An investment and support program for startups founded by Carnegie Mellon University students and alumni is embarking on a multi-city tour to try and shore up support for the fledgling companies on its roster.
It's the first time that VentureBridge, an initiative led by the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, will host multiple "Demo Days" for its startups, which offers program participants the opportunity to network with investors and others who help companies grow and scale.
VentureBridge has hosted an annual "Demo Day" in either San Francisco or Pittsburgh previously, but this year marked the inaugural debut of a "Demo Day" event in New York City on Sept. 27 in addition to the event held in Pittsburgh on Sept. 20 and the one to be held in San Francisco on Oct. 3.
And so far, the opportunities these additional events have brought to the 13 startups in the VentureBridge 2023 cohort have been a resounding success, Namrata Banerjee, the program's director, said. She's optimistic that "Demo Day" events will go on to continue visiting multiple cities in the years ahead so long as it can benefit CMU alumni nearby who are running successful startup companies.
"For me, it's a true indicator of CMU's rise in entrepreneurship rankings," Banerjee said. "We want to have more eyes and more people and more visibility and recognition of the amazing work that CMU entrepreneurs are doing across the U.S. We want them to stand in front of these very dense investment communities in the Bay Area and New York where there are a ton of investors and alumni and give everybody a chance to come together and celebrate these founders and the innovations that they have."
Since 2018, Banerjee said startups that have participated in VentureBridge have gone on to raise over $140 million in funding. It's a figure she expects will only continue to grow with time.
"We have had investors walk up to us and say how enriching it was for them to see these [startups]…the investors were amazed and very impressed by the range of innovation and the range of talent and the range of problems that our founders are solving," Banerjee said. "We have received a ton of great comments and our founders have been receiving the calls from investors, follow-up calls so they can go raise money."
Below are the 11 of the 13 startups selected for the 2023 summer VentureBridge cohort (two firms remain under development or in "stealth mode"):
- Addy AI
- Aug X Labs
- ByMe
- Conduit
- Erosion Film Production
- Fluid Reality
- Leaficient
- Off the Line
- Pendulum
- Upview
- Velo.AI
