Webinar
Masterclass Live! The Art of Evaluating a Deal
Join Mark Edwards, Chief Investment Officer at Alumni Ventures, and Andy Ervin for a masterclass on how experienced venture investors actually evaluate a deal — the frameworks, signals, and red flags that separate the opportunities worth backing from the ones that look better on paper than they perform in practice.
In this session, Mark Edwards, Chief Investment Officer at Alumni Ventures, and Andy Ervin will pull back the curtain on the diligence process the AV investment team uses to evaluate hundreds of opportunities a year. Mark and Andy will walk through how the team sizes markets, assesses founders, pressure-tests business models, and identifies the early signals that flag a startup as either a breakout candidate or a pass.
The conversation will go beyond theory to show how these frameworks get applied in practice — what experienced investors look for in a pitch, where most early-stage diligence falls short, and how to think about risk and portfolio fit when committing capital to a single deal. Mark and Andy will draw on AV’s vantage point as one of the most active venture investors in the country to ground the discussion in real-world decision-making.
Whether you’re an active angel investor sharpening your own process, or simply curious about how professional VCs separate signal from noise, this masterclass will give you a clearer, more disciplined way to evaluate any venture opportunity that crosses your desk. Register to walk away with frameworks you can apply to the next deal you see — and a sharper sense of what really drives venture outcomes.
Want to access our Alumni Ventures Syndicate startup deals to see, evaluate, and optionally invest? No cost, no commitment.
Why Attend?
- HomeDiscover the specific frameworks the Alumni Ventures team uses to evaluate market size, founder quality, and competitive positioning
- HomeUnderstand how AV's investment team conducts diligence across hundreds of deals a year and decides which ones earn capital
- HomeLearn how to spot the red flags that experienced investors catch early — and apply those filters to your own deal evaluation
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
Mark Edwards is the Chief Investment Officer at Alumni Ventures. A seasoned private equity executive who was an early investor in AV, Mark has served on the investment committees of Green D Ventures and Spike Ventures since inception. Mark has over 20 years of direct investing experience, having served in leadership roles at Five Peaks Capital Management, JLL Partners (~$4B of capital under management), and DLJ Merchant Banking Partners (~$10B of capital under management). He holds an AB with honors from Stanford University and an MBA with distinction from Tuck (Tuck Scholar).
Andy is Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Alumni Ventures, where he supports investment operations, analytics, and portfolio management. Previously, Andy held several executive roles at a VC-backed start-up in Boston called MiniLuxe, where he led finance and operations during a period of significant growth. Andy was also a consultant at The Parthenon Group and began his career as an actuary at the Liberty Mutual Group. Andy holds a bachelor’s degree from Penn State University and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.