UC Berkeley monetizes the startups it incubates

Jeremy Fiance arrived at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate intent on entrepreneurship. What he found was a campus not as interested in growing the next Facebook, Google or Twitter as some of its private school counterparts. So he decided to take the task on himself.

But the wunderkind’s biggest move to support on-campus entrepreneurship came in 2016 when he launched the House Fund, a $6 million investment fund raised from private investors and the UC system focused exclusively on providing early stage and seed round funding and assistance to startups coming out of UC Berkeley. The fund is under the umbrella of The House, a nonprofit independent startup institute managed by Fiance’s friend and fellow UC Berkeley alumnus Cameron Baradar.

“What I experienced first-hand was that there was really no one there to write the first check for entrepreneurs. The biggest need – and opportunity – was finding those initial investors in the zero to $250K range,” Fiance said.

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