While studying at Brown University, Rajiv Kumar co-founded a startup called ShapeUp, a B2B well-being software company that was eventually acquired by Virgin Pulse in 2016.
The company grew to 130 employees, created many jobs and ultimately was a tremendous startup success story for the Ocean State.
Looking back, Kumar knows that he and his other co-founder Dr. Brad Weinberg could have never accomplished what they did had it not been for people in the Brown alumni network who served as advisers, mentors and investors.
“This is sort of the stage at which we feel we could have the most impact where angels come together and help fund a few hundred thousand dollars, which will help the startups find talent and help them find clients."
Now, Kumar is ready to pay it forward.
He has teamed up with another Brown alumni, Mathew Farkash from the Brown class of 2003, to organize the Brown Angel Group, which seeks to provide capital and guidance to other entrepreneurs who have graduated from Brown University.
“There's a ton of opportunities and resources for students while they're at Brown,” said Kumar, who is currently the chief medical officer at Virgin Pulse. “Where there is a gap, perhaps, is when students graduate and they’re now on their own. The question becomes how do they tap into a community that will be supportive and that's really what we're we're trying to build. We think of it as maybe almost like a bridge between all the support you get while you're on campus and then companies like Waterman Ventures, which will invest in Brown led startups that are a little bit later stage.”
Kumar said the group is targeting pre-seed investments between $100,000 and $500,000.
“This is sort of the stage at which we feel we could have the most impact where angels come together and help fund a few hundred thousand dollars, which will help the startups find talent and help them find clients,” he said. “It could really have a significant impact on the trajectory of the business over time.”
The requirement is that one of the founders pitching their company to the group have some kind of connection to Brown, but Kumar added that the group doesn’t want to be too rigid with their guidelines and is more than happy to accept pitches from a graduate student or professor.
He also said that investing in student-run companies at Brown would be okay, but he suspects many will not yet be ready.
Additionally, he expects the group to hear pitches from some later-stage companies that they might be able to help in other ways than just writing a check — a big goal of the group is to provide startups with mentorship, connections and guidance such as honing their pitches and business plans.
Thus far, the group is composed of 75 angel investors, some of whom are just out of college and others who are much older. The Brown Angel Group is also working with the Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship at Brown to source companies and find new investors to join the group.
The group recently held its first meeting, where it listened to two companies pitch. Kumar said the group will be looking to hear from about two companies every month to start.
But, he added that the Brown Angel Group could look to host events in the future and maybe even raise a fund so the group could pool money together and directly invest in companies.
“I was told that there are roughly 100,000 people in the Brown alumni universe, so we think there's enough activity going on that we can we can find startups to get involved with, engage and support them,” he said.
