Castor Ventures Portfolio Highlights

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, Enable, Judi Health, Ocient, Qedma, RapidSOS, Synchron, and Unlearn AI, each tackling high-impact problems with ambitious solutions. Castor’s portfolio also includes Groq, which has generated returns for Castor investors — a milestone that reflects the fund’s ability to identify and back category-defining companies early.

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.

Trey brings a foundational AI background and management consulting experience to early-stage investing at AV.

His experience sharpened his ability to rapidly evaluate complex problems, stress-test assumptions, and identify what separates scalable companies. That foundation, combined with a genuine passion for frontier technology, drew him to early-stage investing, where he works closely with builders and founders pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

Trey is deeply embedded in the Boston-Cambridge startup ecosystem, sourcing and evaluating opportunities emerging from MIT and Harvard while staying connected to other global innovation hubs.

Funds Actively Worked On: Castor Ventures, Syndications

Investment Areas of Focus: At AV, Trey is a Venture Associate on the Castor Ventures team, where he evaluates opportunities across verticals with particular focus on the AI stack, Deep Tech, and Longevity Tech. Trey’s investment thesis is rooted in the belief that exceptional outcomes are driven by moats and execution, not pedigree. He backs passionate founders with genuine technical expertise, ambitious vision, and the unwavering grit required to turn a breakthrough into a scalable enterprise.

Trey holds a B.A. from Skidmore College, where he graduated summa cum laude, served as a two-time captain of the baseball team, received the Jefferson Huff ‘88 Prize in Business, and mentored students in the finance club.

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.

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.