alumni angel investment group is celebrating its first anniversary and reaching more than $1 million in total investments.
Andover Alumni Angels was created by Phillips Academy student Venkat Sundaram last June. Sundaram ran the angel investment group through his senior year and is now an alumnus himself, after graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover on Sunday.
Sundaram called this the first-ever angel investment group started at a high school and said that it was modeled after collegiate angel groups such as Princeton Alumni Angels and Wharton Alumni Angels. He noted that while the group is made of alumni who invest in alumni-affiliated startups, Andover Alumni Angels is not sponsored by Phillips Academy.
The 18-year-old is from Seattle and said he’s long been interested in entrepreneurship, starting when he was about 7 years old and would watch Shark Tank. But his roots in entrepreneurship run far deeper. In learning about his family, Sundaram discovered his grandfather had come from the Nagarathar community in India, which a traditionally seafaring merchant group involved in commerce and moneylending.
Sundaram said he connected this history with Shark Tank and angel investing, which his father was involved in.
“I’ve had conversations with him about different startups we’ve looked at investing in. He’s had me on a couple calls here and there,” Sundaram said. “To be part of some of these conversations was really inspiring. It felt like through the advice he was able to provide…(it) really was transforming startups that were having impact outward.”
During his time at Phillips Academy, Sundaram said he realized the school did not have a strong startup ecosystem, so he set out to create one. Last year he started reaching out to alumni and within a few weeks, had 20 people interested in joining an angel investing group. Andover Alumni Angels held its first virtual pitch night in July 2022. Since then, the group has held a total of four pitch nights featuring 14 Andover-connected startups who have raised more than $1 million from 20 investments. The fifth pitch event takes place tonight at 6 p.m.
“I think through all of this, it’s been super exciting to see the kind of traction that we’ve seen. But more than that for me, it’s really the connections that this has been able to generate,” Sundaram said. “We’ve been able to connect entrepreneurs with one another. There’s been a lot of reciprocation in terms of expertise.”
Sundaram said there are no students involved in Andover Alumni Angels, but there could be opportunities down the road to have informational events on entrepreneurship for students or other forms of engagement.
After graduation, Sundaram said he plans to continue running Andover Alumni Angels. He’s also looking forward to making his first angel investment this summer. Sundaram said he will likely attend college, but is contemplating a gap year, among other things for his next steps.
Sundaram said he’s learned quite a bit about the angel investing process through his father and Andover Alumni Angels, where he reviewed the startups before they pitched to the broader group. The pitch events featured companies at pre-seed to pre-Series B stages. Sundaram said he looks at factors like the founders and teams, the competitive landscape, points of differentiation, their projections and financials and their investment ask.
He wants to continue angel investing as a way to inspire more people to get involved, especially people who are younger or might not otherwise know where to start.
“I really think there shouldn’t be any barrier because I think angel investing is a wonderful opportunity to connect people. It really creates a community. And I think also you have real impact on startups,” Sundaram said.
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