In 2018, four MBA students attending Wharton, Harvard Business School and the GSB at Stanford founded The MBA Fund. They saw not only the potential of flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystems at top schools, but also the barriers to getting new startups off the ground.

They started empowering peers to set up businesses with capital from their first fund, backed mostly by contributions from alumni. By the launch of their second fund, three years later, they were set on continuing this mission post graduation.

Over the past 7 years, they have invested in more than 180 companies across two funds, including Jeeves ($2B), Dandy ($1B), Hightouch ($1.2B), and TRMLabs ($600M), amongst others with impressive valuations.

We spoke with General Partner Iynna Halilou to understand more about how their team has been scaling their sourcing operation both on and off campus using Specter.

Classroom to Capital

During her studies, Iynna was already deeply involved with The MBA Fund, helping to nurture talent from within the student network as a Campus Investment Partner. The CIP Program is a highly competitive program, whereby top students from the schools in the MBA Fund’s ecosystem are recruited to scout interesting opportunities, both on and off campus.

After graduating and gaining experience as a venture investor at Moxxie Ventures, her commitment to the cause remained strong, so much so that the founding team of The MBA Fund invited her to join the partnership and lead the firm’s strategy.

“We’ve come such a long way since our early days. What started as a side project evolved into a real passion of mine, and I found myself working on these efforts in my spare time, even after graduating and leaving my formal CIP role. I was one of several students initially selected to join the program, helping to evaluate deals, write investment memos and generally gain invaluable VC experience. Now, it’s a real privilege to return and represent the fund as a Partner.”

Top School Spinouts

Iynna explained that their sweet spot is working with founding teams that have some kind of pilot with traction or revenue, but ultimately if they see a great team going after a big market, there is always the potential to back such products.

“We are fairly generalist investors, looking primarily at plays that are software-first. Example areas of interest would of course be AI, as well as healthcare, fintech, and cloud infrastructure. We usually participate in rounds with a first cheque contribution. The key is that we want to be among the first to back top founders coming from the schools we focus on.”

The pool of talent consists of alumni, current students, and dropouts from The University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Stanford. They are all recognised hubs of technical talent, and Berkeley has recently been added to their roster as a source of founder potential, especially attractive with the launch of their AI Lab.

Use Cases

Specter’s People Database help The MBA Fund target a wide range of relevant profiles, making the most of unique filters for:

  • Education Level - Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees as well as PhDs.
  • Dates of Study - Helps distinguish between targets who are newer founders, and those who are 10 years out of school, and may have had more operational / entrepreneurial experience.
  • People Highlights - Focusing not only students from specific schools, but also those with:
    • Strong Academic and/or Technical Backgrounds, working at advanced levels on challenging and cutting edge scientific fields.
    • Experience at top calibre and high growth companies, for instance at a F500, or in a VC-backed setting.
    • Experience as a VC-backed founder, or a founder who Exited / IPOed.

Specter’s Talent Signals are also useful for identifying important talent movements:

  • Searching - The team wants to know when someone is leaving a position, even before they have founded a company.
  • New Company - Spot founders from these top schools going into Stealth or officially going Live with their new venture.
  • Diaspora Founders - Two of the firm’s four partners came to the US as immigrants, and are interested not only in students from the US, but those who came to study at these top institutions from other countries.

They’ve navigated the complexities of the US immigration system and impressively both were able to obtain O-1 visas (for individuals with extraordinary ability). They understand that many bright individuals ‘without a plan B’ really hustle and excel academically, and have huge founder potential.

“The vast majority of founders we have invested in so far have been US-based, but we also work with portfolio companies in Africa, South East Asia and Latin America. We hope to expand to Europe very soon, and have explored many opportunities in countries including but not limited to Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, South Africa, and Kenya.”

Specter’s Strategic Signals are another device, applicable to picking up on interesting trends in the private markets:

“Seeing what other reputable investors are focusing on is valuable. I respect the way they think, and I want to know what they are seeing — who is on their radar right now — especially given there is so much noise to sift through across international talent networks. Everyone wants to be everywhere, and Specter provides a low-key way of seeing what’s going on behind the scenes.”

Success Story

Iynna reflected that, even though she and the team are extremely connected to the student community and have a lot of on-the-ground connections to leverage in their search for great founders, there are many advantages to using a tool like Specter alongside these networks.

“We invested in a company with roots at Stanford and Wharton, although the founder wasn’t someone we knew or found through personal connections. They were a rising star in their industry with a strong technical product background, and we found them as a Stealth signal in Specter a few weeks before we met up in person for the first time.
We kept in touch, and fast forward after that meeting, they went to YC and wanted to restart conversations at the point when they started raising. They had pivoted to a new idea, which was heavily research-informed and made a lot of sense in retrospect. It was all super impressive, and I took this story to the Partners, only to find that one of them happened to have been in their class at school!
They hadn’t spoken since graduation, and never would have reconnected had I not created that initial spark based on the signalling data we followed, regardless of any mutual connections. It was pure intellectual and operational excellence, as well as the timing of the opportunity found through Specter, that made two classmates cross paths once again. Only this time, it was with the prospect of a highly impactful startup investment, which would later become a reality.”