During his freshman year at University of Cincinnati, Jay Kothari wanted more ways to get involved. He was looking for organizations to be a part of and things to do, he told me.
He stumbled, quite literally, into the world of entrepreneurship. Now, the third-year computer science major is helping stand up Bearcat Ventures, a new student-led venture fund – UC’s first – as its managing director.
The fund has written two checks this year to local companies led by UC alumni. He said he’s even looking to possibly follow in the founder's footsteps one day.
“I showed up at this event at UC with Jim Goetz (a partner at Menlo Park, Calif.-based Sequoia Capital) where venture capital was the topic, and once I was in, I was hooked,” Kothari said. “It was fascinating, hearing about building and growing companies. I realized it was part of my dream to start my own thing. I knew I needed to be able to think like a VC, and if I could get that experience on the other side of the table, I’d have the cheat sheet and (know) what investors are looking for."
Bearcat Ventures got its formal start in 2021 as a student organization. It’s now a full initiative – backed by a $1 million evergreen fund.
Kate Harmon, assistant vice president of the 1819 Innovation Hub and executive director of the UC Center for Entrepreneurship, under which Bearcat Ventures will operate, said its formation is a long-time coming.
The fund will look to make pre-seed and seed-stage investments in companies founded or co-founded by UC alumni. It will remain industry agnostic but will look to back startups that are Cincinnati based.
The fund size – even the check amounts, capped at $25,000 – was intentional, Harmon said.
She credited multiple parties for helping guide the process, including Tim Holcomb at Miami University. RedHawk Ventures, Miami’s student-led venture fund, has existed since 1997. It most recently invested in Over-the-Rhine’s Pieces, which just raised a $13.5 million Series A.
UC's $1 million fund was raised from multiple backers, Harmon said, including internal and external donors.
“We view this as an education fund; it’s not meant to be an investment venture but a way for students to learn,” Harmon told me. “We’ve purposely tried to think through that lens.
“We’ve always had the pieces in place (for Bearcat Ventures),” she added. “Now that the (UC) Center (for Entrepreneurship) and Venture Lab have merged (in late 2022), it’s helped us accelerate and implement some things that maybe in the past we didn’t have capacity for. We know our alum are doing amazing stuff. It may have taken longer than the folks up the road at Miami, but we’re at stage now where we can implement and scale this effectively."
Harmon said Bearcat Ventures will look to make two to three deals a year.
So far, the fund has written a pair of checks. One to Tembo (formerly known as CoreDB), a tech startup launched by Ry Walker; and Band Connect, a healthtech company led by Abby McInturf, a 2018 UC College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning graduate.
Tembo just won a Cincy Inno Fire Award for best tech as it gains customer traction. The company is working to commercialize Postgres, an open-source database, and Bearcat Ventures participated in its $7 million seed round.
Band Connect, a Techstars-backed firm, is currently raising its own seed round, respectively. It’s building a digital health platform for remote physical therapy. Band Connect went through the first pre-accelerator class at 1819, making for a full-circle moment, Harmon said.
Kothari hopes the fund's biggest value-add is the team's ability to do market research for its founders. “The goal at the end of the day is to give them insights, numbers, data,” he said.
It can also help place young talent – college interns eager for experience, especially given UC’s strength in cooperative, or co-op, education – into roles. For companies bootstrapping, it can even help tap into a UC fund to make sure those students get paid for their work.
“We can screen students,” he said. "It's really important to funnel talent from our university to these companies."
Bearcat Ventures currently has roughly 20 students on its roster, Kothari said. They help conduct due diligence, make investment decisions and gain real-world experience. The group also participates in the Venture Capital Investment Competition, an annual global contest held at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Besides the UC Center for Entrepreneurship, a 14-member investment committee oversees its investment recommendations, including Rob Manz, the founder of Bearcat Ventures, now an investment analyst at Columbus-based Rev1 Ventures. The group also has representatives from Queen City Angels, Main Street Ventures, Cintrifuse Capital, H Ventures, CincyTech, Fireroad, Refinery Ventures, Connetic Ventures and Wunderfund locally, as well as Valor Ventures (Atlanta), GrowthX (Nashville) and more.
The fund is looking for more students who are equally serious about VC.
“We’re dealing with real founders and real money,” Kothari said. “We are making significant contributions to the startup ecosystem.”
