Webinar
Castor Fund 11 Launch
Join Alumni Ventures’ Chris Sklarin, Evy Chen, and Kody Amburgey for the launch of the next Castor Ventures fund — and a clear-eyed look at how accredited investors can gain structured exposure to the founders emerging from one of the world’s most powerful innovation ecosystems before this fund closes.
In this session, Chris, Evy, and Kody will introduce the next Castor Ventures fund and walk through how it’s positioned to leverage Alumni Ventures’ connection to the MIT ecosystem — sourcing, evaluating, and backing exceptional founders across the categories that have defined MIT’s place in venture: deep tech, robotics, AI, life sciences, and the frontier technologies emerging next. The team will share the fund’s investment thesis, how they translate access into a diversified portfolio, and where they’re sharpening conviction today.
Whether you’re an MIT alum, a current Alumni Ventures investor, or evaluating university-connected venture for the first time, this is your opportunity to learn about the new Castor fund directly from the team building it. Register to hear the thesis, see how the portfolio is being constructed, and bring your questions to the live Q&A — before the fund closes.
Want to access our Castor Syndicate startup deals to see, evaluate, and optionally invest? No cost, no commitment.
Why Attend?
- HomeBe among the first to learn about the next Castor Ventures fund — the thesis, structure, and where the team is sharpening conviction today
- HomeUnderstand how Castor Ventures translates privileged access to the MIT ecosystem into a differentiated venture portfolio across deep tech, robotics, AI, and life sciences
- HomeDecide whether Castor Ventures belongs in your venture allocation — and bring your questions directly to the team before the fund closes
Rated a Top 20 VC Firm by both TIME and CB Insights.
Alumni Ventures is America’s largest venture capital firm for individual investors.
About your presenters
Evy Chen Senior Principal, Castor Ventures, Neurotech Syndicate & AV Women’s Fund
Evy Chen is an investor and operator whose thesis is simple: behavior is the real moat. She invests in technology that shifts human behavior at scale — across consumer, AI, deep tech, and Neurotech — from Seed through Series B.
As Senior Principal at Alumni Ventures, she leads investment strategy and deal execution across Castor Ventures (AV’s MIT fund), the AV Women’s Fund, and the AV Neurotech Syndicate, which she co-founded.
Her portfolio reflects that conviction. She backs founders missioned to better human lives — Synchron, the brain-computer interface enabling people to control digital devices through thought alone, restoring not just function but agency; and Psyonic, the world’s first touch-sensing bionic hand, giving amputees the ability to feel again. These are companies that don’t optimize existing behavior — they unlock behavior that didn’t exist before.
That perspective is earned. Evy bootstrapped Evy Tea from a farmers market into a nationally distributed brand, and founded Nudge Venture, an applied behavioral economics research studio. She holds an MS in Management of Technology as a Sloan Fellow and Dean’s Fellow at MIT Sloan, and a BS in Marketing Communications from Emerson College. She serves as an adjunct Professor in Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization at Brown University’s School of Engineering.
Principal
Kody brings a combination of a founder’s operational rigor, growth-stage execution perspective and traditional financial industry roots to early-stage investing, grounded in his experience building and scaling consumer and B2B businesses from the ground up, alongside his initial Wall Street training. His investment philosophy centers on defensible unit economics, founder-led execution, and the strategic distribution and go-to-market decisions that separate durable companies from those that plateau.
His unique perspective is informed by his founding journey: he co-founded Zebra, a micro-mobility marketplace that scaled to millions in ARR and raised $15M in venture capital, managing local market operations across the western U.S. and built a team of 30+ from inception. More recently, he co-founded Lumi, a consumer electronics company that generated over $1M in revenue within 1 year through both direct-to-consumer and B2B channel partnerships with major corporate and sports brands—all while bootstrapped and operating with deliberate unit economics discipline.
Beyond his founding experience, Kody has spent years on both sides of the capital markets. He cut his teeth in Leveraged Finance Investment Banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, conducted full-stack venture due diligence at SeedInvest, and has actively invested and advised through roles as an AngelList Syndicate Owner, TechStars Mentor, and venture scout. This multi-perspective experience—from banker to operator to investor—gives him a distinctive ability to assess not just market opportunity, but the operational and capital decisions that determine whether founders can capture it.
Funds actively worked on:
Castor Ventures
Syndications
Investment Areas of Focus:
At Alumni Ventures, Kody is a Principal on the Castor Ventures team, where he evaluates companies at the intersection of founder capability, strong product-market fit, optimal macro timing, and sustainable growth mechanics. His focus areas include enterprise AI and SaaS platforms, connected consumer hardware, growth-stage companies with defensible distribution and competitive moats, and network-effect-enabled businesses such as digital marketplaces.
Kody’s investment thesis is rooted in the belief that execution—not just vision—separates exceptional companies from the rest. He gravitates toward founders who combine ambitious thinking with rigorous financial discipline, particularly those solving real market problems through hardware, software platforms, or marketplace models where go-to-market strategy and defensible business model design is a sustainable source of advantage.
Kody holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Minor in Economics from Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, where he graduated with Academic Distinction. He believes the most valuable companies emerge when founders who are highly creative yet analytically-minded encounter genuine market inefficiencies—and when capital and mentorship from experienced investors help them navigate the unglamorous work of building defensible, profitable growth.
Overview
Chris Sklarin is Managing Partner of the Castor Fund at Alumni Ventures, where for over eight years he has led investments in transformative technology companies redefining how we compute, communicate, and cure. He has deployed more than $120 million across all stages—from seed to growth—building Castor Ventures and expanding the portfolio to over 150 companies. The Castor portfolio features industry leaders such as Algorand, Boldin, Capital RX, Enable, Groq, Ocient, Qedma, RapidSOS, Synchron, and Unlearn AI, each tackling high-impact problems with ambitious solutions.
With over 20 years in venture capital and more than a decade in product development and sales engineering, Chris has also held venture roles focused on enterprise and mobile investments, served as Director of Business Development at a biomedical venture accelerator and an early-stage firm, and sourced seed-stage deals at JumpStart, a nationally recognized venture development organization in Cleveland. Chris holds an SB in Electrical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
Funds actively worked on
- Castor Ventures
- Syndications
Investment Areas of Focus:
Chris targets companies at the forefront of software, AI, data infrastructure, and connectivity, backing teams that are not just innovating but reengineering the physical and digital infrastructure powering the modern world. He believes the next generation of breakthrough companies will emerge from foundational shifts in technology and is committed to supporting the leaders driving that transformation.
A core component of Chris’s strategy is leveraging the powerful innovation engine of the MIT ecosystem. As an MIT alumnus, he taps this network to source compelling investment opportunities and connect with top-tier investors. Chris’s investment approach is informed by his early career as a software and sales engineer, with technical expertise in databases, telecom systems, and software architecture. This hands-on background sharpens his diligence and ability to assess technical complexity and market viability.