Red Bear Ventures

Red Bear Ventures (RBV) is an expert-led investment network of 10,000+ members backing companies founded or led by Cornell students, faculty, staff, and alumni. We started with Cornell because its community spans every industry and every geography at a scale few institutions can match—150+ fields of study and 350,000 alumni. Our investment model is driven by domain-specific expertise. When a founder applies, we route the opportunity to experts in the community whose work overlaps with what's being built. If the experts lean in, we open the deal to the network. Each investment is structured as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) on AngelList, with an intentionally low minimum check size of $1,000 per SPV so more people can participate. RBV is an extension of Red Bear Angels, which has been investing in Cornell-affiliated companies since 2014. Three beliefs anchor everything we do: Founders deserve better. We know what it feels like to pitch people who don't understand your business, to chase intros that go nowhere, to walk out of a meeting that felt more like a hazing than a conversation. The least we can do is make the process faster, more useful, and a lot less humiliating. Expertise is everywhere - and it's about to matter more, not less. The smartest person about a given industry is rarely sitting in a venture office on Sand Hill Road. They're running a hospital system in Cleveland, a logistics company in Memphis, or a farm in upstate New York. And as AI proliferates, hard-won tacit knowledge becomes even more important. Access to private investing should be broader. For far too long, the chance to back great companies has been gated by geography and relationships. We don't think that's right, especially as companies stay private longer. We're building something more open: a network where expertise sends the signal, and everyone can participate.