Cynthia Maxey

Free Ventures is UC Berkeleys leading pre-seed startup incubator, crafting highly individualized paths for founders across industries and academic backgrounds in a 3-month program. As the universitys only nonprofit program run by students, for students, we aren’t pressed for returns or exits. Instead, we spend our full time cultivating relationships with top undergraduate and graduate student groups, and curate a support network of top venture capitalists, resource partners, founders, and thought leaders from the Valley for our portfolio. In doing so, we make entrepreneurship accessible to Berkeley students of all backgrounds by empowering them with the support to innovate and build. Over 11 years, weve helped 100+ portfolio companies raise $200M+ in follow-on capital from Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Greylock, and more. Weve had multiple YC exits & acquisitions by companies like Coinbase, Discord, and Opendoor. Visit www.freeventures.org to learn more and follow us on Twitter @freeventures.

At Bee Partners, we passionately believe today’s decades-long supercycle of AI-enabled machines will transform our world via software, hardware, and biology. Innovation favors adaptive, technical, and bold founders, aligning perfectly with our investment ethos. The inception-stage remains the best for producing exceptional returns, especially through close collaboration with founders to drive profound change. Here is what we are looking for. Bee Partners invests at inception in deepTech startups, deploying $500k - $1.5M per company. Our commitment goes beyond capital; we build genuine partnerships founded on integrity and trust, facilitating strategic introductions to customers, advisors, employees, and capital sources. We underwrite every investment to return the fund, with a Partnership Model that centers around collaboration as the highest form of value addition. Our strategy is grounded in team expertise, extensive research, and comprehensive support from our advisory network. We have established engines of innovation that drive deal flow, from universities such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, and Georgia Tech, alongside angel networks and our Founders network. Our track record over the past 15 years demonstrates our commitment to deep tech investing long before it was widely recognized as a bastion of venture return generation. Our model has resulted in a 60% matriculation rate to Series A, with over $2B in follow-on capital raised from the worlds leading VCs. With $150 million under management, we are currently investing out of our fourth flagship fund.