MBA launches risk capital funds to support their classmates. Now, Harvard Business School has one.
The students in the graduation class of the Harvard business school made an executive decision – the assets are made by access, not by exclusion.
Seven members of the HBS class in 2025 collectively raised almost one million dollars for a class they call TWenty25 Ventures.
The fund is built through graduation class contributions and will invest exclusively in the startups founded by colleagues – An investment structure that takes off at business schools, while students are looking to find a position in a traditionally rarefined financing ecosystem.
Founders – Yoav Anaki, Yuval Efrat, Lisa Yan, Insoo Chang, Lindsay Atkeson, Madison Mcilwain and Rob Muldowney – started discussions during the 2023 – 2024 school and started raising funds in Earnest in September. I close the fund this month and they will begin to implement it in April for a period of five years.
They also recruited a high quality risk capitalists as counselors, including Alex Kayyal, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bryan Kim Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Sara Choi, a partner at Wing Venture Capital and Sanjay Rao, a leader in Tau Ventures. Some of his more than 10 counselors are HBS students.
“It is no wonder that the people at Harvard Business School do business together, right? This is the school genesis,” Mcilwain told Business Insider. “The twenty -year -old thesis is if you only support one HBS graduates index, you exceed S&P.”
The Harvard MBA graduates have collected nearly $ 80 billion in financing the risk capital over the last decade, more than any other business school. The top -financed companies of the school include the NorthVolt battery manufacturer, used car market and Lace Lace Startup Security. He came second after Stanford Graduate School of Business for the largest number of Unicorn founders, producing about 4.2 per 1,000 graduates, according to a LinkedIn post from Professor Stanford, Ilya Strebulaev.
Twenty25 will invest in startups that collect $ 500,000 or more in rounds run by institutional investors and select risk capital companies. The average size of the investment check will be between 10,000 and $ 50,000.
Its purpose is to give several HBS students a chance to enter their exclusive network before engaging in their career and building wealth.
“We wanted to reduce the entrance barrier and offer to several classmates the chance to participate in risk investments,” Mcilwain said. “The creation of generational wealth begins with access”.
The fundament of student checks up to $ 3,000 and places them at $ 100,000 or 10% of the fund.
Related stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Students want to bet on each other
The Harvard Fund is inspired by Stanford 2020, a risk capital launched by Stanford Graduate School of Business students in 2020 to invest in classmates. The fund obtained the support from almost half of the 2020 class, raising over $ 1.5 million and had a minimum of $ 3,000 for contributions.
In a 2020 interview with Techcrunch, the founder of Stanford 2020, Steph Mui, said that the Fund was born from the inaccessibility of angel-by investments that individuals with high net value put capital in early stage projects: “Only accredited people can do it, they feel very elite,” she said.
“We started to think more if we can do something about something that the whole class could participate in or at least to make it more accessible than in these small pockets of people who do it behind closed doors,” she said.
Later, she said to Outlet that most people who contributed to Stanford 2020 were checking writers for the first time.
PIN, which represents power in number, is a platform that appeared from Stanford 2020. It deals with all administrative, legal and fiscal works for investment clubs. Twenty25 uses it, as it facilitates the management of smaller scale checks than a standard union platform.
In recent years, the funds supported by students with similar structures have appeared in other business schools.
Students at the University of California, Haas School of Business, launched Counced Ventures in 2021, which has since implemented over $ 3 million on several funds, investing about $ 50,000 per $ 100,000 on Startup, according to its website. Its general partners also invest about half of the performance taxes in the campus groups that support the startups.
Last year, two Wharton class members from 2026 launched Center City Ventures. The fund collects contributions from students from the 2026 class from $ 3,000 and will invest the money in startups founded at the University, according to its website.
The last few years have been difficult for the MBA graduates, including those of the most elite institutions. Employment with white collar was successful and reduced the amount that companies are willing to pay post-MBA. The share of graduates from top schools such as Harvard, Stanford and Wharton with jobs three months after graduation decreased since 2021.
But class funds at these schools make students see real value in their network.
“This fund is not just about startup,” she said. “It is about inclusion, property and community.”